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Stuck!


nater

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  • 10 years later...

Hi all. I made a bad boo boo. I was pressing a 1lb whistle with a stainless spindle and aluminum rammer. As I was pressing this last increment I was right at 4000psi and looked down and my red no pass line was 1/8" below the no-go. I had to slowly cut the motor off with a razor knife and now my ram is stuck to the spindle. Any ideas on how to save any of it?

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The good news is that Woody makes his no pass lines a little low on the rammers. It MAY not be stuck too badly. Also, he usually drills his rammer holes all the way to the puller holes. In that case, you should be able to squirt water down inside the rammer to wash out the whistle. When it's fairly clean and still wet, you can put the base in a vise after making sure the spindle is locked in tight, and try to twist it off. I bet it comes away. You can call Woody too. I'm sure he's done it before ;)

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It's the motor that is stuck to the spindle, not the rammer. I've tried twisting it off with pliers and marred up the base of the tooling without getting it unstuck. After pulling a giant metal splinter out of myself, I'm tempted to sacrifice the motor. I might try using a couple sets of vice grips and hope it doesn't crack the motor grain before soaking the whole thing in a bucket of water.

I used to have this problem continuously,especially with sali fuel. I used to leave in the small rammer,tighten a hose clamp around the tube and rammer so it wouldn't expand as bad and press down on it with my press till it wouldn't spin and put cresson wrench on the end of the spindle till it broke loose.I tried graphite,i tried parafin,i tried wet sanding my spindle with 1000 grit sandpaper till it looked like a mirror. Now it never ever happens no matter what or how hard i press something because i bought a 30 dollar spindle removal tool from woodys. Its amazing and pops them out like butter. No more torn cardboard tubes from the press,no more cracked nozzles and ruined motors,I wonder how i survived without the thing,ITS AMAZING

Edited by ronmoper76
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The good news is that Woody makes his no pass lines a little low on the rammers. It MAY not be stuck too badly. Also, he usually drills his rammer holes all the way to the puller holes. In that case, you should be able to squirt water down inside the rammer to wash out the whistle. When it's fairly clean and still wet, you can put the base in a vise after making sure the spindle is locked in tight, and try to twist it off. I bet it comes away. You can call Woody too. I'm sure he's done it before ;)

He does and i got my rammer stuck the very first time i ever used my tools on a super BP spindle. It was awful and took hours, i had to rip the spindle out of the rammer like you describe above,put it in a vise, sprayed it with wd40 and kept working it back and forth till it broke free,lol I lost the last inch of that spindle due to being destroyed,i nipped it off with bolt cutters and polished it back to a round end again. Luckily his super BP spindle is Loooong so it doesn't even look bad after i fixed it,i just use it for whistle rockets and hybrid BP fuel. My 3lb set i treat like gold now!!!!

That spindle was hard as hell,It took me 2 days to polish the tip back to new,definitely isn't a soft metal.

Edited by ronmoper76
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Hi all. I made a bad boo boo. I was pressing a 1lb whistle with a stainless spindle and aluminum rammer. As I was pressing this last increment I was right at 4000psi and looked down and my red no pass line was 1/8" below the no-go. I had to slowly cut the motor off with a razor knife and now my ram is stuck to the spindle. Any ideas on how to save any of it?

Yeah,I did the exact same thing once,you can fix it i bet.I just made mine flat at the end. I made a chuck of sorts so it fit in the end of my drill,put a thick piece of wet sandpaper in my palm and and let it spin on high till your hand can't take the heat!!!,lol stop,cool hand down,repeat,lol I had a ugly bent tip ,wish i saved pictures back then.If you bent it a little like i did,it becomes obvious immediately once you start to spin it. you will likely have nasty grooves below the tip as well,underneath the end of your rammer. It will all come out if your determined enough

post-23271-0-59548100-1621264927_thumb.jpg

Edited by ronmoper76
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