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Tungsten bucking bars

S

SvingenB

Well Known Member
How good are they? Are they worth the price? I mean, if I purchased a bar for 250$ or more, I would definitely use it no matter what, simply because I would feel very bad throwing away that much money for a small piece of metal. But from a purely objective point of view, are they really worth the price?
 
I successfully built my QB -8 before the "invention" of the Tungsten bar, and my assortment of steel chunks saw me through. When we began to build the -3, I figured that there were going to be lots of places I needed a compact bar to fit in tiny spaces and odd angles, and tungsten seemed to be the answer. I am fortunate to have a wife who understands tools (and knows she'll either be on the bar or the gun...), so I was rewarded with a set of two for my birthday - and I couldn't' be happier with them! My steel bars now rust in a drawer....

Louise wrote this the other day:

http://www.vansairforce.com/community/showthread.php?t=56121&highlight=tungsten

Expensive? Yes - but in the big picture of airplane costs and looking at the benefit on the time/frustration curves, well worth it!
 
They're pretty!

I was over at Brown Tool the other day, and picked up a couple of tungsten bars just to see how they felt in the hand. They're a long way from holding a plain steel bar, let me tell you.

The prices reflect the rarity of this metal too: $165 for the little 4 x 1 x 5/8 inch bar which weighs 1.65 pounds. That's about twice the density of steel.

All 6 sides of the two bars I looked at appeared to have a ground finish which is nice. They're pretty! And I think tungsten is corrosion resistant, so they'll look nice for a long time.
 
Tungsten bar it is then. Averytools has both models that Ironflight had a link/picture of, so I will order both.

Funny thing, the name tungsten is from Sweden, tung sten meaning heavy stone.
 
Best thing in the drawer

I didnt buck my QB with anything else than my single small tungsten bar. I guess the SB may require additional bars but I doubt it.
 
mculver said:
Can't remember where I learned about this (archives are dry on a search), but I ordered my tungsten bucking bars from where most of them are made in the first place: China :)

Definitely cheaper -- especially if you order several to spread out the shipping cost.

See http://www.mculver.com/2010/04/bucking-bars.html for details
Click to expand...

Perfect. I have sent an email to them. The bars look exactly like the ones Averytool is selling, so I guess that is exactly what they are. Shipping cost will be the same from USA and China for me.

PS the link to chinatungsten in your blog did not work. Nice blog by the way.
 
RE: Tungsten Bucking Bars

Midwest Tungsten Service is another supplier of Tungsten bucking bars and they have lot of different styles. They were offering free shipping a while back and the prices didn't seem out of reason either.

http://www.tungsten.com/
 
Update

Received my tungsten (Wolfram for non english/french people) today. I ordered from chinatungsten.com :)

The price was 50 and 52 US$ + 58US$ in shipping. The price for these at Averytools is 115 and 130 US$ (+ shipping, don't know the exact price, but 40 - 50 US$ at least). Excellent service as well, got them less than a week after placing (emailing) the order. Chinatungsten can custom made any shape or form as well, in addition to a set of standard shapes.
 
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