stainless steel - what happened?

General cycling advice ( NOT technical ! )
reohn2
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Re: stainless steel - what happened?

Post by reohn2 »

TheBomber wrote: 2 Jul 2022, 6:05pm
simonineaston wrote: 2 Jul 2022, 11:07am Japanese motorbike engine. Their otherwise excellent motors seemed always to be spoilt, hap'eth of tar-wise, by really crummy Phillips head bolts
Could that be because they weren’t Phillips heads, but JIS standard cross heads? You get them on Shimano products too and Phillips head screwdrivers always twist out, damaging the head on the way.
BITD I replaced the Japanese crosshead engine casing bolts on a few Jap bikes I owned at the time.
On buying my first set(for a new 1968 CD175 Honda IIRC)was advised by the knowledgable chap who worked at Millers in Wigan,to buy the correct T handled screw driver with the set of Allen bolts to remove the 'cheesy' bolts fitted by the factory,which worked a treat on a subsequent number of motorcycles and a few of my mates bikes at the time.
I still have that T handled screwy :D
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Biospace
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Re: stainless steel - what happened?

Post by Biospace »

simonineaston wrote: 2 Jul 2022, 12:17pm That reminds me of an anecdote told me by a Cumbrian-based chum, where Sellafield is a major local employer. He described how the management at the complex had long suspected the maintenance night shift of sleeping on the job - the evidence being a couple of grubby mattresses, not very well hidden away during the day...
Management planned a mid-night raid and pounced, only to discover not the expected ranks of fitters snoozing in darkened workshops - quite the opposite - they were all v. busy on their backs under their mate's cars, fitting custom-built exhaust systems from very high-grade stainless tube !!
That particular chum had a long long repertoire of humorous tales from life at Sellafield, many of which were quite alarming...

That's a good story - can you tell us any more of your friend's Sellafield repertoire?
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simonineaston
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Re: stainless steel - what happened?

Post by simonineaston »

haha - I should get my Cumbrian chum to tell 'em - he had a way with stories! :lol: But just one more...
There was the occasion when a special crane was required to do some such to one of the tall things they have at Sellafield, so they hired the right one to do the job and were apparently quite pleased when the job took exactly the predicted number of hours to complete - important as the cost of hiring a large, mobile crane and the specially trained driver was not insubstantial.
They rang the company and told them they'd finished and to prepare the invoice. However, the hire company took the precaution of getting said driver to test the rig for radiation and were not happy with the results, so their response was, "You can keep it - we don't want it back! But you're going to have to carry on paying for it, thank you very much!"
So for years afterwards, so it's said, a very expensive crane was tucked away in a corner of the Sellafield site, quietly crackling away and costing the tax-payer loads of money. Whether the specially-trained driver had to stay with it was not reported...
S
(on the look out for Armageddon, on board a Brompton nano & ever-changing Moultons)
fastpedaller
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Re: stainless steel - what happened?

Post by fastpedaller »

Re increased use of stainless steel - could it be that chrome plating and it's associated horrible chemicals have got so expensive as an alternative?
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simonineaston
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Re: stainless steel - what happened?

Post by simonineaston »

chrome plating and its associated horrible chemicals have got so expensive
I quite like that. Once you've factored in consumer preference to ss as well, it's starting to make sense.
S
(on the look out for Armageddon, on board a Brompton nano & ever-changing Moultons)
rmurphy195
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Re: stainless steel - what happened?

Post by rmurphy195 »

simonineaston wrote: 2 Jul 2022, 11:07am
but wasn't the big increase in use before 2000?
Could be. I do recall that in the mid '70s, it was sop to potter off to a specialist bike spares shop (or buy mail order, if you trusted the supplier) to get a set of ss allen head bolts for one's Japanese motorbike engine. Their otherwise excellent motors seemed always to be spoilt, hap'eth of tar-wise, by really crummy Phillips head bolts, made apparently from zinc-plated cheese. The first thing you did back then on acquiring a different model was replace them.
+1 - back in the late 60's in my case!
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Barrowman
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Re: stainless steel - what happened?

Post by Barrowman »

I had some Stainless rims. Excellent fir keeping clean in the winter but lethal when wet :shock:
Bmblbzzz
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Re: stainless steel - what happened?

Post by Bmblbzzz »

Dingdong wrote: 3 Jul 2022, 6:04am I'm very disappointed that SS hasn't taken off as a frame building materials. For sure the higher end Reynolds tubesets and the Italians have been producing good quality frames for years but they are hideously expensive. I've been trying to buy a 953 frame for a few years now, but even second hand they are very very expensive.

