You should do a video with him and show just how all off the forging, grinding, and finishing process looks when in super slow motion. Also I really like the videos you guys and Kentucky ballistics do
Jamie had mentioned it in the discord server, and as soon as he hinted at it being a set I was determined lol, and I guess I just got lucky checking the site every hour or so
@@davidblalock9945 it’s worth what someone will pay, and I paid basically spot price for the silver one at least. But they wouldn’t and wouldn’t be easily able to sell the gold one for that. It definitely would be an investment, but a as I don’t intend to sell them it’s not an investment that will pay off in my lifetime.
A lot of that cost is in traceability. (And quality control.) Aircraft industry as a whole is expensive like that because if there is a crash and the cause is traced to a faulty part, that can be tracked to the batch it was purchased in, all the way back to the manufacturer. And *THEN,* they can be tracked to _every_ aircraft they were used on worldwide & be replaced on all of them, if necessary.
Not to mention. If that bag of bushings is for a plane that is no longer built, and it is for a VERY specific bit of said plane, then they have to be completely recreated for a small batch. Economy of scale never gets involved.
@@VagabondTexan bs. Just use standardized bolts and never have this issue ever. Plus: If one bolt that cost 1$ fails, doesnt mean the next one does too. A security is mostly more expensive than just replacing the accident. Every bolt is quality controlled, especially if you dont order it in china, and this goes a lot cheaper. Its just a way of making politician and military complex friends rich, which makes the politicians rich in return. There is no excuse for a pack of that to cost 90k$
@@jarrrdirt Incorrect in every conceivable way. The QC and traciabilty costs go way up if a failure can lead to a mass casualty event, particularly when dealing with a lot of dynamic loads. It's also not just the military industrial complex, civilian aircraft get this too. Lets say a failure of an imporatn part of an Airbus starts failing because a bolt sheered off. Lets say the bolt is then analyzed and the alloy is messed up and corrodes faster than it should. You need to then chase down every bolt made from that bad batch of steel, which means you need to know what steel was used in every bolt, which means you NEED extensive documentation.
For the record, a threading die does work on wood. And so does a tap. You just need a lot of lube and a relatively steep lead in. I used linseed oil the few times ive needed to add threads to wood.
Like it's cousin the woodchuck, a wood bolt wouldn't bolt any amount of wood, because wood bolts can't bolt wood. But even if a wood bolt could bolt wood, it still wouldn't bolt any wood.
Yeah that was a single bag of fixings. If you think that represents reasonable value you must also believe Joe Biden is the leader of the free world. And makes all the decisions. 🤦🏻♂️😂 Are you fully china vaxed and" boostered "also?
Regarding wooden nuts and bolts. I worked in a defence establishment in a town called Exmouth, in the far North of Western Australia. It was a VLF station for communicating with submarines. The internal parts of the main building under the 1000ft antenna, was made entirely on wood all held together with thousands of wooden bolts and nuts, fascinating place.
So, your first instinct to use a die on the wood was the correct instinct. You just need three different sizes and progressively. The last die is actually blunt and rounded, the idea of this is the last pass actually burnishes the wood into shape which increases it's strength substantially. If you get a wooden dowel and just thread it through a nut you'll see wooden created without even cutting any material off.
Yes, that was a nice demonstration of how something as 'simple' as a wooden bolt can end up costing hundreds of times more than the equivalent mass-produced item.
Not to mention material certs and traceability.... I've seen torx fasteners with a roughly $600 cost to manufacture. Who knows what they were sold for.
and keep track of witch batch of metal was used to make each bolt. And which machines made each bolt. And how many bolts the consumable parts of said machines have been used to make. And, and, and, and...
@@cameronwebster6866 Yeah but you're doing all these things in a factory that makes bolts, that information should be tracked anyway. At 90k, you could pay someone to individually machine the damn things every day for a year.
Dont forget steps like heat treat, passivate, shot peen and myriad forms of inspection(visual/dimensional, RT, UT, PT, MT, Nital(temper) etch depending on material and intended use. Once people realize how much time and effort goes into even the simplest of parts it starts to make sense.
Just remember that every single bolt, rivet, nut, and every other fastener and part in an aircraft is heavily inspected and certified by the manufacturer. The part isn’t necessarily the extremely expensive part. The paperwork is.
It's actually even worse than that. The base material those bolts are made out of has to be inspected and certified and from an approved vendor, with a full chain of traceability back to the place where it was mined. Good for figuring out where the problem started when your billion dollar aircraft falls out of the sky, not so good for actually getting anything done with any sort of reasonable timeframe or budget.
@@inventiveowl395 Oh yeah, that makes sense! :) BTW, mokume gane is like damascus steel, but with softer metals like copper, bronze or brass, not an alloy :) I think it's still called the same, even if it's not copper based metals.
