How to find a man and a lathe to work ali?

I am brand new to this forum in the hope of being able to find someone localish to Cirencester, Gloucestershire who would be up for machining some aluminium

This is to make a lance for use on horse back, but requires a tapering end for the lance head and probably a slight taper to fit the end section and finally a screw joint so the 2.2m lance can fit in a normal car!

Apologies if this is totally the wrong place!!

Edited By Jen Cirencester on 13/03/2012 10:22:46

Hi

Are you into some historic enactment society

I would use wood or bamboo

Seven feet of ali will bend easily, and look pretty silly after you've tried to straighten it up.

Bamboo may have the best combination of lightness and strength.

It's tough stuff

Remember those fishing nets we used as kids to catch minnows?

This is for modern tentpegging, rather than dressing up

The aluminium solution is a lot easier to organise than carbon fibre (tried a net pole, but too much flex, currently also have a bespoke rod maker on the case). Australians have been using this with 1" tube with no bending !

To add I have a bamboo lance, however the problem is if you don't have a 4x4 you try fitting a 2.2m+ lance in your car (usually 7ft 6" )

Below is a bamboo nail head lance on the left and my carbon fibre net pole lance on the right witha 1868 lance head

Sadly my nail head lance is now slightly bent following training at the weeekend!

Edited By Jen Cirencester on 13/03/2012 14:36:50

Edited By Jen Cirencester on 13/03/2012 14:37:28

Blimey!

You'll have someone's eye out with that.

Dont forget you can put a ferrule on a bamboo pole too, just like with a fishing rod.

gl

Bloomin eck do you have to have a licence for that sort of equipment?

Mike

Thats a hell of a tent-peg

Edited By Wolfie on 13/03/2012 21:23:50

Shame Jen was within spitting distance Saturday of you.

Nice easy job what diameter we talking about 22mm (7/8" or 25mm (1"

I live near you but would not be willing to manufacture a weapon like this it looks lethal if something happened it would be "Oy guv where did you get that weapon"

Bob

I think Jen takes part in a much misunderstood sport. Go to http://britishtentpegging.com/ for the facts.

Thanks for the responses! Although still no offers yet

I am going to talk to a local engineering firm this week and see if they will do it

Deltic007 - no licence required, if you wanted to do damage to others, I assure you a car would be more effective!!

Springbok - This is a proper sport, and the lances are relatively safe, ironically most accidents happen with the 1908 swords, as if you've just sharpened it and your horse throws in a buck this is the most dangerous situation

Here's me in action with sword (I'm the fat one!)

You could make the joint out of brass drain rod joints and epoxy them into tube from B&Q. My rod joints seem to be 20mm dia. You will probably find someone at a car boot selling some damaged ones as the current cheap sets use such thin plastic for the rod that they are next to useless for their intended purpose. If you can find an old bamboo set even better.

I'm not sure bamboo will tolerate having joints in it though?

I am going to India next week, so hoping to bring back some more bamboo lances depending on how much weight allowance I have left!

Also one of the Glos pegging crew also has bamboo growing in the UK, but it's taking a while to dry it out properly. This also needs to be worked on a lathe to take out the knobbles!

I am old enough to remember building bamboo fishing rods, and I seem to remember the strongest, hardest bamboo canes were called Tonkin poles, from China. Push-in ferrules were always the weak point, and also had the annoying habit of sticking. Can't remember how many times I came home with a long length of fishing rod poking out of the window of my dad's car. I think a screw thread would be far superior.

Now that looks fun.

Fantastic skill to do that but I can't see Panda the fat cob I ride allowing me to try anything like that while in the saddle.

Good luck

Craig