Street Sweeper Bristle/Alternatives

[salvage]

I am only rarely able to find street sweeper bristles where I live, and they are typically in pretty bad shape. Is there any way to find out when the sweepers run?

Alternatively, what are the alternatives for street sweeper bristle? I tried to find a flat wire supplier of spring steel, but was unable to find a good supplier online that would do limited runs. Is there any such site?

[NanoDuke]

You'd have to ring your local council to find out.

Have you tried wiper blade inserts? Go to your local car service station, and ask for the old wipers.

[raimundo]

You can make picks out of bicycle spokes, I make a hook pick simply by using a thick mountain bike stainless spoke, and shaping it like the number six with a flip back at the top, the loop is for the second finger, and the thumb and forfinger grip the shaft to the bend then the pick shaft and the final flip back will be cut down into the hook tip.

this is some thick wire, start by using a flat file to civilize the sharp burrs on one cut end and round it off a bit, then with a couple of pliers, work a finger loop with this dressed end tucked up inside. put your finger in this and grip the shaft with thumb and forfinger, then place a plier on it in front of the forefinger and give it a little bend for the shaft, and a sharp bend upward at the picktip end, then use the sidecutters to clip this last bend to a medium size hook and finish by thinning shaft and picktip either with flat files and hand sanding or simply hold near a belt sander above the area where the belt is backed by a bolster, where the belt is unbacked and leaves a softer shaping process, rounding things up nicely

then of course finish with finer sandpaper, if you use the power tools remember that these things are aggressive and you must take the work off and let it cool while you look at it to see if its going evenly or if you have to change the way your holding it to the sanding belt.

[sparkster]

Stuff i've used is the metal strip from wiper blades, oil dipsticks, i've also used the metal band from those cheap headphones you can get for under a pound, and for shims i've used the metal strip from these security devices lots of things you buy now have them on and the metal strips inside is very thin and strong

[cppdungeon]

Ive heard flat plumbing snake does the job nicely, or hacksaw blade. Or those little metal bits on pens--the clips.

--Cpp

[evilBOB13]

i was taking apart an old lawnmower the other day ( just for funsies) and the rip cord had a coil spring about a half inch wide not sure how thick, its about half the size of the thickness of a windshield wiper insert but it was springy as heck. i figured it would work have not tried it yet though but i thought it might be a good substitute.............. if anyone has tried this before let me know either way how it turns out

[raimundo]

I have straightened out a briggs and stratton coil spring for a windup starting lawnmower, it makes a lot of picks and straighting out the metal is not so hard.

just mentioning that because someone asked,

look for one foot long feeler guages that are half an inch or 5/8th inch wide. thick as you like, they come as individuals, not sets so you can order ten of all the same thickness or make it ten different ones,

available on the internet, brands are precision, or starrett.

[nataz]

a quick google showed 32 individual foot long 1/2" strips at 64 bucks. Should make something like 64 picks, which seems expensive. It that a normal price you could expect to pay?

[nostromo]

nataz- price would depend on the quality of the steel - manufacturer / vendor reputation is the best indicator. Who is the source of these guages and what is the description?

[Klaiviel]

Street Sweepers don't exist where I live (rural) so I use Windshield Wiper Inserts for pretty much everything, on rare occasion I will use a hacksaw blade when I need something thicker. Around here the auto stores don't really hold onto the old blades so what I do is go to the junk yard and just grab every insert I can find. As a rule trucks generally have the heavier and thicker inserts whereas cars will have the smaller ones. Usually when I go to the junkyard I pickup two extremely large handfuls of them and they usually just charge me like $10 for the whole mess. Totally worth it imo.

[nataz]

They were starrett, not sure who the vendor was. Just the 3 link or so that came up in google. At that kind of price I'll just keep using wipers! I was just curious because there is something to be said for working with consistant materials.

[raimundo]

Nataz, you are planning to make one pick out of each feeler guage, they are a foot long, I used to make 6 picks out of a foot long piece, each nearly four inches long,
I cut the strip into three pieces, then I split each of the pieces diagonally so that one end was just thick enough to make a pick tip, this made two strips out of each four inch length of feeler guage.

to break the strips diagonally, I did not use any typicial cutting tool,

I first used a steel ruler and a "general"brand carbide scribe, which has a very strong sharp point and I scored and rescored the line then with a triangle needle file I cut a groove at the end to start the break, which was done with one half locked in a bench vise jaw while I carefully worked the part sticking out of the jaw by bending it just a bit from the starting notch and worked my way along the length of the piece bending a bit and listening to the metal cracking.
when finished one piece is slightly bent but this is quickly removed as the curvature is gentle, not sharp.