We all know that first week back after Christmas and New Year can be a lonely and desperate time. Just ask Jasper. Many’s the time he can be seen skulking in the steel racks for hours on end when it’s quiet with nary a peep out of him.

I sincerely hope he’s not up to what this geezer in a Southampton fabrication shop has been up to:

A MAN who got his genitalia stuck in a steel pipe had to be cut free by eight firefighters using an industrial grinder. The heavy duty cutting gear had to be used to remove the three-inch long hollow pipe after medics were unable to release it. The painstaking operation, which involved eight firefighters, took around an hour.

The drama began after the man took himself to the accident and emergency department of Southampton General Hospital.

Restricted blood flow had left the man in a state of arousal, and unable to remove the pipe.

Staff there were so concerned that they phoned the emergency services and a crew from Redbridge Fire Station were initially dispatched. But they had to bring in backup from St Mary’s station which has a fire truck equipped with specialist cutting gear. A disc gutter cutter, with a four-and-a-half-inch blade, was used to slice open the stainless steel pipe.

The man, in his 30s, offered no explanation for his predicament but was said to be “quite concerned and anxious”. He had been given an anaesthetic to prepare for the procedure.

St Mary’s crew manager Adrian Johnson said: “It was a very delicate operation. We did not want anything heating up.

The person who did it deserves a commendation for his nerve and steady hand.”

Meanwhile, watch manager Greg Garrett from Redbridge station added: “I’ve only come across this type of thing three or four times in my 17 years as a firefighter. It’s not a daily occurrence.”

The man’s private parts were left bruised and swollen.

I’m generally fairly reluctant to post entire articles seeming it goes against Rupert Murdoch’s grain, but I really didn’t know which bits to cut out (as the fireman said to the bloke with his knob stuck in a steel tube). I mean, this is why you’d love to be a local journalist. Maybe a fireman as well, but not the guy doing the angle grinding or holding the pipe steady.

However, feel free to go and enjoy yourselves in the comments to the article.

Large Hadron Collider

We all know this is some feat of engineering. However, it’s extremely difficult to get a scale of the project. Not only is it impossible to imagine the sizes of particles whizzing around at beyond breakneck speeds, but it’s even more difficult to get an idea of how bloody big the thing is from the inside.

They’ve hardly started doing guided tours.

Thankfully, a certain Peter McCready has been allowed access to the Large Hadron Collider’s gizzards and has photographed some awesome panoramic views of the thing that you can swush around in full 360 degree loveliness.

Click here and give it a second or two to load. He’s even added sound effects to get a general feel of the ho and the hum of the place. [cap doff]

But, if you swing around for long enough you’ll notice the entire thing is held together by bloody duct/duck/gaffer tape. (OK, I’ll go as far as fancy aluminium tape.)

Your average roll of duct tape

Right, so if we take a look round the LHC then it appears we’ve got gaffer tape roughly every half meter. We can’t exactly say that it goes all the way round the circumference of the inner core, but by the looks of things it could very well do. The width of the inner core is approximately 3.8 meters leading to a core circumference of 11.932 meters with a total collider circumference under the Alps of 27 kilometers. [via]

So, by my reckoning (if we’re saying there’s duct tape every half meter that goes around the whole circumference), that means 644,328 meters of duct tape tops, at a rough cost of $336,227 if I were to buy it in 6″ (144 mm) wide 55 meter rolls costing $28.70 ea.

Let’s hope they got a bulk discount.

Supersized press brake

Oh what a joy it is to be given the 4th of July off as a holiday. But, like this fella, I’d much rather be working than have to traipse three hours up the highway to attend some thoroughly cheesy family function, which this year involves some really spurious talent show. Oh, the horror. I have bought kazoos and it’s either Rule Britannia, Sugar Plum Fairy or The Pyramid Song by Radiohead.

Anyway, is there anybody who can help a sheet metal brother from Western Massachusetts out this weekend? As he states in his craigslist post:

Does any body have a sheet metal brake that I can borrow for the weekend. Will return in same condition. Ready to pay small amount for the favor.

