Balls of Steel

[D2Cat]

I was at the salvage yard looking for some sucker rod and fence post and found these. They were laying in the dirt partially covered. They must have come from a large bearing!!

Not sure what I will use them for, but my personality requires me to have junk like this for various fabrication projects. They are too big for sling shots.

You have any ideas how they can be used?

I learned something new today. How to edit a post and be able to post a picture in the edit....just didn't know how. Mr. Moderator tells me to go to advanced edit. Didn't realize there was such a thing! So this is a test run.

 

[North Idaho Wolfman]

Do we get to see them or do we just guess?

 

[Ramos]

I can't see them, either. I bet they are 'this' big, or nearly so!

 

[RCW]

Do we get to see them or do we just guess?

Skeets could come up with a zinger in this circumstance......[emoji41]

Sent from my QTASUN1 using Tapatalk

 

[sheepfarmer]

Bigger than a bread basket???

 

[BAP]

They probably are so big that D2 is still trying to get them to fit in a picture.

 

[SRG]

It's the kind no one ever sees because they are always in the wife's purse.

 

[bxray]

Or they are so small we can not see them.

 

[William1]

If they are rusty and a matched set, they may be mine. I seem to of lost them a while back...

 

[D2Cat]

Oops. I guess I have to have a longer message.

 

[Lil Foot]

Maybe they're painted white, and photographed in snow.
Depending on their size and how precise they are, they may be from bearings or they may be crusher balls.

 

[Lil Foot]

Oops, Len posted faster than me.
They appear to be precisely ground, which makes them balls from bearings or tooling balls- used for various purposes in the machining world: measurement, swaging, hole punching, plugging passages, etc..

 

[Grouse Feathers]

Such a unique find definitely requires a uniquely Rube Goldberg use. Maybe suspend them from the ROPs so they gently bang into your head when the tractor is leaning over to far.

 

[Lil Foot]

They'd make fine grape shot from your cannon.

 

[D2Cat]

When I first saw one I though it would make a nice shifter knob. Have to weld a nut on to thread the rod into, or it world be impossible to replace the shifter boot.

 

[bxray]

Here is a bigger one.

http://www.flickriver.com/photos/15765624@N08/2297413835/

 

[bcp]

Make a longer version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LnbyjOyEQ8

Bruce

 

[Shadetree03]

I like the idea for making a Newtons Cradle out of them. I have a 3 inch steel ball that came from a ball mill (ore crusher) like Lil Foot mentioned. Those chromed balls look like some from the ball and seat area on downhole oil-field pumps? Next to a hardware store, a junkyard is one of the funnest places to browse for some of us

 

[David Page]

You could leave them on the garage floor if you have trouble with night visitors, but for a lot of us on here we would forget they were there and be on the floor ourselves.

 

[G.rid]

A guy at work forges knives as a hobby. He'll use bearing steel sandwiched between 2 layers of softer metal (don't remember what type). When it's finished and polished you see the bearing steel is about 1\16" thick, just as the cutting edge. He's says any more that it would be too brittle. Holds an edge really well!

Myself being a machinist, I'd probably turn up a small cannon to play with! I'd want to find a bigger stock pile of ammo first, it might take 6 shots to get just the right amount of gunpowder.