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