Hello,
I have limited experience in metalworking. I am a wood & stone carver trying to make a tool to "distress" stone. Basically about sixty 3" pieces of 25ga music wire chucked up in a socket. Then this is used in an pneumatic impact hammer to texture the stone. My question is, what is a good way to flatten out the music wire? The tool will work best if I can take the slight bend out of the wire, (since it comes rolled up in a 6" box).
Thanks, Kevin
It's called an "IMPACT BRUSH" pat.# 5,010,632 If you do this, you have to pay me royalties.
Seriously, they are used extensivly for texturing stone. And guess what...I make them and sell them!
Thanks Tom, Heading for your website now!
Kevin
Tom, how is your tool different from a needle scaler? More gentle? I just got through with about an hour of paint removal with the scaler on a forklift counterweight.
RJ
It's like a miniature needle scaler. It can have .016", .025", or .035" wire compared to .125" needles. However, it would be a pain to do a big surface. It shines in the hard-to-reach or irregular areas. On a forklift, I have used 6" knot-type cup brushes on a 9" angle grinder then an Impact brush to get around the bolts and such. See Roy's blurb:
-NotLarry
I think the counterweight and part of the mast assembly will be all I have to scale. I got lucky in that it is an old Datsun forklift, and the major components are bolted on as sub-weldments. I have removed them all down to the chassis and am taking them to a friend for sandblasting. I'm trying to use the old adage "Work smarter, not harder" these days.
RJ
You're wanting to straighten the wire, rather than flatten it. When wire is spooled in production or produced in loose coils, it's processed thru a series of ball bearing assemblies that are situated in 2 staggered parallel rows (maybe 20 per side).
I've seen lots of MIG welding wire transferred from large (approx. 3 ft spools) to the smaller spools. If the arc in the wire isn't set properly, the wire will unspool when the end is cut loose from the spool. The ball bearings that were used to straighten and reset the wire to other sizes were about 1/2" OD, and had a shallow groove ground in the face of the OD.
These bearings were adjusted inward to remove the set of the wire. This is similar to a sheet roll, where the arc is formed as the the ODs of the rolls change the sheet from flat to round. Instead of forming an arc, the parallel rows of bearings remove it.
In working with the relatively short lengths of music wire that's not supplied on a spool, you could improvise some sort of holder that you could load the wire on, maybe 2 discs with a hub (or pins) that would be able to rotate on an axis. The straightener wouldn't necessarily need to be ball bearings, depending on how much wire you want to straighten.. it could be dowels or other parts that could be adjusted in a straight line, and fine adjusted for the ODs to slightly overlap (over the wire's outside dimension).
WB ..........
A sure sign of old age setting in!
You can buy straight music wire. See
read
it explains a good technique.
Paul K. Dickman
Hi Kevin,
Most hobby stores carry 3 foot lengths of music wire, no coiling involved. The K&S wire is sold in tubes of 4 for most sizes, I use then for clock pinion replacement. Seems tubes of 4 wires cost around $1.70 or so.
Cheers, Stan
Kev> Hello,
Welding supply places sell a tool that works the way your tool works. It is used for chipping slag. Its air operated and has a bunch of rods in a sleeve that hammer against the slag
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