Member postings for Hopper

Here is a tale of woe from our local news today about a woman who "won" an online lottery: LINK

The short version is:

The 22-year-old hairdresser from Colac, Victoria, won the $100,000 4WD in an online charity raffle organised by Hello Lifestyle Australia.

...

Hello Lifestyle Australia’s website and all social media channels have since been shut down.

Very often they are desperately poor people in Third World countries with few or no options. EG homeless street kids in Nigeria operating out of internet cafes. And increasingly, they are people-trafficked slaves held in captivity in some Third World country and forced to sit all day and call and call and call or email and email, then if they get a strike, they pass it on to their captors for the big con. It's those guys at the top who should be jailed, and the traffickers.

Then there are the out and out scumbags who are just too lazy to get a real job. Increasingly we are hearing more local accents on the scam calls and in some instances where they tell the victim they are from the national broadband supplier and they need access to their computer to fix a problem, a white van even turns up outside their house and "technicians" are seen "working" on the local cabling network. So obviously very local, and very well organised.

What thread? I am not seeing a link.

The evolution of my lo-tech carriage stop on the Myford ML7. Its main use has been when cutting the lines on graduated dials etc. Different length lines are achieved by use of the topslide, doing all the short lines in one go-around, then all the medium length "fives" and then all the long "tens". But also handy for a stop when turning.

Like most carriage stops, it is not designed to be crashed into under power feed. You disengage the halfnuts just before and finish the cut under hand feed. Even many friction drive feed lathes will overpower the carriage stop and either move it or damage the feed mechanism if crashed into. Drummond M Type had the solution, a dog clutch on the leadscrew operated by a knock-off bar with adjustable settings along the length of the bed.

Edited By Hopper on 09/02/2023 02:25:06

LOL. Nothing beats local knowledge. I didn't know that. Sounds about right.

LOL the lotteries might be genuine but the Rolexes may not be. As the touts in Hong Kong used to say to us " Genuine Rolex copy watch". But I would not touch any lottery on Facebook or the like. Way too risky.

Not on mine. There is only about 1/4" of space between the pulley and the Oilite bushing in the H frame on the left hand end of the pulley. But there is a good 3" or more of countershaft sticking out the right hand end of the pulley through the oilite bushing and through the retaining collar. So that has to be driven through the centre of the pulley until the right hand end of the countershaft is level with the end of the pulley, thus creating a gap the belt can pass through. You could leave the large pulley in place to do this.

Doing it the other way is the same. There is more shaft sticking out the lefthand end than there is gap to slide the shaft sideways before the pulley hits the H frame.

If the step pulley is a tight fit on the shaft, like this one, it is easier to deal with it on the bench than perched up on the H frame moving about.

Edited By Hopper on 08/02/2023 09:32:24

Edited By Hopper on 08/02/2023 09:41:00

Edited By Hopper on 08/02/2023 09:43:54

Exactly. What could enhance well being more than watching a Corliss engine that won first prize at the ;World's Fair in 18something chuffing away? That IS the quintessential definition of well being. See, I told you they was yuppie twits.

A beautiful old engine with a remarkable history. Sad that it is being sold off so the hall can be used as a "cutting edge centre for well-being" by yuppie twits. But as they say, it is not original to that location so hopefully it will find a good home where it can be appreciated.

If you use Gmail, these are all filtered out by their spam filter. I have never received one at my Gmail address.

On my other email account, an old Hotmail address, I have it set to receive emails from contacts only. All others go into the spam folder, which I check occasionally, and it is full of such emails. There must be literally millions of them sent daily. I very much doubt that btinternet or other authorities can do a darned thing about them. They come from some kid in a net cafe in Lagos, Nigeria, or a warehouse full of computer jockeys in Mumbai or similar and they change location and email addresses daily and are pretty much untraceable. I am sure the Lagos police have much bigger things to deal with, even if they would ever respond to contact from UK police.

Such emails are now just a normal part of digital life. Up to individuals to be net savvy and not fall for them. Never click on links in emails requesting details or payments or anything else. If in doubt, check independently with the relevant website, eg your vehicle registration department etc. The scammers rely on the one in 10 thousand who panic and click on the link and give up their details or money. Don't be that one.

That's a good result, mate. Yes the shaft is just a piece of cold rolled bright mild steel bar, nothing special. Very easy to make a new one from a piece of stock without need to machine the OD. A typical Myford piece of frugal but practical production engineering.

Sounds like the young fellow made a great score. The lever tailstock and especially the long cross slide are very choice upgrades and rare here in Australia. And the Grip Tru chuck is the Holy Grail. Very nice. And it is good he has someone like yourself and obviously other club members to help him make the most of it.

Good idea on the locking tool. I'd be replacing the missing headstock hold-down bolts asap. Most probably BSF threads but I have never had mine out so not sure. Can be a bit of a hunt to find BSF these days but they are around. Myford still sell most parts including bolts but the shipping has gone through the roof in the past 3 years.

