Machining a 5# chunk of Fruit cake

Sorry, Roy. HSS won't touch fruit cake. Fact is, even carbide has a tough time with it. You'd be best served by applying diamond tools, but the very best thing to do with it is to send it to someone you flat don't like.

Fashioning an anvil would be one of few useful applications, but do you really want to spend the balance of your life screwing around with it, when you can go to Harbor Freight and purchase one made of steel?

Yeah, I realize it won't hold up as well as the fruit cake, but you'll at least live long enough to get some use from it, unlike the fruit cake model. The way I see it, you'll spend no less than the next twenty years wearing it down enough to resemble an anvil. Won't have much time left by then, and likely not much interest, either.

That's my story, and I'm stickin' with it.

Harold

It's still softer than a motel mattress. They measure about 69 on the rockwell c scale. They make good surface plates.

73 Gary

The mattress is pretty soft once you break thru the white crust.

Ooooh! I'll eat the swarf! You have to pick out the aluminum and steel chips first, please.

I must be the only one in the world that likes fruit cake...

Peter

I (many years ago) worked part time as a baker. I cooked millions of cookies, one Christmas the master baker made a VERY large batch of fruit bread, she asked me to remove it when it was done. Well after "baking (I was

Just ship it here; I like the stuff.

Soak it in rum for 6 weeks and the HSS might work. I live about 60 miles from Claxton, GA where they used to make about 40% of the fruitcake sold in North America. They got in financial trouble a few years back because their product was being recycled from one Christmas to the next and their market dried up. The key to a mass market product is to make it self obsolescent or consumable. Fruit cake never becomes obsolete and is seldom consumed.

Many years ago the guy who now owns the company that makes Jessada router bits ran the US branch of CMT. He sent out Italian fruit cakes for Christmas one year. Absolutely the best baked goods I ever tasted!

Suggest CO2 coolant bath - and Sapphire tipped cutting tools.

Martin Martin Eastburn @ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net NRA LOH & Endowment Member NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder

Roy wrote:

Actually I buy them myself - but only from the real place in Texas. These others are likely left over from another period in time.

Martin Martin Eastburn @ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net NRA LOH & Endowment Member NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder

Peter Grey wrote:

Truth be known, I like fruity cake, but it has to be made with candied fruit, not gum drops.

Harold

Actually..so do I. The last one I got, I took out to the Walker Turner bandsaw, and cut into neat 3/8" slices, then picked out a good book and pigged out on fruit cake and milk.

Gunner

"Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire. Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us) off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give them self determination under "play nice" rules.

Think of it as having your older brother knock the shit out of you for torturing the cat." Gunner

I would say that they got their just desserts.

Upon reading of fruitcakes, I went upstairs and had some made by a friend of my wife. The friend uses a recipe she got from a broker of Italian descent. This seems to be the key.

Joe Gwinn

I would use a No 1 wife with frequent glasses of port as cutting fluid.

Mark Rand RTFM

Gum drops? Horrors! No wonder people don't like fruit cake.

Peter

Yeah, a strange tradition that came with my wife. Small bits of gum drops in place of candied fruit. I'd never seen it before.

My mother made a killer good fruit cake-----heavy, moist, very tasty-----based on a spice cake, and made with candied fruit. Then along came gum drops. I've never viewed fruit cake the same way since.

Harold

A chunk of fruit cake? You mean Cliff?

It's not an accident. When conditions for life are proper, it's spontaneous. Science has proven it to more than my satisfaction by the large number of mass extinctions throughout the existence of the planet Earth, followed by repopulation by different life forms, better suited to existing conditions.

You do read, don't you? You've surely read about natural selection, or survival of the fittest? You know------------ Darwin! The guy that did the extensive studies that enlightened humans and got them away from tired old tales of how we came about, none of which hold water.

Oh, but it should! I don't think it's a good idea to teach fairytales as fact.

Harold

Ah, he probably just hasn't updated his sig file to reflect that court decision in PA, Harold. I'm sure he wouldn't want it to be so badly out of line with the scientific, and *legal* realities.

I read that court's decision BTW. I think it was probably issued on asbestos paper! Those poor foolish ID folks. Given the lying they did, they're probably going to be on the hook for all the court fees and all the lawyer fees as well.

Jim

These are to kill for. Real nuts, Real fruit. I bought a large one for work one year - I was the Engineering Manager - what did I know - by lunch it was gone. I think it was a 7 pound size.

The President - a Greek - bought them the next year.

Martin Martin Eastburn @ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net NRA LOH & Endowment Member NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder

Gunner Asch wrote: