[TheForge] Re: Aluminum vs. Aluminium

[Mike Spencer]

Dave Smucker wrote:

> Why don't we just call it tin foil.  That is something that drove
> those working in the aluminium / aluminum foil business just crazy.
> (There was a time when there was tin foil).

I actually have a roll of tin foil, maybe 6" or 8" wide.  Haven't hit
anything that I thought it would be just right for in 40+ years but
haven't used it casually because I have no idea where I'd ever get any
more when that "just right" application turned up.

> Most of that powdered aluminum was made from pure aluminum and not
> the alloys in cans - still a lot of metal.  The powder is made by
> blowing the molten aluminum with compressed gas...

I used to have a bottle of powdered Al too.  IIRC, it was finer then
flour.  I may have used some in the failed high school rocket
experiment that required an orthopedic surgeon to ensure I still had
10 fingers.

I also have a manual "pie press" made by I forget which of the big Al
companies to promote and enable commercial pie production in
disposable Al plates.  Interesting object.  Plate placed on a die,
electrically heated tup pressed a ball of dough into it when the lever
was pulled.  (I'd look up which company made it but it's out in the
field in the dark.)  Never found a use for it but couldn't pass it up
in the junk yard.

Jerry wrote:

> You know Mike, I think we must have known some of the same people. I
> can't count how many kids I went to school with who wore "stocks"
> under their shoes ...

My elementary school was kinda like that, IQs ranged from (estimated)
40 to 140 and many parents were illiterate.  After that I was urban
and "streamed" into classes among the most promising kids. (As far as
I can tell, the "promise" was fulfilled very unevenly. A few of my
high school classmates became professors, a few successful in biz,
banking or the military, one a career spook.  But eccentricity seems
to be the most prominent later-life characteristic. :-)

When my mother was growing up -- rural Texas before WW I -- the only
guy in the community with a high school diploma was called "Perfessor"
and gently ridiculed.

Here, the norm for "good education" in rural areas was 8th grade until
the 60s and many people who grew up before or during WW II had less.
I worked occasionally for a guy who dropped out of school after the
3rd grade to "work in the lumber woods".  Very observant and good with
his hands, though.  As an adult in his 50s/60s he was almost completely
illiterate (although he could read numbers and do simple arithmetic).
He no doubt learned a great deal from working in his much older
brother's machine shop and later parlayed a contract to do the steel
erection for the historic but now defunct satellite uplink station
into a new building and a brand new English lathe for himself.  I took
stuff to him to weld that I felt insecure doing myself.  He had a
forge and a 400# German-style anvil but didn't know much about
smithing so I'd occasionally go make anchors and graplins for him when
my biz was slow.  Could fix anything but couldn't read road signs,
just memorized the ones he needed to recognize to pass the driving
test.

> Molybdenum anybody? 

Anybody can say "molly". :-) But then there's "cadium".  And is it too
political if I mention "Nambia"? :-o


- Mike

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