[TheForge] Christmas Gifts [SAFETY HEADS UP]

[Andrew Vida]

xlch58 at swbell.net wrote:
> Just completed a simple flower with my son.   The flower was made from 
> an intake valve from a Lycoming engine out of a Mooney airplane. 

	Word of caution on aircraft valves: some exhaust valves, usually those 
out of radial engines, are sodium filled.  You do not want to put one of 
those into the forge.  I don't know if they will explode (don't have the 
boiling point of Na handy at the moment), but once you breach the steel, 
the resulting fireworks will prove most distressful.  Explosion or not, 
the Na will be very liquid at forging temperature and hitting the valve 
with a hammer would not produce good results.

One way to ID potential candidates is the shape of the face, which 
unlike the concave face of your typical automobile exhast valve is 
convex due to the hollow cavity inside wherein the Na resides.

Please be very careful.

Happy, safe holidays to one and all.

	-Andy


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