"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"Jack of all Trades, master of none"?
John, it would be interesting for you to say what conclusions you can draw from the weight of shavings. I can follow distances planed and thickness of shavings. You could in fact take three shavings and get the same weight as fifty shavings. The iron or blade would be cutting through the same length of glue (you said you used plywood) with each stroke for instance. Please help me understand what conclusions you can draw based on weight of shaving.
Jim
Yep... And if you are an engineer long enough - you end up doing all of it....
Anyway - assuming my test isn't a fluke... What would cause this sort of behavior? It's got to be some sort of microstructure change because the bulk hardness didn't change enough for me to tell.... But now - the edge wears down instead of rolling and they cut at least 2x as long...
But this may also explain why some folks get good results out of them and others don't.... Perhaps the tempering was correct on some and not on mine... I am assuming that professional heat treaters with the right equipment and knowledge/experience with the alloy could get a lot better results than I do in the kitchen oven....
I am going to try these out some more - but I (provisionally) like them a whole lot more now...
Not an engineer, though I employ several! Not a metallurgist, though I employ one. Not a teacher, artist or florist either, just the poor, dumb owner of a powder metal part manufacturing plant.
My opinion is based on raw material available in our industry, called "re-mill", which simply is comprised of the tailings of powders from presses. The composition can have high contents of nickel, or copper or none at all! It can have low carbon or high carbon, or none at all. I would suspect the raw material used in most very low cost chisels, does not have tight specifications, leading to the variability issue. Also, as Aldi's is a grocery chain, with these chisels generaly showing around Father's Day, I would suspect most are impulse gift buys, with few purchased by serious users. I would bet that few ever touch wood.
If the thunder don't get you, the lightning will.
Aldi's sells a lot more than just food items....maybe a trip inside would be in order.
I can't say for sure....but, I think they went on sale today.....one carton per store....
stashed.jpg
Hmmm, yep, these do get used...a lot. these are my user chisels.. YMMV
I think they must be trying to create a run on the stores. They get some folks in forums talking the chisels up and next thing you know they sell a few chisels and maybe a bag or two of generic potato chips. The question is, is mr newman getting reimbursed for his endorsements?
No, he is NOT....
I heard on the internet that Andy Kaufman faked his death and is now selling chisels for a supermarket chain.
More Fake News, eh? maybe you two should ask the OP.....I have work to do...
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Right after I get this mess swept up....
Very cool stuff there... Are you doing MIM or compression pressing and sintering?
I did a quick bit of math on the Aldi chisels... I have no idea how they can make anything to a spec for that price.
$7/4 = $1.25/chisel retail price.
Assume a standard 7:1 export price structure = $0.18/finished chisel packaged FOB chisel factory.
Assume 10% materials cost - and all the materials run $0.018/chisel... Blade, hoops, handle, paint, cardboard, lacquer, plastic protector, plastic bubble, and staples... Let's be generous and say the blade is 20% of the total material cost... That means the steel in the blade costs $0.0036... Or $1 worth of their steel gets you 277.8blades.... 4 oz each chisel blade = 8000/ton.... A little math gives us $28.80/ton of high carbon alloy tool steel. YIKES!!! You can get more for scrap in the USA....
Even if Aldi did almost all the leg work and it was an impossibly low 2:1 import multiplier - that means $100/ton of high carbon tool steel.... I still don't see it....
Last edited by John C Cox; 06-13-2018 at 9:42 PM.
If only my messes could be so neat.Right after I get this mess swept up....
jtk
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)