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Having just bought a 4oz piece of tungsten for use as
a paperweight and impromptu projectile, I question
your meaning of "not overly-expensive", at least if
such weights are intended for moderately fit
members of the common masses. |
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Depleted uranium, on the other hand, is much
cheaper, equally dense, and innocuous unless you
decide to take an angle-grinder to it. |
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Tungsten is about $20k/tonne (or that's what they say on the internet anyways)[edit: bar and rod stock seems to be much more expensive]. A quick check says DU isn't cheaper, and some places they have restrictions on how much you can have. |
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Say your set is 200kg: that's $4,000[edit: a few times that]. Expensive yes, but I think it'd still make it into the "For the Man Who Has Everything" gift catalog, alongside the gold pens and crystal golf balls. |
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Either way I just want about 20kg of compactness to keep the joints from freezing up. |
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wow, stuff's expensive :D I found out that "price for tungsten" is actually tungsten trioxide :/ so call it $100/kg. |
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Might have to change the title to "Wolfram Fitness Weights" or something. |
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Easy on the stereotypes there, [bigs]. You know all
Halfbakers dislike stereotypes. |
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// DU isn't cheaper, and some places they have restrictions on how much you can have. // |
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That is just so weird, and small minded too. |
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The trick is not to let on how much you've accumulated. |
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It melts at 1100C, nearly four times hotter than lead, so you can't use conventional bullet moulds; but going to the trouble of casting DU projectiles is well worth the effort. It makes the biggest difference in small-calibre weapons like .223 bottleneck, and airguns. |
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Then again, a .455 Webley hurling solid DU rounds is a beast ... |
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//melts at 1100C, nearly four times hotter than
lead// |
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Oh dear oh dear. It also melts at 2100°F, just over
three times hotter than lead. And at 2500°R, or
about two and half times hotter than lead. |
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I would have expected the Borg to have adopted
the Kelvin scale by now. Uranium melts at 1408
Kelvin (or 1,408,000 elvin), or two and third times
hotter than lead. |
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Why not the Pb-U scale, where 0 represents the melting
point of lead, and 6.876 represents the melting point of
uranium. On this scale, uranium melts INFINITY times
hotter than lead! |
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If anyone other than [8th] was talking about melting DU and casting it, I'd be pretty worried about their motives, as well as their personal safety. |
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As it is, I'm fairly certain of his motives (and they're not good, but at least they're known) - but I'm confident he's aware of DU's pyrophoricity and other handling issues and would take the necessary precautions. |
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That said, if, for whatever reason, you were considering actually going about doing something like this, posting it on the internets is foolishness of the highest order. |
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If he starts posting about obtaining certain other exotic things like beryllium, lithium deuteride, certain types of machinable high explosives, optical grade 5-axis cnc- machines, gas discharge fast-acting switches, etc etc well, let's all back away slowly and get out of his way, huh? |
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I thought this was going to be about weightlifting by the inventor of Mathematica... |
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I read about a plane crash a few months ago where the locals had nicked the DU counterweight. |
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For a long time I have wanted a tungsten paperweight, but have never managed to justify the cost. Perhaps collecting billions of discarded lightbulbs and melting down the filaments would do the trick? |
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// aware of DU's pyrophoricity // |
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// and other handling issues // |
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Yes, we wore gloves so as not to leave fingerprints. |
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// take the necessary precautions // |
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Too right. We did it on a weekend, when there was no-one else about to see. |
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// certain types of machinable high explosives // |
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Big Tick. Monocrystalline HMX, mmmmmmm luvverly. Thankyou Sandia Labs ... |
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// optical grade 5-axis cnc- machines // |
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<Scribbles on bottom of this year's note to Sanity Clause> |
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// gas discharge fast-acting switches, etc etc // |
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// well, let's all back away slowly and get out of his way, huh? // |
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Wait .. come back ... don't you want to watch ? This is probably going to be really good ... here, hold this battery, now, when we say, touch those two bare wires together ... |
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// Monocrystalline HMX// ... I wouldn't have thought that would be possible, or at least practical, to produce. Cool. I imagine it has very particular handling requirements, especially while being machined. Do you need to keep it cryogencially cooled while working it? |
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He does, since the accident. |
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//For a long time I have wanted a tungsten
paperweight// About ten quid on eBay will see you
sorted. |
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You need to read your periodic table more. Osmium and Iridium are the densest (there's some dispute over which takes the crown; isotopes and all that) - both are around 22.6 SG, whereas Tungsten is a paltry 19.2 SG. |
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Okay, I like the idea of Iridium weights better: it's heavier and there's the further cachets of "made from asteroids" and "dinosaur die offs". |
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But now the target market is multibillionaires instead of not-even-millionaires, Ir being 40x rarer than gold. |
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$42,000/kg compared to $110/kg. |
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//monocrystalline HMX// nice try, Borg. |
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The only way I can see Sandia making that would be along the lines of "well Purcell mumbled something about monocrystalline HMX during morning coffee and that was the last we saw of him, the laboratory or that wing of the building". |
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You're just trying to see how far up the HB can get on the Interpol list. |
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