The woodruff key is captive in its part-circular keyway in the centre of the shaft, so can't be removed until it is moved past the end of the pulley. The keyway in the pulley is straight through. So it must be a burr etc hanging up. My countershaft was so chewed up where it ran in the bronze Oilite bushes without oil for years that it was pretty rough. I made a new shaft from a bit of BDMS. You also get burrs where the grub screws were, which perhaps could be drilled out?

The pulley is usually Mazak so will expand a fair bit if heated to 100 to 150C (spit sizzling hot) which may help. Heating the pulley and supporting the frame or pulley on top of open vice jaws or two blocks of wood etc and whacking the shaft with a hammer and block of your best jarrah or brass drift might work better than pressing it.

Pretty sure we had jarrah sleepers in South Australia when I was a kid. Probably came from the west as SA basically has no trees. No idea what they used here in Queensland. They were all concrete and steel by the time I moved here, I think. Not something I spend a lot of time inspecting. But I spent my childhood playing on the railroad track through the Adelaide Hills near our house. Endless source of entertainment for young boys.

Yes it looks like some kind of relief for swarf clearance would be needed if you make your own. The Zoro picture you posted above looks like the small diameter section is tapered back smaller as it meets the larger diameter section, with almost a groove ground around it.

Another way you might be able to remove that much HSS faster in the lathe, other than the use a carbide tool bit and turn it down as in one of the videos you posted, might be to buy a cheap compact bench grinder, the type that has 6" wheels but very narrow, and a smaller motor than the heaver duty models, and mount it on the cross slide then fit it with a smaller and better quality wheel. It would shift metal faster than a router and mounted point, which could be used for finishing off and putting on the taper and swarf clearance groove. It would give more precise control than a pistol drill mounted to the bench grinder. Just be very careful to cover all lathe surfaces to keep the huge amounts of abrasive grit generated out of the slideways, chuck, etc.

Looks like he has it all figured out. Simlar idea, hold the bit in pistol drill by hand and run it up against the belt sander. Then you could finish it off in th elathe.

But unless you are drilling many dozens and hundreds of these stepped holes, the more usual way to do it would be to drill the small hole then use a counterbore bit to drill the larger hole. Sets of counterbore bits are available stupid cheap from that large manufacturing country far to the east of you.

Or you can even drill the larger hole with a regular larger drill bit and then finish it off with a drill bit ground to a flat bottom end.

But if you plan to be drilling more than a few dozen such holes, then the step drill would be a definite timesaver.

Wow. Awesome piece of history. It looks like you could unbolt the front and inspect inside for corrosion. Pressure cookers usually have a safety valve, even if it's just a rubber plug. Does this have some sort of safety valve?

Well there you go. They just look smaller because the outer part has been ground away. When you think about it, the flutes still have to go down to the size of the chisel point.

Still seems like an awful lot of HSS to grind away with a mounted point in a router, with an interrupted cut over the flutes. That kind of grinder set up is usually for taking a few thou off for finishing purposes. You might be better off to make up something to hold a pistol drill up square to your six inch bench grinder so the drill rotates the bit and the six inch grinding wheel does the work. I imagine it would go a lot quicker that way.

But then there are the modern step drills that for sheet metal that start out at about 1/8" and go up in 1/6" increments to 3/4 or 1", alll on one drill. Very handy for sheemetal indeed. All I use these days for thin stuff.

Welcome to the forum. An ex-school Boxford is a great start to a workshop. And quite a few Boxford owners on the forum.

You have to remember too that tapping drill sizes are only approximate. Charts specify the nearest common size to give approximately 85 per cent thread depth to make sure there is sufficient clearance for the bolt to screw into the tapped thread, so plenty of room to move either way to suit the nearest fraction 64th drill. Metric suggestions came about only in more recent years when metric drills became more common. Back in the mid-20th century and earlier in UK and the rest of the empire, metric drills would not have been commonly available. If you get stuck, especially in the larger sizes like 5/8" BSW etc you can often go one 64th bigger or smaller and still get away with it.

I have a fairly recent Tracy Tools tapping drill size chart taped to the wall next to my lathe. Even for BSF/W and UNF/C etc it gives the drill sizes in metric in 0.1mm increments. But notes at the bottom that the nearest fractional sized drill is acceptable. So it is not an exact science, despite the implications to the contrary of today's charts listing tapping drills to within 0.1mm.

Machine shops and toolrooms I worked in had a tool crib that kept all drills in increments of 1/64" all the way up sometimes to 2" diameter. Common practice in large industrial shops.

Common use would be for drilling holes to be reamed to the next size above. 1/64" was standard undersize to drill for a reamed hole, regardless of diameter, except for the really tiny stuff where you would use number and letter drills to get a bit closer before reaming.