[TheForge] Re: Titanium pins

[Mike Spencer]

> The biggest issue is getting them to give you the pins.  Often they
> treat them as medical waste and will not let you near them.  Depends
> on the Dr.

I didn't know that.  But when I had the door knocker made from a hip
ball joint on display at a craft market (where the MD that had
commissioned it was to pick it up), an orthopedic surgeon saw it and
threw something of a hissy fit.  I was not supposed to have such a
thing, the public was not suppsoed to see it and it was indecent to
display it.  Huh.  Early 70s, possibly differing attitudes today?

The physician I was making it for had picked it up in a sink near the
OR where it had been left after being hammered out of someone's femur
-- someone who had reacted badly to the particular alloy.  The marks
left by the surgical hammer were the only defects in a very beautiful
and elegant sculptural object.

Presently I have a small lump of gold that I'm thinking of making
something out of. Some too-sticky home-made Christmas candy yanked a
large gold crown off of one of my molars.  Just had the sadly
unrestorable remains of the tooth extracted today.  Have to separate
the gold from bits of tooth, amalgam, steel and cement.  Nobody expressed
a concern about "medical waste".

Not doing much in my unheated shop just now, though.  Below 0F nights
and up to 10F or so days. Sitting nigh the fire, creating rambling email
messages such as this one. :-)

- Mike

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^