cleaning up some mushrooms

Decided it was time to clean up some mushrooms on the ends of a couple of prybars. I was going to simply grind them down but then I thought why not use my new portable bandsaw and take advantage of the new stand I made and just cut them off.

http://www.homemadetools.net/homemad...andsaw-stand-7

This is a photo of the first mushroom cap cut off

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The bottom side of the cut

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Then I went after the second mushroom cap and cut it off

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The bottom side of the cut ,,,,YIKES!

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That crack was a big mess so I took off another slice which just broke apart during the cut

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I wanted to get to the bottom of this so I took off another slice

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...and another

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..and one more to be sure

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Finally, no more cracks. But it was an interesting lesson and I'm glad I decided to cut off the caps instead of grinding them down.

Here's a summary comparison

Attachment 18829

That is quite revealing. It wouldn't surprise a metallurgist, but few of us think of fatigue at a microscopic level - let alone visually. Grinding or sanding definitely hides many irregularities; samples are lapped and polished before examination.