Member postings for Sam Longley 1

The Colchester lathe is almost identical to one I had for years. . I got it second hand for £ 100-00 plus £ 10-00 for the bloke to forklift it on to my trailer.

I turned out to be a brilliant piece of kit once cleaned up. Sadly when i retired I had no room for it in my new house so it had to go

Does anyone know what model it is?

Clearly a seasoned forumite !!!!

Do they take long to make ??

My wife reminded me this morning- as she went to golf- that I have forgotten out 47Th wedding anniversary ( for about the 45th year in a row) can one make one in the time it takes to play 18 holes , allowing for a few sliced shots & a cup of tea afterwards

Cannot have been that good --- sounds as if he ended up married !!!!!!

Edited By Sam Longley 1 on 20/09/2016 07:37:38

How many times did you get engaged you cheep romeo?

Hope you did not marry the one with the big fingers -- never bodes well for the future

If the OP needed a smiley to realise that my reply was in total jest then he is definitely " sad"

But I very much doubt it somehow

Oh & for the record ----- ----there!!! does that get me out of trouble?

Add my wife's Mazda 6 TS estate to that. At the end of the 12 year warranty period the chassis suddenly failed as did the body work. The body work had just come out of warranty & the chassis was never in warranty - or so they say. Owned from new & full Mazda service history all the way to the scrap yard at 13 years 98K miles

If that was mine it would be covered in oil, dust & chips in a couple of weeks I would forget to put parts back in their correct slots & end up just laying them in between the other bits. As there is insufficient room to get a brush between the parts I would end up using the airline to clean it & blow some important part in the bin. So business as usual really !!!!!!

Other than that-- a neat solution constructed between jobs. Might try something like that myself

Edited By Sam Longley 1 on 18/09/2016 15:10:19

Not when you add the 6 hours & 5 minutes of driving time he did not !!!!!

As far as the photos are concerned I would hasten to add that my rants are not in any way directed at anything connected to them. So in some way i should apologise if I have spoiled the thread with my comments.

The photos are great -- but can we have one of that skeleton clock please I am sure you will have seen it. The owner ought to engrave " Rolex " on it & display it in the Burlington arcade with a price tag in the tens of £ thousands.

It would sell in days as a work of art, if not as a clock.

I am sorry but I object to your comments. This is roughly what happened in the approximate order so you understand where I am coming from.

When I arrived at the main entrance I was given a couple of leaflets & told to park with the other cars & go to the registration building on the right, which I duly did. There , after some explanation it was explained that I did not have to register as I was not an exhibitor but a member of the viewing public ( i thought it was where one had to pay & register ones name for record purposes) & i was told to walk around the site.

I then walked to the chap with the 3 inch marshal & spent 15 mins chatting to him in the rain. After that , on seeing the white tent I went to the trade stands, not seeing any obvious main entrance. From there I walked to the steam railway where nothing was happening & i think I wandered round to the building with the bomber. As I came out I commented to a chap that it was like hunt the thimble & he said some of the exhibition was on the upper floors so I headed to the white balcony & up to a decking & into a lounge from where I entered a corridoor thence downstairs to a very busy cafe & loo then out of an exit door to a stall selling hot dogs etc Still I did not see any signs directing me to any exhibition of models so I walked round to Concord & a Hawker Hunter then into a building which I believed was the exhibition hall plus another deserted room with kids games in it. I then went up some black metal stairs to a pair of locked white doors & down again - still no signs & later found a way up to the second floor.

After that I had had enough & it was then that i walked in the front of the main building - thinking it was just a cafe, saw the table with no one behind it, used the loo & went home

There was no attempt to deliberately avoid paying. I am not whingeing. I did go in some other buildings & perhaps I missed some signs but they were not obvious. I am not running down the exhibitors, they have my full admiration. i just feel that the organisers need to get some advice on how to do it or not bother because they are not being fair to those who attend or those who take the effort to bring items along to exhibit. I did feel a little sorry for the 2 steamers outside the buildings as they did seem a little " lost" & had clearly gone to a lot of trouble to put on a demonstration.

Ok many will disagree with me but that is my take on it so perhaps it is better that we agree to disagree . It will not stop me going to other events. I enjoyed Alexandra Palace & drove a long way to see the Doncaster one but this one - no , not again

Edited By Sam Longley 1 on 17/09/2016 15:57:21

Edited By Sam Longley 1 on 17/09/2016 15:59:09

I had never heard of oilite before & now I have googled it I am pretty certain that I can pick these up dirt cheap. I had an account at a bearing supplier for 20 years & they have since opened a branch 5 miles from me. Account is no longer open but I can still get bearing items very cheaply so thanks for that tip . I will drop in & have a chat next time I go past their depot.

