Re: Homemade Izod/Charpy impact machine

It's not exactly for the timber industry. It's actually for evaluating
timber species for a component of a full-circle bell called a "stay".
An animation of how the full-circle bell works can be found at
http://www.cathedral.org/wrs/animation/swing-bell.thm

The purpose of the stay is to be weak enough to break in preference to
the bolts, axles, etc. if the bell is swung to hard. It also must be
strong enough to prevent nuisance breaking when the bell is only
slightly over swung.

The manufacturers and about 98% of bell installations reside in the UK,
where European Ash is used for the stay. However I reside in Australia
where a number of bell installations have used substitute timbers
(mainly Eucalyptus species), without really knowing whether it is too
strong, too weak, or equivalent to European Ash. At my bell tower in
particular we had used wood too strong for the purpose and have broken
some of the metal fittings.

Hopefully an impact testing machine can compare the strengths of a
variety of Australian timbers to a reference European Ash sample.

This is about as much thought I've put into it. Are there any other
tests which might be more suitable? I've seen a video of an Izod
impact test and it looks very similar to how a stay on a bell breaks.
The only other question that probably matters is whether a sample of
wood will behave the same as the real thing

jbuch wrote:
>
> Have you researched the use of impact testing in the timber industry,
> yet? Or, are you "gung ho" about doing rather than thinking?

.