Motorcycle mania

I'm trying to remember back to when I worked in a steelworks. ISTR that there were two meanings of the word billet. One was a casting straight from the furnace. It weight about 5 tons and was coffin shaped in both axis. This was then rolled into a final form. The other billet was a hot rolled bar about 8 to 10 inch square with rounded corners. This was sold on to customers. Occasionally we would use it in house for vehicle barriers etc. It's amazing how much more careful lorry driver become when the barrier is so much stronger than their truck. Of course you must remember that I'm in UK so all of the above may not translate into US English.

John

Recently on the UK program "the gadget show" they showed a chassis for part of a top end Linn hi-fi system made out of a piece of aluminium plate about 16" square and 2" thick. This may have had at a guess 90% of the volume of the original plate removed to produce the final item in

1.5 hours accord>I was watching the latest motorcycle show on Discovery channel, Jesse James

Terminology changes on these things, but, in the US, the traditional term for that casting is an "ingot."

However, basic steel has gone to continuous casting in the US starting around 1980. Now the first product that appears out of the melt is a slab, as thin as 2 inches. This has really confused the terms.

That's the same here. Most of those customers are rolling mills.

I haven't covered steelmaking for over 20 years, but the little I've picked up since suggests that specialty steels, including tool steels, are still made in the traditional order. Basic steels and low-alloy steels are made via continuous casting. But I can't confirm this. As I said, I haven't really kept up.

The traditional order was to cast ingots; these were pressed or hammered into blooms; the blooms were passed through the first rolling stand, where they became slabs; and then the slabs were rolled into plate. At some point in there, where I forget, squares were cut, I think from the slabs, and they were rolled into billet, for that bar- and shape-making stream. The rest was rolled into thinner plate and sheet.

But my memory is a little vague on all of this.

Ed Huntress

i think you hit the nail on the head. it's like people that paint faces on toothpicks... it seems like a huge waste of time, just use paper... but it's amazing someone would do it to begin with. i guess it works, everyone here is talking about it.

walt

A couple of weeks ago I talked to Alcoa and four other wheel makers about this. They all said that the smaller wheelmakers buy their forgings. There appear to be "generic" forgings available, which allow for individualism in the final machined shape.

They are a small fraction of the volume of a solid block from which the same-size wheel could be made. And they cost a small fraction of the price. The price of a 2-foot-square, ten-inch thick cut piece of 6061 plate would knock your socks off.

Ed Huntress

Choppers are all about attitude, and, from accounts, Jesse James has plenty of attitude. He also has a sharp marketer's sense of how to use it to make money.

Nothing about choppers makes the kind of sense that we apply to most of manufacturing. Milling wheels from solid blocks of aluminum is a kind of stunt; something you can film and put on TV, something that reflects the rebellious nature of Jesse James's choppers, and something that produces a kind of personalized jewelry that happens to hold a tire.

How much would you pay for a Cartier watch? That's like a Jesse James "billet" wheel. My Timex keeps time just fine, thank you very much.

Ed Huntress

not every body can afford a 100k bike , but every body can buy a 20 dollar t-shirt

Sometimes knowing these things is very uncomfortable, especially on a hobby newsgroup.

As the materials editor for a metalworking magazine years ago, and after close to 30 years of visiting shops and plants and writing about the subject, I've acquired some good methods for getting to the bottom of things. They're useful for researching articles, but sometimes introducing them can stop a good conversation cold in its tracks. That's what makes me uncomfortable about it. More often these days I just let people talk about it until some light shines through, and not get involved.

Ed Huntress

But pretty good for the HEAVIEST.

Fred Klingener

Bet they had some of those $400 wood knobs for the switches and such...

Fools and money; ain't capitalism great.

I don't know what they weigh. They're really skeletonized when West Coast Choppers are done with them.

Ed Huntress

prohibitively

According to the article cited earlier

the finished rear wheel weighs 58 pounds and the front 48, leaving (550-58+330-48)/2000 = about three eighths of a ton of aluminum chips.

Immoral?

Don't matter if it is as long as somebody is willing to pay for it.

Fred Klingener

Jeez, over 100 pounds just for the wheels.

Obsession is an amazing force.

Ed Huntress

it sure is... west coast choppers sells it's machines from $60,000 to $150,000.+ and they are 50 orders deep... customers are waiting up to two years for them as well.

walt

Was it a MM show where they talked about using machined headers n whatnot because the original cast components couldn't take the stress (make more horsepower)? I think they're just carrying that over to wheels with 'ours are better,...'.

Is that some kind of Commie watch?

Joel. phx

Never had the spouse throw a vise at me either!

'Don't know about the show, but that seems to be the way the expensive end of the motorhead market is going these days.

Ed Huntress

that was a year ago , their average bike is now close to 200k for the ones you see built on the show , and the waiting list is like 34 months

well then i better rethink my master plan of selling the house, kids, kidney, car, all the furniture and appliances and getting a chopper, i can't wait that long for a motorcycle!

walt