First teardown and best way to get epoxy off tungsten??

[Vitamin K]

FWIW, the cost of tungsten is why I'm planning on running lead in my son's car for any pinewood races this scouting year. To me, a derby car represents a token of a lot of time invested between parent and child, and I am loathe to tear a car to pieces in order to reclaim some heavy metal from it. Even if I can do it in a non-destructive fashion, I don't like the idea. I think that you should be able to take last year's car and put it on a track and see how it runs.

(Incidentally, I found my old derby car from 1986...wheels fell off, but I plan to redrill the axle holes -- she's gonna run again!)

[pgosselin]

FWIW, the cost of tungsten is why I'm planning on running lead in my son's car for any pinewood races this scouting year. To me, a derby car represents a token of a lot of time invested between parent and child, and I am loathe to tear a car to pieces in order to reclaim some heavy metal from it. Even if I can do it in a non-destructive fashion, I don't like the idea. I think that you should be able to take last year's car and put it on a track and see how it runs.

(Incidentally, I found my old derby car from 1986...wheels fell off, but I plan to redrill the axle holes -- she's gonna run again!)

We never tore apart our Derby cars that ran races in previous years. Those are now family heirlooms. Instead, we reclaimed the tungsten from the 5 or six other cars we built that weren't good enough to race.

Paul

[TXDerbyDad]

FWIW, the cost of tungsten is why I'm planning on running lead in my son's car for any pinewood races this scouting year. To me, a derby car represents a token of a lot of time invested between parent and child, and I am loathe to tear a car to pieces in order to reclaim some heavy metal from it. Even if I can do it in a non-destructive fashion, I don't like the idea. I think that you should be able to take last year's car and put it on a track and see how it runs.

(Incidentally, I found my old derby car from 1986...wheels fell off, but I plan to redrill the axle holes -- she's gonna run again!)

As a parent who had a child with lead poisoning, I stay away from the stuff as much as possible. Powdered tungsten is cheap and a reasonable compromise. I think 3 oz of it is ~$8 if you buy from a vendor, or you can get a decent tub of it from golf supply stores if you look around.

While I definitely view our cars as family heirlooms, and have every car we've ever worked on stowed away, we reclaim the tungsten and design around it to make that easy to do. If we want to re-add it, it's a simple as putting it back in and covering the hole with 3M metal tape.

[FatSebastian]

As a parent who had a child with lead poisoning, I stay away from the stuff as much as possible.

My impression has been that it is hard to get poisoned from lead unless you ingest (eat or inhale) it. Might you be able to elaborate on your child's circumstances? Certainly we want our kids to be safe, and perhaps there is a lesson here for the rest of us.

Powdered tungsten is cheap and a reasonable compromise. I think 3 oz of it is ~$8 if you buy from a vendor

The effective density of power held together with epoxy is slightly less than lead (and not terribly convenient IMO).

[TXDerbyDad]

As a parent who had a child with lead poisoning, I stay away from the stuff as much as possible.

My impression has been that it is hard to get poisoned from lead unless you ingest (eat or inhale) it. Might you be able to elaborate on your child's circumstances? Certainly we want our kids to be safe, and perhaps there is a lesson here for the rest of us.

Our daughter was tested at her one year checkup, and her lead levels came back very high. That got the health department involved and they had to come test our house from top to bottom. It was built in 1978, and none of the usual suspects (paint or tile) returned positive as the source, though we did find traces of lead all throughout the house. Then the health department nurse came out, took one look and knew immediately where the source was, and it was a source we never would have suspected: cheap Chinese made plastic mini-blinds. They used lead to stabilize the plastics, or so we were told, and she had seen it before. Instead of recalling them, they would simply run them on clearance and be done with it. The people who owned our house bought the cheapest mini-blinds they could find when we bought the house, and our daughter's playpen happened to be near one of two sets of them that were leaded. All of her exposure was due to inhalation. Even though I grew up around lead, I have been gunshy around it ever since. It took weeks of cleaning for us to get rid of it form our house. Everything had to be washed with a special solution.

Powdered tungsten is cheap and a reasonable compromise. I think 3 oz of it is ~$8 if you buy from a vendor

The effective density of power held together with epoxy is slightly less than lead (and not terribly convenient IMO).

