Broke ma wiggle stick!

LastMantra

Managed to wiggle it out with a screwdriver and pair of long nose pliers! Just needed a bit off patience.

Didn't even need to take block off. TF for that!

Thanks for the help guys 

Kind of weird how it broke. Looks more like it was twisted rather than bending. Not much I can do about it now I suppose. Hopefully it was a one off. 

ICBM

LastMantra said:

Kind of weird how it broke. Looks more like it was twisted rather than bending. Not much I can do about it now I suppose. Hopefully it was a one off. 

It might have been damaged by the threading process - that puts a huge amount of torsion on the metal just where the thread ends, especially if the die isn’t very sharp and it’s done by machine in one operation. If they do break, it’s almost always there.

LastMantra

It's strange. It's about a third of the way down the thread (2/3 was in block, 1/3 out). Suppose it was a weak spot, will see if it happens again!

I've found another anyway. It's the original I think so the one that broke was aftermarket. Can't remember where from. 


Never thought about the thread being cut in one go. That must put a bit of strain on especially if, as you say, it's blunt.

ICBM

LastMantra said:

It's strange. It's about a third of the way down the thread (2/3 was in block, 1/3 out). Suppose it was a weak spot, will see if it happens again!

Interesting - that's slightly unusual, but it does sound like there was some torsion damage to the structure of the metal there from your description.

LastMantra said:

Never thought about the thread being cut in one go. That must put a bit of strain on especially if, as you say, it's blunt.

Exactly - when you do it by hand, you're taught to back off a quarter turn every full turn so the swarf clears and the die isn't just being forced continuously through the metal, which increases the torsion on the piece. Machine threading is usually done in one go, and for something cheap like a tremolo arm I doubt they take much care of the tooling. This is not aircraft engineering...

LastMantra

I think you've got it, that would make sense. 

I'm blaming that anyway, not my shoddy technique!