Rare Earth Magnets

J

Jay Mulcahy

Joined
Jun 13, 2004
Messages
164
Hi everyone, I'm trying to get some information on rare earth magnets. I want to make a neck knife with a leather sheath that hangs upside down, and need to put a magnet in the sheath to hold it in. I've seen wooden sheaths made this way, and also the one Tess Nielson makes where the blade is exposed, but held by the force of the magnet. Just curious where to get the magnets and what size is suitable for this application. Any help/advice is appreciated as always. Thank you!
 
Jay,
Gotta say that sounds like a recipe for disaster!!! If you fall on that it will go straight through the leather and penitrate your torso. Lot of important things in the thorasic cavity. I would strongly recommend against what you have in mind, unless of coarse you are making a knife for your mother in law :D

Tom
 
Lee Valley Tools has a nice selection of very powerful little magnets.
 
www.mcmaster.com has lots of magnets. I have some magnets that are from vcrs[?] and they are VERY strong. If you have two of these magnets together it really takes great effort to pull them apart.
 
Old hard drives have powerful magnets, too. C'mon, Tom, live on the wild side! :D
 
Chiro,
I do "LIVE" on the wild side and think the above sheath is a good way to NOT live on the wild side. It is easy enough to get hurt, we don't need to make up new and improved ways..

Tom
 
I busted open a broken CD walkman a few weeks ago and there were two VERY POWERFUL tiny magnets that now reside on my fridge. They'er about 1/4 x 1/8 x 1/8.

cool beans!
 
I took the magnets I had and checked withdrawl force of my D2 Arclite.It took over 5 Lbs. It took only three lbs to withdraw the knife from it's kydex sheath....Just saw a History Channel program on magnets - very interesting.
 
Ok then, so where does the term "Rare earth" come from? (Didn't mean to hijack your thread Jay!)
 
Rare Earth? They were a rock band back in the early 70's! :D

Sorry, just couldn't resist................
 
I imagine if one were to make the sheath out of a thick enough, very stiff leather, they should be OK as far as blade penetration goes ...even if they 'fell' on it. I can't say, however, what kind of blunt force trauma one's chest would suffer if they fell wrong on any knife in any sheath with a 'blade up' configuration (or even a blade down configuration, for that matter). The last time I checked, falling flat on one's chest onto any 'stake-like' object was not very healthy for one's internal organs ...especially for vampires.
 
rhrocker said:
Ok then, so where does the term "Rare earth" come from? (Didn't mean to hijack your thread Jay!)
Click to expand...

Not sure who called them that but they were isolated from a fairly rare monazite sand and were difficult to isolate because of their similar chemistry, though they were refined into a raw alloy mischmetal that was used in lighter flints because it sparked so well. Later it was separated into the elements cerium, dysprosium, erbium, europium, gadolinium, holmium, lanthanum, lutetium, neodymium, praseodymium, samarium, terbium, thulium, ytterbium, and yttrium that form the lanthanide series of elements in the periodic table. This site lists some of the properties of each http://www.candldevelopment.com/rare_earth_detail.htm
 
Thanks Yuzaha, and Steve. Appreciate the info, albiet a touch more complex than I thought the answer would be. Good one Micad!
 
Yes, hard drive magnets are about as strong as they come. However they are fairly brittle, so watch out.

Hit up a dump, you can almost always find an old case with a HD in it. A few torx screws later you got yourself what you need.

Good luck

_z
 
Sure, I ordered a bunch of NdBFe magnets, mostly 3/16 x 5/8 disks to glue to the backs of little knicknacky things to make refrigerator magnets, but picked up a few others as well... got some 2x1x1/2 blocks that scare me... the 1/2 by 2 square blocks will crush a pencil between them and I imagine the smaller ones I have would bite pretty badly. I have a 1 x 1 cylender stuck to the fridge (will easily hold up a legal pad). Have to be careful getting in the fridge now... first time I wasn't and got too close... that thing just grabbed my hair clip and pinned my head to the side of the fridge.... wound up yanking some hair out trying to dissengage from the magnet and clip. /_-;;
 
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