@badtux Can a guillotine blade be made just from sheet metal? I’d have thought it needs to be thicker and weightier, and probably cast.

@acb
It's 16-gauge, that's pretty heavy (2.5 pounds per square foot)
@badtux

@SvenGeier
Way too thin. The guillotine relies on weight rather than a sharp blade. You want more like 1/4" out even 3/8" steel plate — target weight is over a hundred pounds. You're probably also going to want 8mm rope — it's easier on the hands. You may also want to beef up the frame some, given the forces involved — both when the blade drops, but also because you're gonna have a couple folks hauling on that rope to get the blade up, possibly at an angle. Some kind of cheat so you can tie it off safely while it's up is important too. Workplace safety is still a thing, even during the revolution.
@acb @badtux

@dymaxion @SvenGeier @acb @badtux

<returns to sharpening pitchfork>

@dymaxion
I'll grant the weight issue, but 3/8 is too blunt - it'll break a neck, surely, but I'm not sure it'll deliver that satisfying chopping action.
I'm assuming there's an optimum thickness that is sharp enough to cut but heavy enough to do so with confidence.
As a generally empirically-minded person I suggest we do a couple executions each with a number of different thickness and record the results. For science.
@acb @badtux

@dymaxion @SvenGeier @acb I think 1/8th inch plate is enough for this. A 24x24 1/8" plate only weighs 20 pounds, but you can put a sixty pound sand bag on top of it and the rest of the apparatus for supporting the plate will be the remainder of the weight. The design for the DIY project is still a work in progress, obviously, but I'm sure it will evolve quickly once it gets tested the first few times.

@SvenGeier
You'll want to get a cheap angle grinder so you can maybe not exactly sharpen it, but aggressively bevel the edge, at least.
@acb @badtux