I really wanted to use Tungsten as the base ballast for a custom narrowboat, for better headroom. Other than the cost you also have the problem of tungsten’s melting point being so high you can’t pour it into a boat hull without melting through.
Possible but the expense ruined my plans in the end… I did consider collecting broken tungsten end mills and inserts from machine shops and throwing them in molten lead, like croutons in a lead soup.
If I understand it right, you’d get mostly cobalt that way. Carbide tooling isn’t solid tungsten or silicon carbide but carbide powder embedded in cobalt.
I really wanted to use Tungsten as the base ballast for a custom narrowboat, for better headroom. Other than the cost you also have the problem of tungsten’s melting point being so high you can’t pour it into a boat hull without melting through.
Aircraft use tungsten ballast plates. I know it requires hardware, but would that have been viable?
Possible but the expense ruined my plans in the end… I did consider collecting broken tungsten end mills and inserts from machine shops and throwing them in molten lead, like croutons in a lead soup.
If I understand it right, you’d get mostly cobalt that way. Carbide tooling isn’t solid tungsten or silicon carbide but carbide powder embedded in cobalt.