I used to make parts for the government....and for sure the vast majority of the seemingly inflated cost of those bushings was due to the paperwork on each one demanded by the government. For 'flight' parts we had paperwork back to the forge and most of the time back to the mine where the ore had been found. This DID come in handy when a couple brackets holding oil lines broke and we lost an F-16 because of it. Turned out the fractured brackets came from the same place...so all the rest of that batch were immediately grounded until they could be replaced. That kind of paperwork is really handy to have...but so many fingers have to create it that it costs a lot. Not to mention all the specialized testing they may have had to endure which often takes specialized test equipment that you have to build to be able to test them. We had to build an environmental chamber able to go from scorching desert heat to -70F along with altitudes up to where airplanes carrying weapons can fly. And cycle the parts over and over and over then test them. Again and again each time the cash register is rolling up the costs. It's not the guys making the parts gouging...it's an out of control government wasting our money.
@@flpmlks5181 You can't have a military in a democratic nation without popular support. A quick way to lose popular support is to put people's sons, fathers, and husbands in defective vehicles. I know the "one man gets the rifle, the other man gets the ammunition" approach is popular in.... certain countries... but it turns out you get a higher quality fighting force when you don't have a bunch of desperate forced conscripts being forced to march at gunpoint.
@@flpmlks5181 Yeah, it turns out if you lose less soldiers the ones you keep get to become way more skilled. To say nothing of the morale effects of soldiers _not_ dying.
@@PhysicsGamer that´s bs. america and other western countries has manpower crysis, even tho they keep soldiers ´´safe´´ and how exactly you get skilled soldiers, when you are fighting just insurgents, who can´t fight back? :D when people find out, you are starting wars just for resources and to install client regimes, there goes your morale
Btw. Here is a tip if you need to recover tiny specs of value from the floor. Take a coffee filter and hold it over the mouth of the vacuum hose, make a little pocket in the tube and vacume away… I learned it as a young man if we dropped …. Eeeh… valued smoking “tobacco”….tasted horrible btw… but heyho 🤷🏼♂️😬
I hope you had this idea already pop into your head after mentioning it but a table mounted shear made out of damascus would be sick! It popped into my head as soon as you said it, would be cool to see and a lovely addition to the shop!
Cost goes up when you want small numbers of parts that are way out of normal limits, which are usually defined by a standard parts catalogue. It's almost always the small quantities, special features, quality controls, inspections, and packing that drives big changes in price. The cost you pay for most consumer products is just marketing, it's often cheaper per item to make something big and flashy and complicated by the million than it is to make a dozen simple special items.
Alec... some advice... when threading more delicate materials/sizes set your top slide to 29.5 degrees then feed the tool with the top slide only. This makes the thread tool cut on only one side, reducing the lots dramatically. On larger sizes it helps to prevent chatter too.
Alec , for future reference , when turning gold or silver on the lathe , use the sharpest cutter you can (HSS works a treat) and use Bees Wax as a cutting compound ! You can also make a mixture of bees wax and paraffin . That mix will also work a treat on Aluminium , copper and most other really soft metals !
If anyone is genuinely curious why aerospace parts are so expensive it’s because of the paperwork involved, you can track parts back to the mine the material came from, to the foundry the billets were casted and formed at, to the supplier who cut the raw stock the machine shop ordered, to the machine the part was made on and the machinists who made them. And every step of the way involves certifications as well as trust relationships.
Right before he grabbed that copper tube, when he was looking around for "something more expensive" I was certain it would be one of those two metals. Missed opportunity to tie back in with previous videos and also use up some of those metals that are just surely lying around.
@@OperatorMittensactually it's based on who the aircraft manufacturer says you can get the part from. Airbus for example has a seal that is manufactured in the US then shipped to Europe to be repackaged then shipped back to the US government. They will not allow the government to buy the parts direct from that manufacturer at a lower cost because theyre not "certified parts".
Sooooooo. I work in military aviation. Hardware that is for critical applications go through robust quality control steps. From metallurgy, dimensional, heat treatment and non-destructive inspection, the quality control is what makes parts expensive.
For everything the infantry uses yes it's low quality from the lowest bidder because it's considered disposable. Aircraft and such is on the opposite end of quality standards.
@@cleverusername9369 It's not simply the lowest bidder, it's the lower bidder capable of meeting the standards. If it's substandard, the military isn't buying it. But that substandard over-run will often be sold on the civilian market as "military grade". IYKYK.
One of the reasons the military sometimes spends outrageous amounts for simple things is that in mission critical situations such as when building the primary coolant loop of a nuclear reactor, you need to be able to trace the metals back to exactly which part of which mine the metal came from. This means that every single bolt and nut has a serial number on it that can be traced. Also each fastener has been exhaustively individually inspected and tested.
The whole 90k bushing that is typical congress grandstanding put on for show to the voters. Its a Gotcha question. Aircraft requirements have hefty certification and inspection requirements ontop of that it also has to meet mil spec requirements. Tack on all the BS contracting non-sense and that's how the price ends up being stupidly high.
You continually make things that anyone else would shout "What the F**K!" from the top of a mountain if asked to make and turn it into absolute magic. Well done sir, well done.
oh wha a travesty.... you got t watch some cool, free video content, and you didn't like the advertisng.... better not turn a TV anytime.... you'll be SO UPSET at what you see every 3-4mins when the show goes to an ad break :D :D
Except in that case they weren't a rip-off. The specific bushings wound up being high-precision long-life bushings made out of some sort of exotic metal. Probably titanium or magnesium.
