Member postings for Hopper

Lathes.co.uk should have pics to identify which model you have. They also list a lot of serial numbers for some models.

There is also a MyfordLathes group at https://groups.io/g/myfordlathes/topics that has a lot of info on older Myfords both from members postings and in the Files section. There is also a Myford Lathes Facebook page with members with earlier Myfords who may be able to help.

The bottom pic you posted is the tumbler reverse mechanism that goes somewhere at the top of the quadrant on the headstock and engages with the gear on the end of the main headstock spindle. It's purpose is to reverse the direction of the leadscrew for cutting left hand threads or feeding left to right etc.

A good book to give you the basic layout and terminology and how to use lathes of this vintage is The Amateurs Lathe by LH Sparey. Available I think from Tee Publishing.

Here is what I am talking about, hiding your mistakes. The ball on the end of the handle on my lever tailstock was SUPPOSED to be just a perfect sphere with a flat on it where the handle screwed in. But in my faffing about, I set up my jury rigged ball turning tool about 75 thou too far toward the end of the blank, resulting in the bit left sticking out where it joins the handle as seen in the above pic. It looked pretty ugly with a V groove in it from the turning tool and flaring out. So rather than scrap the job and start all over again, I simply turned the most of it down parallel as seen and blended the small remaining V groove in with a file. Until it all looked like that is how it was supposed to have been in the first place.

It was good enough to fool most of the people most of the time and made it onto the front of MEW so can't have looked too bad! Looks quite the part with a lick of paint, which covers many sins. Sometimes you get lucky.

You can't trust the email address or the phone number. Can be some wally in India or Nigeria calling, texting or emailing and "spoofing" a local number or address. They have it all worked out.

They must send them out to millions of numbers or addresses every day and rely on the percentage who are expecting a parcel that day and the even smaller percentage who fall for it. But they must catch enough to make the venture worthwhile or they would not keep doing it.

It has gotten to be such a big business they are now holding buidings full of trafficked people prisoner while they work off their "debt" by dialling dialling dialling all day long, according to Amnesty International etc. Sad.

IE, "The nut that holds the handwheel".

Don't assume it is only self-taught beginners who drop clangers. I was told very early on that a good tradesman is not one who never makes a mistake, but is one who knows how to fix his mistakes. (Or at least hide them. Which means he probably won't post them on the internet for all to see!)

Here's one: Very early on in my chequered career I had the job in a car assembly plant toolroom in Zimbabwe to machine up some quite a few dozens of cast iron trolley wheels to run on an overhead track to carry car bodies along the production line from hangers. They were rough castings about 6" diameter, flanged like a train wheel and had to be machined all over and bored with a recess to take a big 4" or so diameter ball bearing. So I machined them all up over a week or so, then gave them to one of the African apprentices to press the bearings in. But somehow I had managed to bore them all a thou or two too tight so when they were done, the bearings would not turn, they had closed up with the pressing in. So we had to press all the bearings back out again, set each and every wheel up true in the four jaw chuck painstakingly, and skim about two thou out of each bearing recess then reassemble.

Never did tell the foreman. He just thought i was painfully slow at getting the job finished. As an old Glaswegian tradesman out of the shipyards once told me "Just act dumb and you will always get by". (In that particular case I did not have to act too hard!)

Yes, seagoing vessels are much like power stations and industrial boiler plants, they run on some kind of distilled or reverse-osmosis purified/demineralised water to make up for any condensed steam that is lost each cycle. But water treatment is still needed to some extent. Not so much because of solid sediments but because of pH balance, sulfites, condensate corrosiion inhibitors and other factors. There can be quite a bit of contamination comes back with the condensate into the hot well, from leaky condenser tubes as discussed, or corroded pipework etc.

My grandfather went to sea on a Grimsby trawler as a lad and he told me they went out for a couple of weeks at a time, running on pure seawater, then when they got back to port, the boilers were opened up and the salt scraped out.

Some industrial boilers I worked on needed a good scraping/water blasting internally once a year, even with good water treatment. It was the apprentice's job to crawl inside the top drum of the water tube boiler and run a high pressure water hose down and back each of hundreds of 2" diameter water tubes and blast the scale out. Mostly it was a thin layer about 1mm or less thick of a hard glass like scale. Some old 1923 vintage fire-tube hospital boilers I worked on in America, we had to crawl in through the manhole once a year and clean the tubes with chipping hammers and wire brushes. They had no evaporators or RO unit, just mains water filtered and treated, so they were pretty horrible inside. Still in use up into the 21st century!

