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Posted by David Sherman [24.32.202.83] on Friday, December 18, 2009 at 12:07:53 :
In Reply to: Re: pto winch posted by Jerry in Idaho [64.139.238.43] on Friday, December 18, 2009 at 11:12:39 :
I disagree about the quality of Chinese iron over the years. Some of their new stuff is good quality if they decide to build it right. In the first wave of Chinese imports the cast iron was of very uneven quality, full of hard spots, blows, slag pockets, and sand, and very uneven grain and likely to be brittle. Basically I think they just melted any and all iron they could get, poured it into a mold and took what came you. Kaegi's right about the bondo too.
In terms of cast iron, I still don't think you can beat the quality of US products from the glory days of American foundry work, say from 1900 to 1940. Part of it is probably that they used virgin iron rather than scrap, but a lot of it is just expertise in all the fine nuances of doing it right, from the patterns to the types of sand and binder, hardness of ramming, iron composition, pouring temperature, and cleaning of the finished castings. They got surface finishes right out of the mold that are better than most of the newer stuff, and a tough, even grain structure that machines well. And no bondo.
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