I knew someone who worked for a defense contractor. One of the problems they kept having was the government changing the specifications of a project after the final contract was signed. Just like when you make last minute changes with your building contractor, it will cost extra.
@@heavymetalbassist5 ...Which are made of exotic materials which won't spark, have the exact right hardness not to mar or streak, and are are guaranteed to not drop their head down into a multi-million dollar turbine.
@@PhysicsGamer or you could just, oh I don't know, do your job and not be so dumb as to drop a hammer down a turbine, i've spent plenty on hammers and never had to blow $2000 because 'oh im just so dumb, i don't know how to hold a hammer?", but i guess $2000 is about right for the government
I've machined copper making some funny pencil holders just for fun. Was a really great time considering I primarily work with stainless. I admire your technique and patience, wish I could have ordered the silver bolt as it's my favourite precious metal! Titanium would have also been awesome to see 👍👍
First things first. Congress is wrong. It depends on where those bushing are from. If it's off a Humvee then it is a standard bushing. If it's of an Apache helicopter or a sub, then it's a special sized bushing. Not all of the military stuff is overpriced. I really wish people would stop saying a that stuff.
The facts are in this case that Congress was not wrong. This bushing is a commonly available and used bushing. The manufacturing process is not special. The reason for the price increase is because of the required FAA certifications needed to sell it as a aerospace grading. That's a Government created expense.
@bigbird4481 The first one, yes, because of testing for specifics. The rest is recouping the cost of the first one. Just like everything else in this world.
funny how this video made me actually more understanding of the high price on bolts and fasteners because if you are working with temperamental metals and need something to be insanely precise wow, I knew it was hard but this makes it look insane to try to make things that are actually perfect dimensions. Also best use of gold that I have seen in a long time
Love the challenge videos like this! I’d like to see a similar challenge/educational video about recycling material (literally melting it down in a forge, pouring into a bar/ingot, and then making it into something new!)
bloooody hell! 12/10 for the camera work by Jamie over the lathe. that slow-mo on the gold was *chefs kiss*!! Alec , would love to see you make something cool, and then electroplate it using the leftover gold shavings. reckon you'd enjoy it too :)
For certain military vehicles, the bolts have to be bulletproof. Usually requires hand machining special types of steel. I think some of the newer tanks are in the $500-1000 range per bolt.
Fun fact, jewelry manufacturers have little vacuums at each workstation to catch all the stray gold dust. They also periodically change out the carpet to get all the gold stuck in it as well.
god yeah fresh-out-of-casting silver can be such a nightmare... in the jewelry studio i used to work in we had a little steel shot tumbler to work-harden the surface so it was a little less likely to smoosh and bend all over the place. great video lol. (also, no idea if youve done this before, but if you want your whole shop to smell like burnt hair and fish, cuttlebone casting is super fun!! thats my favorite small metalworking technique)
A real actual Golden Bolt. Fun fact, at the airfield I worked at when we'd do checks for debris, quality assurance would usually hide a "golden bolt" somewhere, and if you found it you'd get a day off (and if everyone missed it you'd have to turn around and sweep the line again :p)
Kinda reminded of an old comic strip by a belgian comics illustrator André Franquin, where two industry execs on a business jet talk about their most recent cost-cutting innovation: making nuts and bolts out of a material which is mostly cardboard with a bit of zinc thrown in. In the last panel the engines of the jet fall off.
As a woodturner I do a little bit of thread chasing on the lather and the type of wood definitely matters even if it stabilized it kinda still matters choosing a burl for your wood was why you had so much trouble because the end grain is going everywhere you really need to do it with the end grain running the way of your centers. Ebony or cocobolo do amazing jobs but most exotics do. if you are on a budget I use holly or satin wood or even boxwood from larger bushes. you want really hard slow growing straight wood!
The Ceremonial Golden Bolt sometimes used to complete a project such as a ship are probably something like 14 ct and possibly plated to look like proper gold.
Gotta say that footage of threading the gold bolt right before things went awry was magnificent 👌 and I felt your pain when beauty turned to chaos. I am sure my cursing rant would have been much longer lol
9:10 - "are they all going in the bucket jamie?"
"yeah straight in"
God I love the two of you haha
18:47 I feel genuinely bad at how much I laughed at the swearing 😂
On skibidi?
Me too bahahaha
Same, really felt the Britishness there.
Also, congrats on the wedding Gav!
You should do a video with him and show just how all off the forging, grinding, and finishing process looks when in super slow motion. Also I really like the videos you guys and Kentucky ballistics do
It's cause we've all been there on some project or other. I mean......maybe not when using precious metals, buuuuut...
I think Oliver realized there was going to be a set with the second bolt, and was determined to get the whole set.
Jamie had mentioned it in the discord server, and as soon as he hinted at it being a set I was determined lol, and I guess I just got lucky checking the site every hour or so
@@Volt64bolt Would you have bought the gold bolt if it came up?
@@mikes78 I would have considered it
@@Volt64boltthe complete set, including the golden bolt, will definitely appraise at a much higher value than the sum of its materials.
