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Does anyone happen to know where you can buy these sorts of mandrels at a significantly lower price than £2.72 each? I've bought the other kind of mandrel direct from China, paid about 10p per item, and they're perfectly OK, but I can't source the first kind of mandrel anywhere at what I'd consider a sensible price. I need about a dozen.
could you just buy some steel/ stainless steel bar cut it to length then put then in a cordless drill and use a die clamped in a holder in a vice to cut the thread wouldnt take long and would work out a lot cheaper if you have the time
Thanks for your answer.Quote:
Originally Posted by josef1
I might end up doing that. The pitch of the thread is clearly not going to be important anyway, and I don't really need the retaining nut for the cylindrical silicone polishers I want to use with them. I can't really understand why these very simple tools are not available cheaply on Ebay like the other type. Presumably there's just not the same demand for them.
Try Cousins Mark:
https://www.cousinsuk.com/product/sc...ls?code=P1343M
But business to business rules apply, so no returns if you get the shank size wrong. Dennis.
Grrr - I can't post URL's yet.
Cousins, as mentioned earlier, the top one on the (threaded tapered mandrel page) is exactly the same as the cookies one, but are 86p plus vat each if you are buying three or more.
Redroosteruk dot com sells in packs of four for £3.50 I think including vat, and postage is only £1.00 for three packs.
Hope this helps.
ThE bay - rank by £+post
Happened to have bought one of these earlier today from Suttons in Birmingham. Paid £1.30 plus vat. Was there in person though - no idea how much the postage etc would be if you ordered online.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Thanks for the answers, everyone.
The problem with the suggestions is that all of them are still considerably more expensive than the second type of mandrel linked to above can be had for: as little as 10 pence each on Ebay.
Metalsmith, exhaustive searches on Ebay have been fruitless. I even contacted two Chinese sellers who sold the second type of mandrel to ask if they also sold the first kind of mandrel, but the answer was no. The first kind of mandrel I linked to is simply not available anywhere, as far as I can tell, at a price that is remotely close to that of the second type of mandrel I've linked to above, and the reason for this disparity is a mystery to me; manufacturing costs cannot be appreciably different.
A short follow-up.
As per your advice (sort of), Josef, I bought a length of stainless M2.5 threaded bar, thinking I could cut it into short sections then file away the threads on the shanks a little to bring the 2.5mm diameter down to the requisite 2.35mm.
Things turned out better than this though; the bar's diameter is exactly 2.35mm, so all I had to do was cut it into sections, thread on my drum polishers, and away I went. It works out at 20p per mandrel as opposed to Cooksons £2.72.
I don't quite follow that Mark. If it's sanding drums you are referring to, then the cavity in mine is more like 3+ mm in diameter and require a tapered screw mandrel.
I have also scared myself a couple of times by putting my foot down inadvertently and having it bend to a right angle at speed, due to centrifugal force. Dennis.
These are the polishing drums I wanted the mandrels for, Dennis:Quote:
Originally Posted by Dennis
http://www.cooksongold.com/Jewellery...prcode-970-426
The basic design for the type of mandrels I needed can be see at the bottom of the picture, though the ones I showed in the first link in my opening post have a longer threaded section on them and are better for the job really.
Mark.
Ah I see now. You gave two links in your first post, but I only looked at the second one. So I was on a false trail from the start. Sorry about adding to the confusion. Dennis.