Member postings for Hopper

A bolt with the 'ead cut off and a hacksaw slot for a screwdriver in the end of the shank would probably do the job.

The paint colour certainly brightens the old girl up and makes a change from the ubiquitous machinery grey.

Edited By Hopper on 25/02/2023 10:10:55

I think Jacobs may have gone the way of many others, they offer their expensive top of the line quality gear at top prices, and also offer lower priced fare of lesser quality. The latter most likely sourced from China or surrounds. Their good ones seem to be branded as their "industrial grade" and cost 80 Quid and more. They seem to have others for 20 Quid or so.It might be a case of you get what you pay for, regardless of the name stamped on it.

Interesting. Well spotted.

And it turns out there are standards for Knuckle threads. LINK Apparently they are also used on railway couplings and brake rods and fire department fittings owing to their high tolerance for dirt etc on the threads.

Looks like it could be a modified form of Acme thread with rounded off corners to stop chipping.

But this article makes it seem that guys working with the brown stuff just make up their own threads as they go along to suit themselves. LINK

The Amateur's Lathe is an excellent guide to lathes of this vintage and to the basics of using them. My favourite too. It starts right off with basic nomenclature of the parts, how to mount and set up the lathe, and then how to use it, including the best description I know of how to grind your own toolbits from high speed steel.

You won't need the banjo and gears to get started. They were only used for screwcutting back in those days. Turning feed was normally provided by the handwheel on the right hand end of the leadscrew. Very handy, (err, so to speak) you can crank it fast for roughing cuts and can get a very fine finish with a slow hand feed using the two handed "hand over hand" method. And most small model-size threads are best done with taps and dies anyway, so the screwcutting gears can wait until you get a better understanding of things.

I think you have got yourself a bit of a special little lathe there. Certainly an unusual one.

Thanks. A lot quicker than the other way, by about three weeks! Yes that flight must have circled the globe several times! Or it included a few days stopover in Bahrain or Singapore etc as often happens,but all counted as "in flight" as far as the post office or courier company is concerned.

Those extra pics show lots of very distinctive detail not seen on the run of the mill small lathes of the era, like the handwheels, tailstock, apron, cross and top slide construction etc. And it all smacks of quality, not cheap hobby machine. Intriguing.

The original two-pack paints that came out in the 1970s killed two of my mates who were spray painters in the days before its dangers were known and breathing gear etc organised.

Dave, not saying asbestos is not dangerous. It  can be. Just that I possibly dodged a bullet... so far. And how ignorant we were of the dangers.  We didn't wear hearing protection in car body stamping plants or on the turbine floors of powerstations either. Got two hearing aids today to prove it.

Edited By Hopper on 23/02/2023 02:51:40

I have a bit of material sitting there waiting to make such a dog clutch for my ML7. I thought I might add a support bearing on the leadscrew end just to the right of the clutch though, being a bit of a belt and braces kind of guy.

Then I saw the reprint of an old article in the February MEW for a rather neat way to do similar by making a sliding dog clutch on the outboard side of the large gear on the end of the leadscrew. The gear spins on a bushing when disengaged. The dog clutch is keyed to the leadscrew and engages two pins into holes drilled in the large gear, all operated by shaft and a lever in about the same position as the ML10 lever. You don't need to cut the leadscrew that way.

But the single-tooth ML10 type clutch has the advantage it can be used for screwcutting on TPIs that are multiples of the leadscrew, eg 8, 16, 24, 32 and 40 tpi. Handy with a knock-off bar to trip the lever when screwcutting up to a shoulder. You can screw cut at turning speeds and get a nice finish that way. The gear clutch with two small pins does not have that capability due to two possible engagement positions.

Decisions decisions.

Edited By Hopper on 23/02/2023 02:08:17

Nice to see a GH Thomas versatile dividing head being used in anger too. I have been meaning to set mine up with ER collet holder like that for several years now. Must get a round tuit. Looks right handy.

Just out of interest, how long did the shipping take Australia to UK once the seller had dispatched it?

It seems to be taking about 4 to 5 weeks at the moment coming the other way -- A week from regional UK to Sydney, a week in customs and then 3 weeks sitting in Australia Post's depot before they get around to delivering it. Just wondering if they are so slack with outgoing shipping. It used to be 10-14 days total for incoming before Covid so not sure what has slowed it down now that is all over.

