Railroad Rail Lantern / Sign Stand Split With Axe.
Introduction: Railroad Rail Lantern / Sign Stand Split With Axe.
Hi
My wife asked me to make a stand for a lantern / house number, to mark our driveway.
I thought that if its going to be a marker, then its better be something that takes the attention.
"Railroad rail split with an axe" ,isn't very common object. So, it shouldn't be easy to miss or mix with others.
At the winter time, stand is used for hanging a lantern. At the summer time lantern will be replaced with a sign with our house number.
Because its impossible to split a railroad with an axe.
First reaction when one sees it is: " what? ". That makes people to take a closer look to it.
Axe sticking from a log would have been more natural choice. Too natural, i think.
None would have been paid much attention to it.
That would have been "Just another forgotten axe sticking from a log".
This video shows the building process of the stand:
All cuts are made with an angle grinder, and welds done with a stick welder.
Used track is grade 54kg/m, overall height of the railroad part of the stand is 750mm ( 0.75 meters )
Step 1: Splitting the Track
Because it would be somewhat impossible to split and bend 750mm long piece of track, with the tools that i had in use.
I decided to do splitting and bending separately, and then weld parts back together.
Split section of the track is 270mm long.
For splitting i used 230mm angle grinder with 2mm cubitron 2 cut off wheels.
"Officially" max cutting depth with 230mm angle grinder that i used is 65mm. But on the right position, it reaches nearly 85mm deep.
I measured and marked the centerline around the track, and then made cuts around it following marked line.
After 30min and one and a half ( i used one wheel and about 10mm / 1/2" section from four wheels to reach deep enough ) wheels later, track was split in two pieces.( Those half used wheels wasn't waisted, i used them to make this small anvil. )
This video shows the splitting task in actual time:
Splitting video is really boring to watch, but you can notice that making that kind of cuts ain't time taking,or hard work at all. When using suitable tools and abrasives with a little experience you can get very accurate results too.
When making this kind of deep cuts with angle grinder.
Its important to keep the bottom of the cut groove warm from wide area as possible. Then groove stays in "expanded" stage.
When sides of the groove cools down, those start to shrink. 933
That makes groove to shrink narrower than is the used cut off wheel. That makes cut off wheel to wear from the sides.
Finally, if groove gets too tight wheel bounces, jump, or stuck.
So, don't battle against the wheel. When you feel that cut off wheel starts get stuck, carefully lift it little upper and gently, after a while, push back down.
Let the wheel do the job, don't push it against the workpiece, that only makes wheels wear out faster.
With "sawing" movement, bottom of the groove stays equally heated and equally expanded. ( watch a minute or two from the video above to see the idea. )
Best alternative for splitting a track in this way would be a bandsaw ( it needs to be somewhat big thought ).
Plasma-, water,- or flame cutting wouldn't be possible, because of cutting depth.
Step 2: Bending the Split Sides.
Splitting the track wasn't enough to reach the impression that i wanted.
Parts needed to be bend to get them more separated and to get wider gap between them.
Because, even the half of the tracks we're somewhat thick, bending pieces with my 8 ton press wasn't possible.
I decided to use heat instead.
I heated the outer sides of the track, to shrink them.
Because metals expand during heating, i clamped pieces to vise, to minimize expanding.
That way, when steel starts to shrink when cooling down. It shrinks more when it doesn't need to "take back" that expanded distance.
On the video, and pictures too. It looks that i heated the whole area similarly, but that's not true.
Camera that i used seems to show all heated areas with the same colour.
Truth is that i heated the whole area to little reddish, and then several spline shaped sections to "white hot". Leaving short gaps between white hot areas.
These white hot sections works as a hinge. Actual bending happens in that area. 933