@@davidblalock9945 it’s worth what someone will pay, and I paid basically spot price for the silver one at least. But they wouldn’t and wouldn’t be easily able to sell the gold one for that. It definitely would be an investment, but a as I don’t intend to sell them it’s not an investment that will pay off in my lifetime.
9:10 The help from Jamie is unparalleled 🤣🤣
You didn't want to check to see if Oliver C. wanted to buy the $5,000 gold bolt?
This!! I hate this!!
He didn't sell it, see, he screwed it in his workshop. 20:07
@@namelesshero434 maybe re read his comment.... Carefully
@@DarthBil1 ya I’d be upset if I wanted the whole set lol
I actually would love this set as an art work
I think Oliver wanted the set
Selling the wooden bolt has to be the most seamless transition to a sponsor segment I have ever seen
The gold bolt on the anvil is like the golden railroad spike, awesome video and can't wait to see more of the steam hammer
A lot of that cost is in traceability. (And quality control.) Aircraft industry as a whole is expensive like that because if there is a crash and the cause is traced to a faulty part, that can be tracked to the batch it was purchased in, all the way back to the manufacturer. And *THEN,* they can be tracked to _every_ aircraft they were used on worldwide & be replaced on all of them, if necessary.
Not to mention. If that bag of bushings is for a plane that is no longer built, and it is for a VERY specific bit of said plane, then they have to be completely recreated for a small batch. Economy of scale never gets involved.
@@VagabondTexan bs. Just use standardized bolts and never have this issue ever.
Plus: If one bolt that cost 1$ fails, doesnt mean the next one does too.
A security is mostly more expensive than just replacing the accident. Every bolt is quality controlled, especially if you dont order it in china, and this goes a lot cheaper. Its just a way of making politician and military complex friends rich, which makes the politicians rich in return.
There is no excuse for a pack of that to cost 90k$
What a joke, 99.99% of that $90k bag of bolts is lobbying and greed. That's what happens when you have a monopoly.
@@jarrrdirt
Incorrect in every conceivable way. The QC and traciabilty costs go way up if a failure can lead to a mass casualty event, particularly when dealing with a lot of dynamic loads. It's also not just the military industrial complex, civilian aircraft get this too.
Lets say a failure of an imporatn part of an Airbus starts failing because a bolt sheered off. Lets say the bolt is then analyzed and the alloy is messed up and corrodes faster than it should. You need to then chase down every bolt made from that bad batch of steel, which means you need to know what steel was used in every bolt, which means you NEED extensive documentation.
@@jarrrdirt You a certified idiot
"Are they all going into the bucket Jamie?"
"Yeah straight in"
My sides have left the building.
Oh, that's what was running past me yesterday? They were bloody fast!
ah so thats what shot ny my head, thought it was a bullet based on speed, but it took out my apartment
@@michellerondinone9398 Why did you take OperationDarkside's comment and reiterate it into a worse joke?!
@@oShadowkun? Cause I didn't see it, stop being an ass
20:05 Reminds me of a story my dad told me about how one of the shops downtown used to use a bar of silver as a doorstop.
For the record, a threading die does work on wood. And so does a tap. You just need a lot of lube and a relatively steep lead in. I used linseed oil the few times ive needed to add threads to wood.
@@richardknox4612 "a lot of lube and a relatively steep lead in"
... Are we still talking about bolts?
It's how they cut the very first screws that weren't carved by hand.
@@DH-xw6jp I think may have switched to talking about nuts, actually
And not using burl wood.
You type this as if wood isn’t a word with thousands of different kinds, in which I assure you it wont work with a lot of woods.
Oliver C must be pissed knowing he’s now missing the final piece of the collection 😂
How much wood could a wood bolt bolt if a wood bolt could bolt wood?
*How much wood would a wood bolt bolt if a wood bolt would bolt wood?
As much wood as a wood bolt would bolt if a wood bolt bolted wood.
@@Luke-mp3lj But a wood bolt would never bolt wood now would it? or would it not?
someones got wood for wood
Like it's cousin the woodchuck, a wood bolt wouldn't bolt any amount of wood, because wood bolts can't bolt wood. But even if a wood bolt could bolt wood, it still wouldn't bolt any wood.
Music in this was absolutely on point. The close-up at 18:31 was a stunner.
Yay, can’t wait to get my bolts!
Also we need an update in a few years of how the gold bolt lasts.
You should make a frame and mount all the bolts of various materials on it as a nice display piece
Did you also go for the gold one, or did he not sell it?
@@ESTrashfire13 Jamie said they won’t sell it because of shipping + insurance costs as well as tax
@@cocodojo yes it is planned, a nice heat bent swept acrylic frame with a walnut base.
Maybe see if they'd make a gold plated bolt, would cost substantially less than solid gold, but still look good and completes the set
Part 2 platinum bolt is going to be wild! Hopefully they do titanium and tungsten as well.
Yeah was hoping for those materials as well. Maybe a Damascus and aluminium as well.
@@Goodgu3963 Damascus would be wild!
Titanium Damascus Tungsten bolt? The TDT!
