Make Your Own Gear: Titanium Snow Stakes

Hi Mike

You are right, I should have mentioned that. Yes, for Ti, you cut slow and deep, to avoid work-hardening.

I do sometimes drill a pilot hole and then a final hole. I drill both quite fast. Works for me with a mill.

Reground masonary drills – an old trick! Cheaper than a solid carbide drill too. But grinding them requires a green wheel (or a diamond wheel), which few have. I find the green when very messy and don't like it. A resin-bonded diamond cup wheel is very nice.

Cheers

Roger,

Where did you get the Ti? OnlineMetals.com? I ask since I have many projects in mind but haven't found a good supplier of Ti around the bay area. It seems as though it's mail order only.

Thanks for the ideas (quite sufficient in metal working so you know i'm going to do this),

Hi Matt

OnLineMetals is $$$$$
I use Titanium Joe. He has always given me very good service.

Cheers

> > It would be interesting to look at the weight comparison for using a bit thicker cord
> > – trip tease or similar perhaps, or dare I say P-cord and sticks
> Sigh – you are probably right. A thicker cord would not weigh a real lot more.
> Probably not worth the hassle in fact. But I have this big reel of the 150 lb 0.5 mm
> Spectra kite line you see, and I don't have any of the triptease line for comparison.

Update:

I now use 1 mm Spectra cord sheathed inside 1 mm tubular Dacron cord for the winter tent. The Dacron surface allows knots and friction. The long sheathing means the Dacron does grip the Spectra properly. The Spectra adds core strength. The end result is closer to 2 mm thickness, but very light.

I could not buy this combination at the time, so I bought the two separate cords and ran the Spectra inside the Dacron myself. I did it several metres at a time. Yeah, fiddly, but that's what MYOG is about: getting exactly what you want.

I use the smallest Clam Cleat as a toggle, next to the tent. The 2 mm cord is gripped very nicely by the cleat. By not having the cleat at the end of the line I don't get tangles, and adjusting the guy length is much easier at that height above ground too.

Cheers