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Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? [message #411322 is a reply to message #411309]

Mon, 27 September 2021 20:10

Mike Spencer
Messages: 997
Registered: January 2012

Karma:

Senior Member

Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> writes:

> On Mon, 27 Sep 2021 10:00:40 +0100
> gareth evans <headstone255@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> But are conventions determined by historical
>> personages some of whom are long dead, or do
>> the later contributors also have a say in what is a convention?
>
> The origins of conventions are generally obscured by time, even when
> everyone involved is present they can be difficult to pin down, whatever
> documentation may remain is usually only a thin remnant of the original
> discussions and thinking. Once established they tend to have enormous
> inertia by virtue of group acceptance and tend only to change if pretty much
> everyone finds them irksome.

Circa 1972, I visited the celebrated Dauphinee Block Shop in
Lunenburg, NS. Three-storey frame building with flat-belt-driven
machinery that made the whole building vibrate.

In the cellar they had a blacksmith shop and that day the smith
was making hooks for attachment to fairly large tackle blocks. He had
several dozen half done and was making the eye by splitting the end of
the iron stock, wrapping the split ends around a mandrel and
forge-welding them shut.

I asked why he was doing it that way as I would have punched or
slot-punched a hole and opened it to desired size, stronger and less
error prone.

"It's stronger that way" was his answer. As I was a young novice
smith and he was a middle-aged career smith, I didn't argue but I
didn't get it.

It was years later, looking at a buoy bell clapper salvaged from
Boston Harbor, that it dawned on me. When Dauphinee's was
established, wrought iron was the article of trade used for anything
"iron". Wrought iron has a grain resembling wood grain. Its
structure is anisotropic. You never [1] make a wrought iron structural
element with a hole under tension near the end of a bar for the same
reason that you don't do that with a 1" pine or oak board; it stresses
the area around the hole in its weakest direction.

Modern "iron" is more properly called "mild steel" and, unlike wrought
iron, it is for practical purposes isotropic.

Dauphinee's had been making tackle since before Bessemer and open
hearth replaced wrought iron with mild steel as the standard article
of commerce. They'd settled, correctly, on the way to make a tension
eye at the end of an iron rod circa 1850 and had been passing that
wisdom on for 120 years.

[1] Never say never. The reason the buoy bell clapper [2] caught my
eye was that it was so corroded that I could plainly see the grain
of the wrought iron from which it was forged. The smith had in
fact punched the eye near the end of the stock but had then forge
welded a strip of iron across the end where it might tear out with
the grain of the strip at right angles to that of the clapper and
thus orthogonal to the direction of tension.

[2] Harold Edgerton collection, MIT.

--
Mike Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada

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[Message index]

		Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: Anonymous on Sun, 26 September 2021 15:51
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: Anonymous on Sun, 26 September 2021 16:20
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: Anonymous on Mon, 27 September 2021 04:58
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: D.J. on Mon, 27 September 2021 11:03
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: John Levine on Mon, 27 September 2021 15:57
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: usenet on Tue, 28 September 2021 09:09
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: Charles Richmond on Wed, 29 September 2021 12:54
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: Anonymous on Wed, 29 September 2021 15:42
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: Charlie Gibbs on Wed, 29 September 2021 16:20
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: Anonymous on Tue, 28 September 2021 21:13
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: Joy Beeson on Wed, 29 September 2021 22:25
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Sun, 26 September 2021 16:44
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: Mike Spencer on Mon, 27 September 2021 00:41
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: Anonymous on Mon, 27 September 2021 01:54
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: Quadibloc on Mon, 27 September 2021 03:01
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: Mike Spencer on Mon, 27 September 2021 19:25
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: Anonymous on Tue, 28 September 2021 02:03
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: Charles Richmond on Tue, 28 September 2021 02:04
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: Arne Luft on Mon, 27 September 2021 13:45
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: Anonymous on Mon, 27 September 2021 05:00
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Mon, 27 September 2021 06:03
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: Mike Spencer on Mon, 27 September 2021 20:10
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: Charles Richmond on Tue, 28 September 2021 02:18
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: Anonymous on Tue, 28 September 2021 21:20
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: Anonymous on Mon, 27 September 2021 16:34
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: D.J. on Mon, 27 September 2021 19:24
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: Anonymous on Mon, 27 September 2021 21:45
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: usenet on Tue, 28 September 2021 09:12
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Tue, 28 September 2021 13:33
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: scott on Tue, 28 September 2021 14:16
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Tue, 28 September 2021 15:20
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: Quadibloc on Tue, 28 September 2021 19:39
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: Charles Richmond on Wed, 29 September 2021 13:03
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: Anonymous on Fri, 01 October 2021 00:11
		Re: Sub or dom ; does it really matter? By: Anonymous on Fri, 01 October 2021 00:17
		Re: Sub or dom ; does it really matter? By: usenet on Fri, 01 October 2021 14:57
		Re: Sub or dom ; does it really matter? By: Anonymous on Wed, 06 October 2021 03:11
		Re: Sub or dom ; does it really matter? By: Mike Spencer on Wed, 06 October 2021 13:22
		Re: Sub or dom ; does it really matter? By: Anonymous on Thu, 07 October 2021 01:31
		Re: Sub or dom ; does it really matter? By: Mike Spencer on Thu, 07 October 2021 13:33
		Re: Sub or dom ; does it really matter? By: Dan Espen on Thu, 07 October 2021 13:49
		Re: Sub or dom ; does it really matter? By: Mike Spencer on Thu, 07 October 2021 15:52
		Re: Sub or dom ; does it really matter? By: Anonymous on Thu, 07 October 2021 16:13
		Re: Sub or dom ; does it really matter? By: Dan Espen on Thu, 07 October 2021 18:54
		Re: Sub or dom ; does it really matter? By: Anonymous on Thu, 07 October 2021 19:50
		Re: Sub or dom ; does it really matter? By: Andreas Kohlbach on Thu, 07 October 2021 20:12
		Re: Sub or dom ; does it really matter? By: Dan Espen on Thu, 07 October 2021 20:24
		Re: Sub or dom ; does it really matter? By: usenet on Sat, 09 October 2021 01:48
		Re: Sub or dom ; does it really matter? By: Anonymous on Tue, 12 October 2021 11:26
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: Charlie Gibbs on Tue, 28 September 2021 15:03
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: D.J. on Tue, 28 September 2021 17:45
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: D.J. on Tue, 28 September 2021 17:41
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: Quadibloc on Tue, 28 September 2021 19:55
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: Anonymous on Tue, 28 September 2021 20:53
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: Peter Flass on Tue, 28 September 2021 12:36
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: D.J. on Tue, 28 September 2021 17:46
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: Anonymous on Tue, 28 September 2021 21:18
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: Anonymous on Tue, 28 September 2021 21:17
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: Anonymous on Thu, 30 September 2021 04:41
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Thu, 30 September 2021 05:22
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: Harry Vaderchi on Thu, 30 September 2021 05:42
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: scott on Thu, 30 September 2021 10:31
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: Anonymous on Thu, 30 September 2021 21:58
		Re: Top or bottom posting; does it really matter? By: D.J. on Thu, 30 September 2021 11:07

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