Osmium bolt on part 3
Palladium and rhodium bolts are next! 😅
rule of thumb for aeroplane parts get the price of the same part for car and then add a zero to it
The bag held up IS a bag of airplane parts. Stilll not worth 90k xD
Yeah that was a single bag of fixings. If you think that represents reasonable value you must also believe Joe Biden is the leader of the free world. And makes all the decisions. 🤦🏻♂️😂 Are you fully china vaxed and" boostered "also?
only 1 zero?
@@cerealport2726 you add another 0 when you go from airplane part to military grade for the same thing
thats the rule for boat planes you add 2 zeros
boats stand for Bust Out Another Thousand
Regarding wooden nuts and bolts. I worked in a defence establishment in a town called Exmouth, in the far North of Western Australia. It was a VLF station for communicating with submarines. The internal parts of the main building under the 1000ft antenna, was made entirely on wood all held together with thousands of wooden bolts and nuts, fascinating place.
:v
So, your first instinct to use a die on the wood was the correct instinct. You just need three different sizes and progressively. The last die is actually blunt and rounded, the idea of this is the last pass actually burnishes the wood into shape which increases it's strength substantially.
If you get a wooden dowel and just thread it through a nut you'll see wooden created without even cutting any material off.
12:27 “it’s so diddy”
Well you have enough lubricants in your workshop 😂
"This bag of thingies costs too much."
Same guy: "How dare you let an aircraft crash because of a fault in a thingie?"
😂😂
Arguably not more important than a bolt in a car.
Sheep of the government here lol. No one can justify it costing that much
@@Hazed64 Anything used on an airframe has some serious quality requirements.
@@Hazed64 Homedepot bolts used to hold together a table and bolts used on air frames couldn't be more different. Typical uneducated American.
12:28 Thank you Jaime for the Ocean's style casting explanation. It was lovely
The silver bolt should have been sold for at least 30. You need to charge for the work that goes into manufacturing, not just material.
Well, he didn't even charge appropriately for the wood material. But he wanted to price it at a dollar for the sake of the video title.
Yes
I would definitely pay more than a dollar for a beautiful wood bolt.
Now add documentation and you'll be in the same range as the outrage clip.
experience, planning, work hours, material cost etc.. should be like 200dollar bolt
Yes, that was a nice demonstration of how something as 'simple' as a wooden bolt can end up costing hundreds of times more than the equivalent mass-produced item.
Just what the viewers want.. an ad that's so thoroughly embedded that it quite literally cannot be skipped. Touche.
You skipped the most expensive part of the process... You have to x-ray each one to check for voids or defects.
Not to mention material certs and traceability.... I've seen torx fasteners with a roughly $600 cost to manufacture. Who knows what they were sold for.
and keep track of witch batch of metal was used to make each bolt. And which machines made each bolt. And how many bolts the consumable parts of said machines have been used to make. And, and, and, and...
@@cameronwebster6866 Yeah but you're doing all these things in a factory that makes bolts, that information should be tracked anyway. At 90k, you could pay someone to individually machine the damn things every day for a year.
Dont forget steps like heat treat, passivate, shot peen and myriad forms of inspection(visual/dimensional, RT, UT, PT, MT, Nital(temper) etch depending on material and intended use. Once people realize how much time and effort goes into even the simplest of parts it starts to make sense.
part number RB12-FS-00663-02. good YT video on a process
3:30 Now we have an answer for the age old question: How would a metal worker go about woodworking? 😂
Just remember that every single bolt, rivet, nut, and every other fastener and part in an aircraft is heavily inspected and certified by the manufacturer. The part isn’t necessarily the extremely expensive part. The paperwork is.
Unless it's Boeing...
@@robertjb001 Then they just skip the bolts all together.
It's actually even worse than that. The base material those bolts are made out of has to be inspected and certified and from an approved vendor, with a full chain of traceability back to the place where it was mined. Good for figuring out where the problem started when your billion dollar aircraft falls out of the sky, not so good for actually getting anything done with any sort of reasonable timeframe or budget.
Is that also why they spend 5000 on a toilet? 😂 Government projects are notorious for going over budget.
Also most people dont understand how pricing stuff out works for the military
@9:12 “Are they going in Jamie?” - “Yeah straight in” 😂 I’m dead 😂
"Ok good" 😂
Why no Damascus bolt???????? Between silver and gold ?? Come on it would be the best one
That would technically be mokume gane, I think, and I think those metals are too mechanically different to work together.
@@bjrn-oskarrnning2740 He meant steel damascus that would be priced between the silver and gold bolts. Not a bolt made of silver and gold alloy :D
@@inventiveowl395 Oh yeah, that makes sense! :)
BTW, mokume gane is like damascus steel, but with softer metals like copper, bronze or brass, not an alloy :) I think it's still called the same, even if it's not copper based metals.
There's a mokugame video in the back catalogue.
And I'm sure there was a small block of it left after Alec finished making belt buckles iirc...
