Member postings for Andrew Tinsley

Electric cars are NOT a replacement for current IC models. They have limited range and expensive batteries. It will suit some people, but totally useless for my particular needs.

Electric cars will eventually take over, BUT this will only happen when there is a big breakthrough in battery technology. It will also be useless for HGVs and the like, even when the breakthrough occurs!

Note the French will be banning IC cars in 2040 and Volvo will only produce electric or hybrid cars form 2019. So it will happen, but not yet!

Andrew.

My goodness "you don't see many pheasants and partridges about these days"! They all seem to have come to live in Rutland. Had my car damaged by low flying pheasants on a number of occasions!

Andrew.

Not sure about miniature injectors. For full size, I always opened the water and made sure that it drained onto the track (Quick look over cab side) , then opened the steam valve until it picked up and water ceased to flow onto the track. The only real problem I ever had with full sized ones was when they got too hot, then they would not pick up. Loads of cold water was the trick, usually from buckets (depending on the loco) I found ex industrial ones to be a bit temperamental, main line stuff always behaved in my experience.

Sounds as if you are not getting steam to the injector?

Andrew.

Thanks Maurice, Hopper and my fold made Mr Hanna,

Now it looks as if I am spoiled for choice! I like your method Maurice as making the necessary 2mt to expanding rod device is pretty easy to do and I can also use my Radford style tool for scribing the lines, it is good to have the 3 stops to give degrees, five degrees and 10 degrees different scribed lengths.

Hopper, your method will give me similar results for the cost of making up a detent system to fit on the lathe. So it all comes down to which of the two "adapters" do I want to make? the detent lever is probably simpler. However the 2mt taper and expanding tube will allow further adaptive use of the Myford dividing head.

Dallas, your method has got a lot of merit. If I can devise some variable saddle stops to do the different lengths, then I am home and dry. I do have the Myford 6 position stop, so I could use that (it came with the lathe and has never been used as yet).

Talk about spoiled for choice! I think I will make the dividing head adapter anyway as well as the detent system. I like making goodies for the lathe. I will give it a thought or two over a glass of Australian red this evening! Thanks everybody for so many helpful suggestions. I need to machine the circular T slot in the rotating Quorn body before I can finish off the degree scales so I will have time to mull it all over. I am now down to small doses of morphine, so I am probably OK to start machining safely, once more.

Thanks again everyone,

Andrew.

Thanks Mike,

I will do that and then perhaps make them.

Andrew.

Now that makes a lot of sense, too busy trying to ape GHT's design and not thinking laterally. Thanks Maurice for showing me the way! Now how do you make an expanding parallel? You cant use a bar pulling on tapers to force out the parallels, because the Morse taper is on one end of the adapter and the chuck carrying the cylinder to be indexed on the other end. Ah, one can remove the chuck and cylinder and tighten up the bar from the chuck end of the mandrel. Then screw the chuck back on and the register of the cylinder will be undisturbed. Simple if you think first and write afterwards!

Thank you ,

Andrew.

Hello everyone, I will soon need to graduate the various scales on the Quorn. I have a Radford style graduating tool and a Myford dividing head. How do I use the Myford dividing head to graduate dials in degrees?

Looking at the various methods of indexing and dividing, it seems that GHT's method of putting a dividing head, meshing with the Bull wheel seems the neatest way to do the job. However this seems to require other bits of GHT's dividing and graduating tool, for example the plates with appropriate holes etc.

Now when it comes to rigging up a Myford dividing head to do a similar job on the Bull wheel. I simply do not have a clue, indeed I don't know if it is even possible. I have only used the dividing head once to cut a rack. So I am really clueless on this aspect of dividing apart from reading GHT's book on the subject.

Any help or advice will be greatly appreciated,

Andrew.

Edited By Andrew Tinsley on 03/07/2017 19:03:45

Hello Brian,

Thanks for your words of encouragement. Large doses of morphine don't help with cognisance and I have made rather too many similar blunders, while under the influence. I have kept well away from machine tools, but hopefully I can safely get back to machining soon.

May I congratulate you on your book. It is full of useful information for many different lathes used by model engineers. The book itself is beautifully produced and must be one of the best presented model engineers book of all time. I heartily commend it to everyone on the forum

Regards,

Andrew.

Brian, Hopper and Roderick, you are dead right in what you say! I am embarrassed, because I have Martin Cleeve's book and indeed Brian's excellent book, "Gearing of Lathes for Screwcutting", I can highly recommend both of them.

I have worked out how to get around the need for a 42 and 48 gear wheel, you gentlemen are right on the money! It really is pathetic to have a library that could have answered my query and simply not use it. No point in reading it for bedtime use and not use the info in practice! I am slowly coming off some potent medication and I can blame my lack of thinking on that (well I really hope that is the reason!) .

Thanks all for putting me right,

Andrew.

P.S. I actually enjoyed doing the calculations to get me as near as damn it the correct metric threads. A bit worrying , I thought I had left behind the need for maths.

Bingo! Myford's have them, a bit pricey but can't complain! I looked up RDG as I assumed they were the same outfit as Myford, well they operate out of the same address. RDG didn't have them so I assumed that Myford would not.

Apologies all, I really should have looked up Myford rather than RDG!