It's a real shame as I've actually ridden one and they are a great, smooth and dare I say, more plush drive than any carbon frame I've ridden. I wonder why they didn't get a mass appeal, and trickle down into a more popular market? I suppose carbon has really usurped everything, except the specialist niches of contemporary cycling.
I think it could be to do with the extra labour involved. Lots of hard, hard filing and so on.
scottg
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Re: stainless steel - what happened?

Post by scottg »

Stainless steel, costs like Ti, weighs like steel.

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djnotts
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Re: stainless steel - what happened?

Post by djnotts »

I once ran off 1000 x 1 sq yd ss panels for New World industrial cooking ranges in 1 might shift that were wrong. The checker had passed the control piece although I told him the punched holes etc would mean the grain ran the wrong way.
But he'd signed the sample so I put them through the brake press. When he finally realised.... he had them dumped down the back of the factory into the Aire.
I like ss!
Stradageek
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Re: stainless steel - what happened?

Post by Stradageek »

reohn2 wrote: 3 Jul 2022, 1:55pm BITD I replaced the Japanese crosshead engine casing bolts on a few Jap bikes I owned at the time a new 1968 CD175 Honda IIRC)
Snap! I would have had happier memories of my CD175 if I hadn't left it buried in the front of a Ford Cortina courtesy of the usual SMIDSY.

However my solution to removing those cross head screws was to buy an impact screwdriver, a magnificent tool that I have also used (with a socket head) to free completely jammed car wheel nuts!

I speculate that stainless steel abundance may be dependent upon Chromium/Zinc/Molybdenum commodity prices, the bribes paid to politicians in Kazakhstan etc.
Jamesh
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Re: stainless steel - what happened?

Post by Jamesh »

djnotts wrote: 17 Jul 2022, 10:02pm I once ran off 1000 x 1 sq yd ss panels for New World industrial cooking ranges in 1 might shift that were wrong. The checker had passed the control piece although I told him the punched holes etc would mean the grain ran the wrong way.
But he'd signed the sample so I put them through the brake press. When he finally realised.... he had them dumped down the back of the factory into the Aire.
I like ss!
Can you clarify the exact location I'm just going to pop down this morning and pick some up before it gets too hot! :lol: :lol: :lol:
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tykeboy2003
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Re: stainless steel - what happened?

Post by tykeboy2003 »

simonineaston wrote: 2 Jul 2022, 10:45am As I looked at my Aris LY sprocket this morning (what a nice freewheel the Aris is!), I concluded that it's steel, chromium plated. I may be wrong - it might be stainless steel... but my Q. this morning is this: what happened to stainless steel over the last couple of decades? Back last century, stainless was i) fairly rare, ii) usually expensive and iii) reserved for special uses. Nowadays, it's almost the default material, so what changed? Is it the way the stuff is made? Or has the price of the raw materials dropped? Is there a new recipe? Does anyone know?IMG_0515.JPG
Probably cheap poor quality imported from China. In 2015, I worked for TATA Steel in Scunthorpe and much of the talk round the place was concern over the plant's future because of such imports....
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PedallingSquares
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Re: stainless steel - what happened?

Post by PedallingSquares »

tykeboy2003 wrote: 19 Jul 2022, 9:57am
simonineaston wrote: 2 Jul 2022, 10:45am As I looked at my Aris LY sprocket this morning (what a nice freewheel the Aris is!), I concluded that it's steel, chromium plated. I may be wrong - it might be stainless steel... but my Q. this morning is this: what happened to stainless steel over the last couple of decades? Back last century, stainless was i) fairly rare, ii) usually expensive and iii) reserved for special uses. Nowadays, it's almost the default material, so what changed? Is it the way the stuff is made? Or has the price of the raw materials dropped? Is there a new recipe? Does anyone know?IMG_0515.JPG
Probably cheap poor quality imported from China. In 2015, I worked for TATA Steel in Scunthorpe and much of the talk round the place was concern over the plant's future because of such imports....
I was on a Union course with a TATA Scunny worker a couple of weeks ago and they are hearing rumours that they have been owned by the Chinese,not Indians,since 2019.
When TATA took over our plant it was almost three years before the brand/logo/clothing was changed.We've been Liberty Speciality Steel for about 5 years now yet TATA is still on most of our systems.We don't even think we're Liberty SS anymore.
It's all above us bottom-feeders :lol:
Jdsk
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Re: stainless steel - what happened?

Post by Jdsk »

PedallingSquares wrote: 19 Jul 2022, 10:33amI was on a Union course with a TATA Scunny worker a couple of weeks ago and they are hearing rumours that they have been owned by the Chinese,not Indians,since 2019.
Is this a reference to Scunthorpe Steelworks being part of British Steel Ltd which is owned by the Jingye Group?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Steel_Limited

Jonathan
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