He should have done aluminum, brass, damascus, titanium, magnesium, tungsten, platnium
17:00 Woah. Hold on! You're telling me that a socket, which is made to grip a bolt, will grip that bolt better than a three jaw chuck? Wow! 😂
I used to make parts for the government....and for sure the vast majority of the seemingly inflated cost of those bushings was due to the paperwork on each one demanded by the government. For 'flight' parts we had paperwork back to the forge and most of the time back to the mine where the ore had been found. This DID come in handy when a couple brackets holding oil lines broke and we lost an F-16 because of it. Turned out the fractured brackets came from the same place...so all the rest of that batch were immediately grounded until they could be replaced.
That kind of paperwork is really handy to have...but so many fingers have to create it that it costs a lot. Not to mention all the specialized testing they may have had to endure which often takes specialized test equipment that you have to build to be able to test them. We had to build an environmental chamber able to go from scorching desert heat to -70F along with altitudes up to where airplanes carrying weapons can fly. And cycle the parts over and over and over then test them. Again and again each time the cash register is rolling up the costs. It's not the guys making the parts gouging...it's an out of control government wasting our money.
ok. so purpose of that much money is to keep pilot safe. those western people want even their military to be safe :D
@@flpmlks5181they don't care about the pilot, they want their multi million dollar planes to be safe.
@@flpmlks5181 You can't have a military in a democratic nation without popular support. A quick way to lose popular support is to put people's sons, fathers, and husbands in defective vehicles. I know the "one man gets the rifle, the other man gets the ammunition" approach is popular in.... certain countries... but it turns out you get a higher quality fighting force when you don't have a bunch of desperate forced conscripts being forced to march at gunpoint.
@@flpmlks5181 Yeah, it turns out if you lose less soldiers the ones you keep get to become way more skilled. To say nothing of the morale effects of soldiers _not_ dying.
@@PhysicsGamer that´s bs. america and other western countries has manpower crysis, even tho they keep soldiers ´´safe´´ and how exactly you get skilled soldiers, when you are fighting just insurgents, who can´t fight back? :D when people find out, you are starting wars just for resources and to install client regimes, there goes your morale
The explanation at 12:50 gives me such oceans 11 vibes with the editing style and music choice
Btw. Here is a tip if you need to recover tiny specs of value from the floor. Take a coffee filter and hold it over the mouth of the vacuum hose, make a little pocket in the tube and vacume away… I learned it as a young man if we dropped …. Eeeh… valued smoking “tobacco”….tasted horrible btw… but heyho 🤷🏼♂️😬
a man of culture /salut
@@Prophias yea well…the Dude abides 😎
Dust and keif joints always hit different lmao
18:27 is some of the most glorious detailed footage I've seen on this channel.Good work, Alex, but also, great work Jamie (sp?)!
I bet Oliver C. is pissed that he didn't get to buy the full collection!
Nah, my bank would be if I did
I hope you had this idea already pop into your head after mentioning it but a table mounted shear made out of damascus would be sick! It popped into my head as soon as you said it, would be cool to see and a lovely addition to the shop!
Legend has it, Oliver C. still refreshes his browser, waiting for the next bolt
Oliver C : Where is my platinum and diamond bolt?
I actually only checked every hour, just got lucky.
@Volt64bolt Nice, yeah, would be awesome if he would sell you the gold one aswell to complete the set.
@@DMalek Jamie said they won’t sell it bc shipping and insurance costs, plus there would also be tax issues. Tbh my wallet is happier for it
That single point threading of the gold bolt clip had me on the edge of my seat closer than any film or TV show scene ever has! 😂😂😂
Sheesh! Is there no way to conceive a way to do proper thread _rolling_ in the shop?
That gold swarf is hella expensive!!
Cost goes up when you want small numbers of parts that are way out of normal limits, which are usually defined by a standard parts catalogue. It's almost always the small quantities, special features, quality controls, inspections, and packing that drives big changes in price. The cost you pay for most consumer products is just marketing, it's often cheaper per item to make something big and flashy and complicated by the million than it is to make a dozen simple special items.
poor guy is still waiting for a gold and platinum bolt to hit the market...
Alec... some advice... when threading more delicate materials/sizes set your top slide to 29.5 degrees then feed the tool with the top slide only. This makes the thread tool cut on only one side, reducing the lots dramatically. On larger sizes it helps to prevent chatter too.
I'm not sure those bolts are compliant with ISO 4014 Alec.. 🤣
I LOVE the jazz in the background. Really makes the video seem "proper" as you would say it over there
Future video idea! Forging a sheer for your shop.
Just what I was thinking when he mentioned it
… a Steam powered sheer!
"If we're going to compete with big fastener, we need to step it up a notch". Killed me
Please do a damascus swiss army knife...would love to see the forging of different tools and the complexity of the construction
Alec , for future reference , when turning gold or silver on the lathe , use the sharpest cutter you can (HSS works a treat) and use Bees Wax as a cutting compound ! You can also make a mixture of bees wax and paraffin . That mix will also work a treat on Aluminium , copper and most other really soft metals !
Hi man love your videos can you do a video where you make darts and sell them and raise th peice until people stop buying them
If anyone is genuinely curious why aerospace parts are so expensive it’s because of the paperwork involved, you can track parts back to the mine the material came from, to the foundry the billets were casted and formed at, to the supplier who cut the raw stock the machine shop ordered, to the machine the part was made on and the machinists who made them. And every step of the way involves certifications as well as trust relationships.
