Re: cordless tool 18V to 12V converter

"Richard Smith"  wrote in message news:m1bk7f62ps.fsf@void.com...
Hi everyone.
Posted at top of thread - wishing to thank everyone who contributed to
this "journey" whose extent (effort, duration) I never anticipated.
Here is the outcome - what a surprise.  In a very pleasant way!
There is hope this is "for real".
I handed the equipment to another person who came by to see how I as
getting on, and trying it he concurs - it works and it is to be hoped
this is "for real".
http://www.weldsmith.co.uk/tech/minerals/240314_rocksplit/240314_rocksplit_drill_feathers.html
"Rock-split granite with "cordless" SDS drill and "feathers""
Well would you ever have believed it...?!
Best wishes,
Rich Smith
-----------------------------------------
Congratulations on your success! You are a skilled problem solver.
The shims / feathers are soft, the wedges need to be hardened and tempered, as I found out with shop-made ones. A horizontal bandsaw can cut the taper angles or a smith can forge them from silver steel or old truck coil springs.
You might consider my alternate method if the boulders don't have far to go. I also have largeish boulders to move over uneven ground, at least to the trails where I can hoist and tow them on my 1 ton shop crane trailer. Before acquiring the drill I used a home-made gantry hoist of 3" x 8' channel iron with a 1 ton trolley, supported on various improvised legs of wooden A frames or pipe tripods. The wooden legs had trailer caster jacks as retractable landing gear to easily move the gantry by myself with the load lowered, where the ground was fairly level. On steeper slopes the low end of the track hung from a pipe tripod, which was harder to move. The legs on mine swing freely at the top connection which allows walking one leg at a time and adjusting for slope or bad footing.
The wheels of the Harbor Freight trolley were slightly too large for the 3" channel so I turned them down on the lathe. 4" channel takes them as-is, and has a better strength margin / less flex at full load. At the time I had only the 3", surplus pallet rack shelf supports.
I just discovered that the world's oldest still-working powered vehicle is an 1831 Stephenson-built locomotive in the Smithsonian museum nicknamed the John Bull.
Here it's running (at reduced boiler pressure) on its 150th anniversary:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/86/John_Bull_operating_in_1981.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bull
John Doe for an unspecified American is from the same source.