Can't Miss Center Punch

[Crusty]

I don't have that problem - the title was just a small joke, but if I did I'd probably have a different hobby because 8 fingers and 2 thumbs only go so far.

When I was dismantling a Kia engine for the aluminum, I was surprised by how nice of a steel from which the valves were made. It was really tough but not that brittle and that's when the idea hit me that one would make a good center punch.

A friend suggested that I see if the engine would fire up and indeed it did when I tried.





This mostly didn't work BTW. Only the lowest section got hot enough to take the aluminum to hot shortness so that it would bust apart easily. I cut the rest into smaller chunks with an aluminum cutting blade in my circular saw and though it was a dubious operation it worked. All that I couldn't recover were the actual cylinders with liners that were impossible to remove and impervious to the aluminum cutting blade, but still overall I got 3 5 gal buckets of casting aluminum chunks to melt.