I expected titanium and magnesium maybe damascus. And tungsten.
Right before he grabbed that copper tube, when he was looking around for "something more expensive" I was certain it would be one of those two metals. Missed opportunity to tie back in with previous videos and also use up some of those metals that are just surely lying around.
I thought the same, but maybe he already has something else planned with the materials.
My only qualm with magnesium is there would be no forging it only machining. Same with tungsten.
18:42 Went from the highest level satisfying to the most bummer buzzkill at the last minute
90k for that tiny bag of bushings is criminal
In theory, that bag was sourced from the lowest bidder too.
the joys of a government contract, license to steal
@@OperatorMittensactually it's based on who the aircraft manufacturer says you can get the part from. Airbus for example has a seal that is manufactured in the US then shipped to Europe to be repackaged then shipped back to the US government. They will not allow the government to buy the parts direct from that manufacturer at a lower cost because theyre not "certified parts".
Sooooooo. I work in military aviation. Hardware that is for critical applications go through robust quality control steps. From metallurgy, dimensional, heat treatment and non-destructive inspection, the quality control is what makes parts expensive.
@@OperatorMittens "Lowest bidder" is determined by an overall cost estimate, not a microscopic estimate of how much an individual bushing costs.
This guy is pure comedy.
"You gotta be kidding me, pAcking peanuTs"
"I wonder if these are the edible kind"
fucking bites into it
Alec, have you ever thought of collaborating with Collin Furze? Think of the possibilities.
I'm thinking about it... what are the possibilities? they design things in a way almost opposite to one another
They technically kinda did years ago. Not a real collab but were in a video together. I forget exactly what Colin was doing there.
Colin has made a brief cameo in one of Alecs videos before.
Colin came to his shop and went dumpster diving looking for metal scraps 😂
In their collab video Colin showed up to the workshop while Alec was on the plane moving to the US.
I wonder if a better casting method for the gold bolt would be a lost PLA or lost wax casting. You can get extreme detail with that method
Lets not ignore that American military grade is usually of subpar standard, often sourced by the cheapest resource available
For everything the infantry uses yes it's low quality from the lowest bidder because it's considered disposable. Aircraft and such is on the opposite end of quality standards.
did we not just establish that the bolts cost $90k? subpar... maybe, cheap... not if its paid by the American taxpayer.
I've always said this, that military grade just means sourced from the lowest bidder
theres a difference between military grade and aerospace grade.
@@cleverusername9369 It's not simply the lowest bidder, it's the lower bidder capable of meeting the standards. If it's substandard, the military isn't buying it. But that substandard over-run will often be sold on the civilian market as "military grade". IYKYK.
One of the reasons the military sometimes spends outrageous amounts for simple things is that in mission critical situations such as when building the primary coolant loop of a nuclear reactor, you need to be able to trace the metals back to exactly which part of which mine the metal came from. This means that every single bolt and nut has a serial number on it that can be traced. Also each fastener has been exhaustively individually inspected and tested.
The whole 90k bushing that is typical congress grandstanding put on for show to the voters. Its a Gotcha question. Aircraft requirements have hefty certification and inspection requirements ontop of that it also has to meet mil spec requirements. Tack on all the BS contracting non-sense and that's how the price ends up being stupidly high.
3:00 Oh does that mean he got a powered cutting attachment that he can finally u--nope he's taping an angle grinder to the lathe again ok 😂
did you get the silver one hallmarked? technically illegal if you didnt, but i wont tell.
no one cares about that government mumbo jumbo
You continually make things that anyone else would shout "What the F**K!" from the top of a mountain if asked to make and turn it into absolute magic. Well done sir, well done.
just 1 mans opinion, but these 20 minute Squarespace ads are getting kinda tired.
Life is hard, hey?
oh wha a travesty.... you got t watch some cool, free video content, and you didn't like the advertisng.... better not turn a TV anytime.... you'll be SO UPSET at what you see every 3-4mins when the show goes to an ad break :D :D
Big Faster has been real quiet since this dropped
0:15 Defense contractors ripping off the US government is nothing new unfortunately. The classic example was the $600 toilet seat.
Except in that case they weren't a rip-off. The specific bushings wound up being high-precision long-life bushings made out of some sort of exotic metal. Probably titanium or magnesium.
I knew someone who worked for a defense contractor. One of the problems they kept having was the government changing the specifications of a project after the final contract was signed. Just like when you make last minute changes with your building contractor, it will cost extra.
I once heard about $2000 brandless Estwing hammers
@@heavymetalbassist5 ...Which are made of exotic materials which won't spark, have the exact right hardness not to mar or streak, and are are guaranteed to not drop their head down into a multi-million dollar turbine.
@@PhysicsGamer or you could just, oh I don't know, do your job and not be so dumb as to drop a hammer down a turbine, i've spent plenty on hammers and never had to blow $2000 because 'oh im just so dumb, i don't know how to hold a hammer?", but i guess $2000 is about right for the government
I've machined copper making some funny pencil holders just for fun. Was a really great time considering I primarily work with stainless. I admire your technique and patience, wish I could have ordered the silver bolt as it's my favourite precious metal! Titanium would have also been awesome to see 👍👍
20:07
seriously!?!