Andrew.

I am looking for a 42 and a 48 change wheel for my ML10. I need them to cut some metric threads (The lathe is imperial). The usual suspects don't seem to have any, unless I need to go to Specsavers!

Anyone any idea where I might look next?

Andrew.

I have just realised that I used some Tractol Landrover green about 6 weeks ago, So far it has not hardened off and will scratch off very easily. Nothing like as good as Paragon. You pays yer money and takes yer choice!

Andrew.

Paragon are very expensive, but I find it goes a long way and the finish (if you follow instructions) are superb and they last well.

Andrew.

I am not sure there ever was a golden age for tools. I have some of my fathers kit and I have also purchased old chisels and planes. Some of these items are extremely good. I have planes from the 30's that will sharpen up and keep their edge far better than some of the more modern, recognised, good plane. Chisels are a bit hit and miss from this period, ranging from superb to mediocre. I have some Bahco chisels that are 15 years old and every bit as good as anything I have pre war.

"As ever the poor are always with us" to misuse a phrase. I am sure that if you are prepared to pay the price then you can get as good a tool these days as you ever could in bygone times! It is simply that people have become used to cheap imports and are just not prepared to pay the very high price that is required for top quality.

Andrew.

P.S. you can probably get better tools these days than ever before. Modern metallurgy is simply streets ahead of yore! But will you pay the price?

I was always taught one motto when it came to transformers. "You can either have a lot of iron and little copper or vice versa!"

The ones with lots of iron are inefficient compared to the ones having a lot of copper. You can imagine which way most cheap transformers go. Yes lots of iron because it is cheaper than copper!

My apologies to those electrical engineers that can work out the equations for the above two extremes of transformer design. It is in fact a very complex subject. I well remember a lecturer on my first degree course, writing down the equation for an audio transformer V out = and then 4 pages to take the RHS of the equation. Even then he said he had made some approximations. A bit simpler for a 50 Hz power Tx!

Andrew.

It seems that all sorts of prejudices are creeping in to this topic. I really cannot get my head around it. We should all be aware that old British tradenames have been sold off when the company closes. Look at Alba and Bush in electrical goods. They both produced half decent products. Today they represent the bottom of the market and made presumably in China.

The answer to this topic is really quite simple. Buy from a reputable dealer who provides the appropriate quality and service, at a price you are prepared to pay! Simple as that. If you buy from Ebay at knock down prices you will invariably get a knock down product.

Once you have found the right dealer, then stick with them. I am a returnee to the hobby and I have found that ARC meet my requirements. I am sure there are other noteworthy dealers, but I am not going to risk it.

I have one other observation about Indian products. I am an aeromodeller who loves diesel engines. There is an Indian company by the name of Sharma, who manufacture model diesel engines as a sideline. Their build quality is absolutely outstanding. Now I am not sure what their main line of business is, but if they make tooling, then it is probably of equally superb quality!

Andrew.

Edited By Andrew Tinsley on 27/06/2017 16:52:24

Thanks very much indeed for all the input. One of the links indicated that the spigot could be Loctited into position, so that is interesting.

I was a bit surprised at KWIL stating that it was not easy to silver solder cast iron. Not knowing that, I have always been able to silver solder to CI without any problems. I suspect my success is no more to do with me, than it is down to the flux used. My father was a welder and sheet metal worker. I inherited the flux from him and I believe it is / was a BOC product. He always took me to task silver soldering to cast iron, but that was because Sif bronzing was much cheaper!

I will try and work out how to attach pictures, I always fall foul of too high a resolution and I can't remember the free resizing programme that I used to use.

Everyone seems to indicate that I would be better off junking the cast iron chunk. Now wait a minute........ I seem to remember Prof Chaddock remarking in his Quorn book that "it was cast steel and it cut like free cutting mild steel, which in fact it is". Just checked on that and found my memory is correct! So big apologies all around for the duff information.

Thanks everyone for the assistance so far,

Andrew.

I was idly looking at the castings left to do on my Quorn, when I realised the rotating base casting wasn't there. After a bit of panic, I realised that the remaining unidentified casting was in fact a part of the rotating base and that other bits and pieces were too. So it looked as though this item was fabricated, rather than a single casting.

Opening the Quorn book I saw an addendum at the front which said that this was so. Never saw it before despite constant reference!!

I have some of my own ideas as to how to fabricate said base, although the Quorn book said that the instructions were freely available from MES! Some hope!

I intended to silver solder a block on top of the turned down cylinder of cast material and also silver soldering a fabricated spigot with the 90 degree V already turned on it!

How about loctiting the spigot in place then I don't have to solder two components close together?

Andrew.

At the risk of Peter's ire, I always called them eyelets, but I suppose I have that one wrong too!

Andrew.

Hello Ketan and Tony,

I tried your advice and find that the finish is now much better. I will try the 0.8mm tips for my next trial. So it shows that you need to ask people who know about the product!

I can still get a better finish with HSS but the difference isn't so great after following good advice. I have a pal who uses carbide tipped tooling for everything including plastic and Perspex! He can't use HSS because he simply cannot grind a decent tool! I suspect I may finish up using carbide tips for roughing out ad swop to HSS for the final finish. let me see how the 0.8mm tips work out.

Andrew.