You don't necessarily have to mix it with epoxy, and I don't as a rule, so I get similar performance to lead. The powder fills cavities quite nicely when poured in directly, much as you would use melted lead for. I simply cap off with a light coat of melted candle wax on top, then cover with wood filler on cars where we've sealed it in. It's not reusable without removing the wax/wood filler, but it works in a pinch. I'm already placing an order for a pound of tungsten cubes and another canopy or two for this year's race season.

[Vitamin K]

My impression has been that it is hard to get poisoned from lead unless you ingest (eat or inhale) it. Might you be able to elaborate on your child's circumstances? Certainly we want our kids to be safe, and perhaps there is a lesson here for the rest of us.

Our daughter was tested at her one year checkup, and her lead levels came back very high. That got the health department involved and they had to come test our house from top to bottom. It was built in 1978, and none of the usual suspects (paint or tile) returned positive as the source, though we did find traces of lead all throughout the house. Then the health department nurse came out, took one look and knew immediately where the source was, and it was a source we never would have suspected: cheap Chinese made plastic mini-blinds. They used lead to stabilize the plastics, or so we were told, and she had seen it before. Instead of recalling them, they would simply run them on clearance and be done with it. The people who owned our house bought the cheapest mini-blinds they could find when we bought the house, and our daughter's playpen happened to be near one of two sets of them that were leaded. All of her exposure was due to inhalation. Even though I grew up around lead, I have been gunshy around it ever since. It took weeks of cleaning for us to get rid of it form our house. Everything had to be washed with a special solution.

Yikes, that's pretty scary, TXDerbyDad. I'm glad you were able to locate the source of the problem.

I know that lead has some issues, but I plan to take all the precautions I can. Any forging will be done outdoors in open air with the children kept away. I also plan to seal any lead within the car body with epoxy or similar. I know you can't remove every risk, but you can minimize it.

[FatSebastian]

... All of her exposure was due to inhalation ...

Thanks much for sharing such potentially useful information.

[gpraceman]

This is a bit off topic, but I would not use epoxy in the first place, if you wish to reuse the weights. I'd use hot glue instead. It is easier to pull out the weights without destroying the car and removing the glue from the weights themselves is not hard.

[DerbyDash]

This is a bit off topic, but I would not use epoxy in the first place, if you wish to reuse the weights. I'd use hot glue instead. It is easier to pull out the weights without destroying the car and removing the glue from the weights themselves is not hard.

Was thinking what other options we may have and think this would be a great option...thanks! We're going to use the true silver "duct" tape to cover our the other openings we have.

[resullivan]

We just use the silver duct tape. No glue at all.

[The Iceman]

I just had to do it last night and tried the Heatgun, WOW did it make a difference! Cut my time in cleaning up cubes 1/5 the time!

Ice

[Scrollsawer]

I will never tear down the kids' cars, as I'm going to eventually work with the boys to build wall-mounted displays for the cars. Unfortunately, each car probably has $30-$40 tied up into it (tungsten being the costliest component).

I did break down a couple of Mid-America cars to reuse the cubes this year though. Since we use CA glue and basswood veneers, all it took was two pair of pliers to snap the cubes out (breaking the thing cars of course). An XACTO knife was a quick way to shave of the CA glue from each cube, but it was a tad tedious.

Scrollsawer

[DerbyAddicted]

I will never tear down the kids' cars, as I'm going to eventually work with the boys to build wall-mounted displays for the cars. Unfortunately, each car probably has $30-$40 tied up into it (tungsten being the costliest component).

I did break down a couple of Mid-America cars to reuse the cubes this year though. Since we use CA glue and basswood veneers, all it took was two pair of pliers to snap the cubes out (breaking the thing cars of course). An XACTO knife was a quick way to shave of the CA glue from each cube, but it was a tad tedious.

Scrollsawer

Too late now, but a bath of acetone/nail polish remover would have made quick/easy work of it.

[TXDerbyDad]

We just use the silver duct tape. No glue at all.

Same here. I LOVE that stuff! We actually used it to cover several of our cars last year due to time crunch. Honestly, our cars have never looked great since we haven't done good paint jobs since our first year when we only had a Bear. When we made the jump from 2 to 3 cars, we lost a lot of time.

[resullivan]

I did the same thing with a car last year. It started out being stained, but I broke it while installing needle axles (outlaw car). I was able to glue it back together, but because I hollowed the car out I couldn't fix the thin wood. I just covered it with the tape and it looked pretty good.