Member postings for John Rutzen

Thanks , I've chatted with them online and they say it's obsolete so no spares. Does anyone know where i could get a tiny contact to suit the LR44 battery?

Hi, I have a Mitutoyo digimatic calliper that I bought about 30 years ago. Recently it's stopped working much to my chagrin. I think it's a battery contact problem, it looks as if one of the contacts has broken. Does anyone know it it''s possible to get a replacement part please. It comes up with the message 'error 05'. It does work if I press the battery down. Thanks.

I wouldd agree with redsetter that it's best not drill holes in a tested boiler. It's not god to pressure test to 2x more than once. The boiler articles in ME a few years ago showed that the pressure test strengthens the boiler by deforming the soft plates around the stays but you can have too much of a good thing. On by Crampton boiler I made a stainless steel sleeve that fits in the firehole and the firedoor is attached to it, so no holes needed there. I attached the boiler at the fire box end by the cladding and supported it on two bits of angle on the frames, so no holes there either.

Hi Thank you JA. The general consensus seems to be that soldering stainless is not easy at the best and impossible at worst. If I can get some phosphoric acid cheaply I'll try it but I don't think it's worth pursuing othethwise. I think a major problem with making a large assembly like a tender would be the poor heat conductivity which would lead to distortion. I made a steel guitar once and that was very difficult to solder all the seams - the thing bent every.way. Didn't matter too much, I wanted curves but it wouldn't suit a loco tender.

There's a problem getting these aggressive fluxes because they won't send them to Northern Ireland!

Thanks That's Bakers fluid which I have. It does work to a certain extent but it isn't certain.

Thanks for more replies. Nick do you know the name of the etching flux you used?

Thanks for replies. JA have you any idea what concentration it was you used. I can get 81% on eBay easily. Tried the local builders merchant but they don't have it.

Hi,

I've recently acquired a lot of stainless steel 430 grade offcuts, 1mm thick. I've been trying to soft solder it. I had ideas of making a loco tender from it since the brass price is astronomical. The only flux that worked at all was baker's fluid and not very well at that. I've read that phosphoric acid is the stuff to use but I don't know where to get any. There are products from china on Ebay but it doesn't say what they are.

Has anyone any experience soft soldering this material?. Thanks.

Please can you tell me how to get my subscription on Pocketmags as well as on my laptop?

HI, I've had the digital ME now for over a year but it seems to be giving problems with it freezing. I preferred the old version using Flash player but I understand that is being phased out soon. Will I still be able to view the archive when Flash player is no longer supported?

With the new magazine viewer I find it difficult to adjust the magnification and move about the page. Frequently it freezes and I have to delete the magazine and re-select it. Is there a tutorial anywhere on how to use it? I am using a Macbook pro.

hi, I'm using the steam fittings one on my Crampton and it works fine. It didn't work at first but they told me you have to polish the plunger to remove machining marks. Otherwise it sticks in the O ring.

Have you seriously considered making them yourself? Chuck's book the Backyard Foundry inspired me to have a go and i successfully made the castings for a 5 inch gauge Crampton. Aluminium is easy compared to iron. You can get a perfectly good furnace on eBay for £200 including the gas fittings and run it on propane. You could melt the aluminium in a stainless steel pot using old car wheels as material. Myfordboy has very good videos on Youtube about the process.

Hi, does anyone know what's happened to the ME index? It just comes up with error 404 at the moment.

hi, refractory bricks are ok for small jobs but to do a big job such as a boiler i have found that there is nothing better than ceramic fibre blanket which comes in 1 inch thick roll and you can buy it from pottery suppliers for around £2 a sq foot. You can get it on eBay as well but more expensive.

I've got an Amadeal 25 long table with brushless DC motor and R8 taper and I'm very pleased with it. The quality is really good, a surprise because I was expecting much worse from China. The motor is silent and never gets hot. The R8 taper is a real plus and I think it's only amadeal that supply it. Service was great and delivery only £75 to Northern Ireland. I think it's free to Uk mainland. Nothing to complain of really. It would be nice if it had back gear.

Thanks for the help folks. I'll look into getting a programme to run windows but i've remembered an old windows laptop I've got somewhere so I may just try to crank it up.

Thank you but I'm not into CAD. I wondered if any of the simulators could be run on a mac.

Does anyone know of a stephenson's link simulator to run on a macbook please? Thanks.

I'm pretty sure I've tried that and it didn't work. The flame just won't burn properly at the end of the extended tube.