Manhole doors (sorry, person access covers) and handhole and mud doors I think would have always had gaskets of some sort. If no new gaskets were available, the old ones could possibly be reused, or you made your own by laying asbestos packing rope in there carefully, with the ends spliced together. Or cut gaskets out of flat sheets of thick asbestos-laced jointing paper. Good old Bell's Asbestos jointing. It's a wonder any of us survived. (Some didn't.)

Edited By Hopper on 09/03/2023 10:47:33

Seems like the best way to make sure those shoulders are square would be to take a facing cut across them with a regular turning tool. So you would need a right hand and a left hand turning tool to do each shoulder respectively, but then you would know it is square to the job's axis.

What is the purpose of the groove? Is it just to make sure there is clearance around the corner so the bearing sits on the centre of the turned section and not on the corners if the radius there is bigger than the radius on the bearing pillow block?

If so, you could leave the groove off all together and just make sure the edges of the holes in the pillow block are suitably chamfered to clear. Or you could make the clearance with the turning tool at the end of the final facing cut of they shoulder on the bearing by taking it in a few thou deeper and then taking a short cut longitudinally away from the shoulder.

Grooving/parting tools will often wander about a bit and are not always to be trusted!

Very sad about the thefts. Irreparable damage to pieces of history. Seems a big problem in SA. I have read reports that the railways were in danger of shutting down due to such widespread theft of overhead cables, and in one case a whole six miles of the actual tracks. Sounds pretty desperate.

If you can clamp one chaser in your lathe's toolpost, it makes a nice screwcutting tool.

Nice trick there in the video to pull the hands off without the special tool, using two Q-tips and two screwdrivers.

You might have to use a clockmaker's special tool (clock hand remover) to pull the needles off their spindles so you can then pull out the bezel and dial face. Maybe.

Or if you look at that small half-round cut-out on the edge of the bezel and slowly rotate it around the full circle, you might see a tiny little screw revealed that you can undo and that allows the whole assembly to be lifted out together. Maybe. That half-round cutout must be there for some reason. Or is it there to engage with the outer bezel and allow you to rotate the dial?

Edited By Hopper on 05/03/2023 14:24:23

Verified by official on-board speed measuring equipment, calibrated and checked by supposedly impartial officials, vs an unverified manufacturers claim, I believe. Followed by suitable PR campaign to capitalise on it of course, and the legend was born. Ironically its record only stood for a year before being upped by 8mph by a train that almost everyone has long since forgotten. That's PR for you.

Interesting. As he says, a bit like grandad's old axe. New boiler one year, new frames another, etc but it's 100 years old this year. Great old machine. I'd love to be on it at the magic "ton".

And if it is rust, sometimes if you move the backplate out as far as you can, then tap it back in then repeat a number of times, it can clear the rust sufficiently to let it come out. Liberal lashings of your favourite releasing fluid, WD40 etc along the way of course.

Why? It is how they do giant billboards, the sides of buses, tradesmen's vans and all sorts of things these days. They will even do your whole car in the colour and graphics of your choice and mould it to the shape of the body work and stick it on, indistinguishable from a new paintjob but a lot cheaper.

Does it have threaded holes in the backplate that you can screw some bolts into to jack the backplate out of the chuck evenly?

Usually the chuck key barrels with the bevel gears on them should come out once you remove their retaining pins. But that should not stop the back plate from coming off.

Here is the pic, showing the extent of chain needed to be made. Big job, however it is done. Material choice would have to take into account the accumulated weight and what framework will support it. I would still opt for a painted/printed backdrop though. Such dioramas are commonly used in museums etc. (Or were before screens and videos took over. And now virtual reality.)

Edited By Hopper on 05/03/2023 07:47:58

Edited By Hopper on 05/03/2023 07:53:55

Unless you drill and file the slot, then solder the two pieces together, then machine the flat on the round bar, either as shown in the pic above or by holding the standard in the four jaw and taking a facing cut.

As with most machining, there is no end of different ways to skin the same cat.

Edited By Hopper on 05/03/2023 07:37:29

Presumably life sized?

When you look at the picture, that is a lot of chain links in the background, and not an easy shape to first of all make, and then link together. For a village project you might be best to look at a painted backdrop behind a 3D figure of the man. Or a computer printed backdrop done by a signwriter or advertising display printer or one of those mobs that do "skins" to go on vehicles and displays etc. They could even scan the original photo, photoshop the extra chain in where old IK is blocking the view and then print it out on a lifesized piece of signboard etc. Cheapest option might be to get a volunteer artist to paint the backdrop.

Or if the holes are not all the way through, you can fill them with "plastic metal" casting repair putty or JB weld etc and then file down flat.

Wear gloves when fitting that spring. They can be rather nasty on the fingers if they slip during installation. (Another one not to ask me how I know this! Yes, we never stop learning.)