That Oliver guy would have bought that thing tooo, mate.
Now that’s a real shop foreman there at 7:02 haha!
First things first. Congress is wrong. It depends on where those bushing are from. If it's off a Humvee then it is a standard bushing. If it's of an Apache helicopter or a sub, then it's a special sized bushing. Not all of the military stuff is overpriced. I really wish people would stop saying a that stuff.
The facts are in this case that Congress was not wrong. This bushing is a commonly available and used bushing. The manufacturing process is not special. The reason for the price increase is because of the required FAA certifications needed to sell it as a aerospace grading. That's a Government created expense.
you're going to tell me that a special sized bushing is going to cost anywhere near that price?
@bigbird4481 The first one, yes, because of testing for specifics. The rest is recouping the cost of the first one. Just like everything else in this world.
Honestly crazy impressive how he always come ups with these on the fly tools to achieve whatever he is working towards.
funny how this video made me actually more understanding of the high price on bolts and fasteners because if you are working with temperamental metals and need something to be insanely precise wow, I knew it was hard but this makes it look insane to try to make things that are actually perfect dimensions.
Also best use of gold that I have seen in a long time
Love the challenge videos like this! I’d like to see a similar challenge/educational video about recycling material (literally melting it down in a forge, pouring into a bar/ingot, and then making it into something new!)
bloooody hell! 12/10 for the camera work by Jamie over the lathe. that slow-mo on the gold was *chefs kiss*!!
Alec , would love to see you make something cool, and then electroplate it using the leftover gold shavings.
reckon you'd enjoy it too :)
Missed opportunity.... Where are the Nuts?
I really enjoy the quality of your videos and the back and forth of you and Jamie. I have to watch older videos as I saw your newer ones first.
Off topic, but genuinely one of the most convincing Squarespace ads I've seen, if not the best.
20:05 imagine in 50 years someone need to move it , takes that bolt out and is like "bit shiny ....to trash it is"😅😢😂😂
9:14 and there you have Jamie’s famous last words…
For certain military vehicles, the bolts have to be bulletproof. Usually requires hand machining special types of steel. I think some of the newer tanks are in the $500-1000 range per bolt.
As always, fantastic content. The cherry on top is the Tyler Bell shirt, that man is awesome.
Fun fact, jewelry manufacturers have little vacuums at each workstation to catch all the stray gold dust. They also periodically change out the carpet to get all the gold stuck in it as well.
god yeah fresh-out-of-casting silver can be such a nightmare... in the jewelry studio i used to work in we had a little steel shot tumbler to work-harden the surface so it was a little less likely to smoosh and bend all over the place. great video lol. (also, no idea if youve done this before, but if you want your whole shop to smell like burnt hair and fish, cuttlebone casting is super fun!! thats my favorite small metalworking technique)
A real actual Golden Bolt. Fun fact, at the airfield I worked at when we'd do checks for debris, quality assurance would usually hide a "golden bolt" somewhere, and if you found it you'd get a day off (and if everyone missed it you'd have to turn around and sweep the line again :p)
Kinda reminded of an old comic strip by a belgian comics illustrator André Franquin, where two industry execs on a business jet talk about their most recent cost-cutting innovation: making nuts and bolts out of a material which is mostly cardboard with a bit of zinc thrown in. In the last panel the engines of the jet fall off.
As a woodturner I do a little bit of thread chasing on the lather and the type of wood definitely matters even if it stabilized it kinda still matters choosing a burl for your wood was why you had so much trouble because the end grain is going everywhere you really need to do it with the end grain running the way of your centers. Ebony or cocobolo do amazing jobs but most exotics do. if you are on a budget I use holly or satin wood or even boxwood from larger bushes. you want really hard slow growing straight wood!
C’mon Oliver! We’re all rooting for you to buy the gold bolt too!!!
(They look amazing as a set!)
Little did you know, Oliver C. was the only person getting the emails 😂
The Ceremonial Golden Bolt sometimes used to complete a project such as a ship are probably something like 14 ct and possibly plated to look like proper gold.
Gotta say that footage of threading the gold bolt right before things went awry was magnificent 👌 and I felt your pain when beauty turned to chaos. I am sure my cursing rant would have been much longer lol
Jamie is now jazzy it seems. Nice edits, as always. Plus really neat instruction-manual-telling cuts there.
@Alec Steel, are we going to get more on the steam hammer soonish?? The wooden bolt is one of my favorite things you have made.
Oliver C. watching him put that bolt in the ground
👁️👄👁️
Great video, also longest ad I’ve seen
I saw the thumbnail and IMMEDIATELY thought "Must be one of those $90K Bushings hehe"
😂😭
Top upload lads, loved the idea, execution, edit & music. Cheers!
Great challenge video Alec and some beautiful video work Jamie.
Oliver was really tryna collect these like infinity stones😂 tho itd dad hell never grt the whole set.
That production value on the silver procedure walk through was so good I had to pause the video and make this comment!
ahahah loving the editing around 12:30 🤣
Only Alec Steele can make me watch a 20 minute ad for Square Space 😂