Come on, somebody have a heart. Maybe you can save him from some truly horrendous hoopla with the in-laws as well.

Click here for his details.

Oh, and Happy 4th of July.

I always get mightily confuddled by various steel grades and types. Oh, I have the basics from 304 to 316 down pat, but when our Steve at Steel Strip mentioned to me that he’d started selling small quantities of spring steel I had to scurry off to Wikipedia to find out what spring steel actually was. All we get is this paltry stub:

Spring steel is a low alloy, medium carbon steel with a very high yield strength. This allows objects made of spring steel to return to their original shape despite significant bending or twisting.

Silicon is the key component to most spring steel alloys. An example of a spring steel used for cars would be AISI 9255 (DIN and UNI: 55Si7, AFNOR 55S7), containing 1.50%-1.80% silicon, 0.70%-1.00% manganese and 0.52%-0.60% carbon.

Most spring steels (as used in cars) are hardened and then tempered to about 45 on the Rockwell C-Scale.

According to Machinery’s Handbook, “The spring materials most commonly used include high-carbon spring steels, alloy spring steels, stainless spring steels, copper-base spring alloys, and nickel-base spring alloys.” According to the same, the most widely used spring steel is ASTM A228 (0.80–0.95% carbon) known as “music wire”.

I presume we’re not talking about slinky spring steel?

It makes a change to hear of somebody prepared to service the little guy…..as it were. Here’s Steve’s raison d’etre and combined mission statement:

Whilst steel mills regularly insist on minimum order quantities of up to 5 tons, and stockholders upwards of a ton, we have recognised the need of smaller engineering companies who may require as little as a single sheet to complete a project, or to replace a part in an aging piece of plant.

It can be frustrating and time consuming for an engineer to spend hours on the telephone trying to source small quantities of spring steel, only to find the supplier loses interest the moment he realises the small quantity involved. To be honest it’s as a big a problem often for the supplier as for the customer! Not for us.

So, if you’re looking to buy spring steel in small quantities I’d recommend you go and have a word with Steve over at Steel Strip as he’s a top bloke. Or, you can give him a bell on 01709 324379. (Yes, he can ship worldwide.)

Oh, and I can assure you I’m not on any commission. I just like it when people aren’t trying to stiff smaller companies – especially when they happen to be a mate.

I’m awfully fond of the idea of a Doomsday Ark:

IF civilisation is wiped out on Earth, salvation may come from space. Plans are being drawn up for a “Doomsday ark” on the moon containing the essentials of life and civilisation, to be activated in the event of earth being devastated by a giant asteroid or nuclear war.

Construction of a lunar information bank, discussed at a conference in Strasbourg last month, would provide survivors on Earth with a remote-access toolkit to rebuild the human race.

A basic version of the ark would contain hard discs holding information such as DNA sequences and instructions for metal smelting or planting crops. It would be buried in a vault just under the lunar surface and transmitters would send the data to heavily protected receivers on earth. If no receivers survived, the ark would continue transmitting the information until new ones could be built.

You’ve also got to be quite keen on the idea that should we be wiped out, we’d not only learn the important stuff such as splicing our DNA with cockroaches and how to set up an allotment, but making sure we can still make things out of metal.

However, I’ve always been one for believing that prevention is infinitely better than the cure; and I’m especially worried about the dregs of mankind struggling to build new receivers because they didn’t have the sufficient smelting knowledge as the ark was falling on deaf ears.

Thankfully, The Tinbasher is at hand to help educate anybody in the ways of smelting prior to any unforeseen cataclysmic event.

Of course you could read the metal smelting page on Wikipedia, but you know that’s not hard core DIY info.

Build a similar metal smelting furnace.

You need something far more survivalist, and we obviously have it in the above charcoal powered metal casting furnace. (You’ll have to scroll down the page.)

After an asteroid hit or nuclear devastation there’ll be more charcoal than you can shake a stick at, so fuel for your smelt furnace shouldn’t be a problem.

So, for the sake of humanity – read and inwardly digest.

*Next week: How to arc weld your way through Armageddon.