Actually i was not " proud" to sneak in without paying. There was no indication that I was actually expected to pay anything !!!. It was a case of there just being a table inside one of the buildings ( the second one I went in) with some people wandering about infront of it & no one behind it so i kept going as no one seemed to care. Was that the ticket office ?? I do not know !!

Edited By Sam Longley 1 on 17/09/2016 13:48:52

Actually i searched for the thread & realise that it was an old thread so I stand corrected & apologies to MACC

The problem I have is obtaining the 4 inch copper tube ( 12 inches plus 3 inches plus the end caps) at a reasonable price. It seems from this forum that the suggested supplier ( MACC) is not supplying at present so i am stuck for an economical source < Not that MACC is what one would call "economic"

So who are the next cheapest down the line ? someone must be in the know!!!

Edited By Sam Longley 1 on 17/09/2016 12:10:39

It was such a disorganised shambles of a layout that i am surprised that the judges actually managed to FIND all the exhibits. Surely some signage telling people where to go would have helped.

I certainly do not think an exhibition with exhibits shoved in corners of random buildings with no evidence of signage as to how to find them is the way to run an exhibition. I am certain I did not get to see every thing but just gave up. trying to find it . Even the trade stands were lacking- I went with an open cheque book & I am afraid it stayed closed

I wanted to watch some trains running along the rail lines but walked away after listening to a crowd of old blokes sitting moaning about their b..y works pensions

As for the museum itself - pretty poor. How can you stick a dirty great bomber ( I assume it was a bomber) in a building, with absolutely no indication whatsoever about what it was supposed to have been, amazes me- but I did not go to see the Brooklands museum so that is not a critisism of the MEX itself.

As for catering I think the DOE prize should go to the outside caterer for their burgers. I chipped a tooth on a bit of mine which did nothing to help the pain of a 3 hour drive each way for a 1 hour walk round.

The only thing in its favour was that it was free. I suspect it was not, but when I passed what might have been the entry desk they were all standing about nattering so I just walked by & wandered round playing hunt the parcel

Now Jason has raised it I see that the PYRTE design calls for 1.5mm for the tube & 2.5mm for the end plates.

As for the diameter , yes I had already picked that up, but most of the dimensions are variable on this model so i think I can work with the extra 4mm on diameter.

I am not a member of a club so knowing who is going to test the boiler is going to be a problem. Seems pointless joining a club now to get advice for something that might take a while before it is ready to test.

As far as I am aware the nearest club is in Chelmsford. Not sure how they will view someone who asks to join just to get a test done ( assuming they have a qualified tester) then disappears. Not very favourably I imagine. Cannot say I would blame them!!!

The only good thing to come out of my visit to the MEX at Brooklands was my chat to the chap with the 3 inch scale Marshall just inside the gate. I could have spent all day talking to him & watching his engine create steam like nothing on earth.

Among other things we got talking about copper for boilers & he started lecturing me on the difference in effect between cold air & hot steam at the same pressures. Then i mentioned a PYRTE boiler & said I could source 1.5 metres of 4 inch copper pipe from a heating engineer for not much more than I could buy 12 inches from a model supplier. He immediately went into a rant about types of copper warning me that I might be making a big mistake. I was unable to stop & talk for long, so want to check with the experts because I can get all the copper i need - including some for the end plates -from a 1.5 m length. But would it be the wrong sort of copper as he suggested it might, or was he being a bit paranoid? I could effectively save some dough & have enough for several false attempts which i will probably need , being first effort.

"I've seen some c...y exhibitions in my time , but this has to be the worse. "

or how about:-

"Shall we award a prize for the bloke who manages to actually find all the exhibits in this shambles ?"

Edited By Sam Longley 1 on 16/09/2016 20:03:13

I have bought the e book for the PYRTE traction engine & just before I head for the MEX at Brooklands to start looking for materials I made a summary of some of the materials in a more organised list. Then I started looking on line to get an idea of prices

When I got back up off the floor I began to wonder about things like the bearings for the wheels. I have already sourced the steel for the wheels but the Phosphor bronze for the bearings seems expensive & it has occurred to me that if I took the middle out of some old ballrace bearings & mounted them within steel carrier parts I would have something that would wear every bit as good as PB- or would I? in fact the complete bearing could go in the front wheels & if it worked the same could go on the rear & i would only need to lock the bearing to lock the wheel. I am not really worried about the look , more about getting a working model

The problem would be getting the ballrace mounted into the carrier true to the wheel & axle but is that is no different to boring the hole in the PB correctly - just a little harder ?

So am I thinking out my rear end or can I save some bucks for a bit more time spent ?