Helvete

I have had a stockpile of old 90's computers sitting around for years and recently have taken interest in deplating the components for gold retrieval. I've watched a few videos on the internet on doing it using various acids, which were very helpful, but I was curious if any of you were doing this and had any helpful methods for doing it. -Rich

I know this is an old thread, but I use surface grinder almost daily at work in a machine shop and even know how to do some mechanical work on the Brown & Sharpe 2L with an automatic table reversing mechanism. My forum avatar is the gearbox from when I had to rebuild it after it sat unused for a few years, the rack pinion shaft was severely damaged, the oil lines had to be replaced, and I had to fabricate a lot of parts for the traverse distance mechanisms and the table reversing switch. The coolant pump/tank doesn't work anymore so we can only grind down about .003" at a time using a spray bottle with coolant otherwise it will burn the part and wear out the wheel in no time. There's also an old Cincinatti one in the shop but I don't particularly like that one now that I have the B&S running again. We use them from anything from sharpening sheet metal punches and dies (auto turret, duplicator, ironworker, etc.) to holding an extremely close tolerance with a nice square ground finish on a part to cleaning up the surface on mill and table vise jaws. Or the face of a lathe chuck. The most important parts to remember for reliable operation were mentioned above, dress your wheel regularly, be sure that the spindle is running true with no runout, and absolutely positively be sure that your travel stops are tightened down and working properly before turning on the table reverser. If you don't the table can jump off the rack pinion gears and either break teeth on the gear rack or the gears themselves and you're opening a can of worms. A good travel distance on Y would be about 15-20 thou per ratchet. There really isn't any need to travel more than that each pass, IMO. Oh, and if you do happen to have a service manual, don't pay attention to it, it's garbage, use your God-given mechanical instinct or call a professional. The manual on a lot of the older ones are specifically designed to prevent you from working on them yourselves, almost like new cars are nowadays!

I like how that guy uses hand tools to built it! Here's a link to a similar treadle design, complete with schematics and bill of materials http://rizaydog.webs.com/treadlelathebuild.htm I must say it would be a lot easier to find an old flywheel like in the video and use that instead of crafting one out of wood! I have a few pulley wheels from haybale hooks I was going to use this design as a base for a treadle grindstone at some point. Thanks for posting the vid, Glenn!

I'm brand spanking new to this, but not new to working with metal in general. I've been working in machine shops off and on for 9 years, strangely starting out in a shop that solely fabricated tungsten carbide tooling. Currently I machine various mild steel, stainless, aluminum, tooling steel, and softer metals on conventional mills and lathes. My forum photo is the gearbox for a 1957 Brown & Sharpe surface grinder that I recently rebuilt. That being said, I've been talking about smithing for all this time and finally built an extremely sturdy (as in, overkill) forge that I hope will survive for the next 500 years. It has a 3/8" base plate and 1/4" walls. I'll be firing it up soon and practicing with working out some of the steel drops I'm able to get from work. I probably won't ask a lot of questions as I'm not a newbie to using forums and know it can be a pain to answer the same questions over and over for those established members. "The search button is your friend" What made me decide to finally stop talking and start doing was my recent procurement of some meteorite fragments. It may be years before I'm able to work those into a blade or something similar but I have to start with the basics. I tested their hardness--92 with diamond cone on the Rockwell! I don't know if I'm going to be able to do anything with them at all but one day I'll try!