Edited By Hopper on 22/02/2023 21:52:53

Problem would have been that shonky gib strip. Keep your old screw and nut for spares if the new one ever wears out.

Edited By Hopper on 22/02/2023 21:33:52

And when working on steam pipework and boilers we used to rush in to be first to get to work on the old section lagged in asbestos so we didn't have to put up with that itchy fibreglass stuff on the new sections.

It might be worth emailing some pics to Tony at lathes.co.uk and asking him. It does look similar to a Haighton Cadet but with many differences. But would be too small to be a South Bend clone I think, at 10-12" between centres and 3" across the bed ways.

If you have a dial indicator, you can measure how much the carriage advances in one turn of the leadscrew and thus get an accurate reading of its pitch. Looks in your pic to be about 10 and a half TPI so maybe not British but rather a metric machine from the Continent?

No sign of a gear on the end of the headstock mandrel to drive feed gears or screwcutting gears. Perhaps the power feed was some other arrangement, either belts or something like a windscreen wiper electric motor and gearbox hooked up to the leadscrew?

The cast iron tray on the base of the tailstock is very distinctive. Never seen that before. And what is that silver lever sticking upwards next to it, coming from down at the leadscrew end? Never seen that before either. Some more pics of that arrangement and of the other end of the headstock and of the apron on the carriage would be helpful too.

I guess it was 3/4" steel flat bar welded together, not 1". Anyhow, works a treat. No vibration.

The large stud in the centre of the toolpost goes right through to a T head underneat that fits in the T slot on the cross slide. Second T bolt and nut on the foot sticking out the side. The extra two holes allow it to be hung off the back of the cross slide as a rear toolpost if needed, using two T bolts.

It has a spring loaded plunger that indexes with four holes drilled in the underside of the revolving 4-way toolpost for positive indexing.

Edited By Hopper on 22/02/2023 10:55:20

I made mine out of steel.Two blocks of 1" thick flat bar welded together one on top of the other, with a steel fourway toolpost mounted on top of that. Works a treat. And clean and easy to machine.

It is a pretty hand accessory for heavy cuts and also for general use because it does not get in the way of the tailstock.

Depends on the material, the rod and the welder, but the weld can be stronger than the parent material in some cases. And he looked like he knew his welding. To get a weld so well done the slag just drops off like that is not easy.

With the spigoted join it could be spot on alignment. There is one scene there where they are checking the alignment of all the main bearing journals with a dial indicator with long probe. They showed the reading and I think it was within a thou. Then setting the phasing of the bigends with wire pointer in the lathe. So, yeah, I reckon it could be possibly as strong and as accurate as the original Indian made Tata truck crankshaft (which snapped in the first place!).

Or it may not be quite as good as a brand new crank but it must be a lot cheaper. Looked like they had lines of them stacked up there and were doing a good trade.

Right now I am struggling to weld bits of 1" angle iron together to make some motorbike petrol tank brackets without it looking like a seagull flew over and dropped a load on the job!

Metal polishes such as Brasso and Solvol Autosol aluminium polish are a good fine abrasive for smaller jobs. Brasso is a bit too fine sometimes but the Autosol works well. As does Mothers Aluminium Polish. Never tried it on small model IC valves though.

Had to think of you guys keeping "ancient" computers running on alternative software to WIndows 10 etc today. I took my 5-year-old Samsung smart phone to several repair places to get the off button fixed because is is becoming hard to use without pushing it in very hard with a thumbnail. Obviously dirty contacts in the switch. But nope. No can fix. No parts available for such an old phone.

I would have a go at it myself with a bit of contact cleaner but don't want to risk killing the phone and losing all my contacts and photos etc.

So I guess it is new phone time when really there is nowt really wrong with the old one. But I am going to America in July and struggled to find a sim card there four years ago that fitted my "obsolete" phone then so I am sure it will be totally unusable there by now. Sadly, planned obsolescence is the way of the world, the world the Millennials keep blaming us for. But I am pretty sure it is not us is doing all this.

Good stuff. One step at a time.

Hard to see how that groove could have been worn in place like that. Maybe it left the factory like it? QC can be a bit hit and miss over there. It will have to improve things with a full smooth face bearing on the dovetail!