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"Any Old Iron?" - A Reminiscence from Forty Years Ago!

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Pete W.:
Hi there, all,

There's currently a listing on eBay for a 'Small Lathe Stand, Home Made from an Old Bedstead'.  The picture shows it's a bolted construction.

That too me back about forty years to when I was establishing my workshop.  I collected all sorts of raw material including 'angle iron' cut from the frames of old bedsteads.  One common brand was 'Vono' - if I remember correctly, the adjacent sides of the frame were joined at the corners by a cast in-situ piece that included a sort of cone on a stalk that fitted into the mating fittings on the head-board and foot-board.

The story at the time was that this angle iron was re-rolled from the tram rails when the tram-tracks were taken up from the streets of London.  It was very tough and stringy, as though the metal hadn't been cleaned before re-rolling so all sorts of grit and other inclusions got incorporated into the metal.

It was quite un-cooperative with any attempts to cut or drill it.  My neighbour had a stick welder but neither he not I were welders so our welding difficulties might have been due to the material or to our incompetence or to some combination of the two!!!    :scratch:   :bang:   :scratch:   :bang:   :scratch:   :bang: 

Did anyone else experience this material?  How did you fare? 

awemawson:
Pete, it's not an urban myth. Tram rails were high in manganese so that the rolling surface 'work hardened' in use. Loads were re-rolled and not just from London - Absolute bugg @@ to drill through - rather like some stainless steels.( I used to go to school in Leeds on a Tram.)

As for Vono beds - my bed as a young child up to the age of 9 was a Vono - there was a cast (really rather too tapered) spanner to tighten the nuts. I re-met the Vono's when I went to boarding school and most of the beds in the dormitories were the same style except in the Sanatorium where they were ex army tubular ones.

DavidA:
Pete,

Ah yes, the dreaded 'bed frame iron'.

It is indeed hard to saw and drill, but also seems to be quite strong. I have used it a lot, but things became easier with the advent of the angle grinder and 1mm slitting discs.

Dave.

hermetic:
Still got some Vono bed frame angle, built a grass racer chassis out of it in the seventies, very springy and as everyone has said, an absolute sod to drill or saw. I thought it welded pretty ok, I was using a stick welder cobbled together out of a "welders mate" DC welder, and a matching transformer producing AC........but it worked  :D

mcostello:
Same story over across the pond. Some say not weldable, the rest of us just get it done with no problems.

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