Machining and Casting Recycled English Pewter Workshop Magnets

This film follows me making a number of novelty (though hopefully useful) workshop magnets. The plan was to make 36 (6 sets of 6) to give away, in the end there were nearer 50. This is the most of one thing I’ve ever made!
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I begin by machining the cast pewter bars from my previous film ( https://youtu.be/Ub9NtvyIn7w ).

When my parcel of disk magnets arrives I’m reminded that “the bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten”, and embark on some testing to see how good or bad they really are.

As is entirely normal for me I suffer from another case of project creep, and take a meandering detour from my machining to try directly casting the molten pewter.

When it comes to assembly time I realise winter has crept up on me and adapt my mini mill’s rust prevention heater to warm things up.

Finally I make a tubular cutter to prepare the foam insert for the presentation tin.

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Why pewter? Why not! I’ve machined wood, plastics, various brasses, bronzes and copper, steels, cast iron, titanium and anything else I can get my hands on to play with. Part of the fun of my hobby is seeing how different materials behave, and what can be achieved with benchtop tools in the home workshop.

Any imperial conversions are ballpark at best, just so non-metric viewers can keep up.
 
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Chapters:

00:00 - Machining Pewter
02:16 - Magnet Tests
04:13 - Adhesive & Prototyping
09:07 - Mould Making & Casting Pewter
16:30 - Cleaning, Polishing & Buffing
18:22 - Warm Box & Magnet Assembly
20:53 - Presentation Tin Preparation
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The polishing compounds I used (in order of appearance) in the film are (no affiliation):
 
Yellow: Dialux Jaune Compound

Green: Menzerna 439T Pre-Polishing Compound

White: Dialux Blanc Compound

Red: Dialux Rouge Compound

Yellow: Menzerna P175 Superfine Compound
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My thanks go to @JimTaylor42 for getting me started on Design Spark Mechanical, which I've used for the 3D visualisations.

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Manually subtitled for accuracy - Press the CC button

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Shot: HDC-HS700 1920x1080 50P AVCHD
Edit: FCP7 ProRes 422
Mic: DR-05

Видео Machining and Casting Recycled English Pewter Workshop Magnets канала The Recreational Machinist