Member postings for richardandtracy

To gain an appreciation of what can be done at home with very little, I'd recommend the David Gingery series 'Build your own Metalworking Shop from Scrap' here: **LINK**

You don't need to make any of the machines, just learn the thought processes and get a feel for it all. It's a complete industrial revolution in one bound volume.

Regards

Richard.

I found the most effective method from preventing cats getting into & using my garden as a toilet was to get the roughest, toughest, stroppiest Tom in the area. Then neutering him. After being able to rape/fight any cat around, only being able to fight it tends to make the Tom even more stroppy and aggressive. That will keep the other cats out, and a cat never uses its own garden as a toilet if it can help it.

How do I know this is effective? Experience, only experience.. **LINK**

Regards,

Richard.

Ian,

Sorry, I got the number wrong, must be a sign of old age. The horizontal lift is not 10% lateral, but a 15 degree angled lift to the nominal vertical down (which also has to be considered), and equates to a 25.8% horizontal load. This is based on Def Stan 07-85 parts 1 & 2 requirements. There was a defence standard for lifting equipment (Def Stan 04-14, Interim 1992) but that was withdrawn before being fully implemented. Def Stan 07-85 is now withdrawn as British & European Standards seem to be considered 'good enough' to require the same quality levels. The current crane design document is BS EN 13001:2015 ( **LINK**  which supersedes BS 2573 (apparently its status is 'Current, superseded' ) .

Most of the Def Stans (inc 07-85/1 & 07-85/2) are available on the web as zero cost downloads, unlike the BS EN.

Regards,

Richard.

When doing my stressing, for lifting equipment and the immediate area adjacent to the lift points it's always 4 on yield (or 0.2% proof stress for a material that shows no definite yield ) and 6 on ultimate. The load is always combined with a 10% non vertical load to accommodate swinging of the lifted equipment.

Regards

Richard.

My favourite pen is the P61, The P51 was an incredible pen, but the P61 was better still - with one exception, the use of Polystyrene as the body material. I've not come across anything to equal the P61, and had one as my daily use pen for 25 years before it wore out. I used the cartridge version, and must admit I don't like the capillary one I have quite so much for the very reason you mention.

Regards,

Richard.

I cannot claim to be a structural engineer, but this is what I did when re-building a Victorian outhouse whose foundations had failed.

I used two sheets of the 6mm bar stuff (SRF001). these I trimmed to length with an angle grinder & cutting disc. I put them into the concrete after pouring and knowing the concrete would be in bending with tension on the top face, so I pressed the steel in less than 1/3 the concrete depth. Did not tie the steel together, but overlapped it by 4 holes in the mesh - about 2 ft. Edge distance, knowing the edges were likely to be wet, was 3". Less than that could lead to enough oxygen to be present for corrosion.

All in all the slab ended up thicker than expected because the truck had 2.5m^3 when we'd ordered 1.5, and was about 14" thick, so could have done without any steel. However, the old building had lasted 120 years on a 2" thick lime mortar foundation, so how long will this version last with a 14" steel re-inforced foundation? At least as long I hope.

Regards,

Richard.

Where I work the commercial practice is to use a factor of 6 rather than 2 on lifting equipment, so using the calculations by Ian above would suggest a rated load of 4200/3 = 1400 kg, which is more in line with what my 'gut feel' of 1 Tonne would suggest. I believe in the US the figure is more normally 4 (a family story goes that my grandfather apparently accidentally sank a Liberty Ship in WW2 with a tank because of this difference in safety factors between the UK & US).

For webbing slings, CE marked stuff has a factor of 7 minimum, and I have come across 10 being required for some bits of kit being used in the US, though I've never been clear whether this is a regulatory or customer requirement.

Regards,

Richard.

Derek,

The Beaufort Bock offerings are adequate, but Onoto used to make their own and they were in a totally different league. Bock do supply some of the current good quality manufacturers, like Visconti, Delta and Stipula. Few manufacturers still make their own. Parker do, as do (IIRC) Montblanc and Pelikan. Modern Onoto nibs are, I think, made by JoWo, and every one is smoothed by John Sorowka before being sent out, making them about as good as you can get these days.

I have never been a real fan of Bock nibs, they don't have that little spark for me that the JoWo's have, and they don't seem to polish up so well either. A smooth nib is good, but there is a limit to how far they should be polished. I once over polished a Jinhao nib, and ended up with one that felt like it was always writing on ice, with no feedback at all. It was surprisingly disappointing and I ended up having to roughen it up a bit to make it feel better. Never been able to get to that stage with a Bock Nib.

The Bock titanium flex nibs are an attempt to reproduce the verve of the old gold flex nibs, unfortunately the attempt is not successful and falls woefully short of the old Onoto nibs.

Regards

Richard

Parker fountain pens when made at Newhaven. Gorgeous, juicy nibs on interesting pens. Then the quite remarkable Duofold Centennial, a pen both looking back to a great past and taking advantage of the best of modern manufacturing. The Parker 61 in spectacular finishes with the 'Cumulus', 'Stratus' and 'Cirrus' designs.

Cannot forget, either, the amazing 'Onoto' fountain pens made by De La Rue. Even 100 year old pens work beautifully with the minimum of restoration. One even was raised from a ship sunk by a sub in 1916, and worked beautifully after a rubber and cork seal was replaced. This was 2012, with the pen having spent 96 years at the bottom of the English Channel. The gold nibs are a joy to use, making the roughest of paper feel like silk and encouraging wildly expressive florishes in your writing as they flex under the lightest of pressures. Anyone making nibs of that quality these days could sell thousands.

Definitely the best of British manufacturing. I just don't want to think about Platignum or Osmoroid's output in the 1970's.

Regards

Richard.

As an exercise in needless horror and pain that caused flashbacks followed by panic attacks, the birth of my two couldn't be bettered. A pleasurable or beautiful one was the last thing to describe it. Seeing my wife turn into a mindless being trying to climb the walls while bleeding seriously to get away from the unbearable pain is a sight that will stay with me forever. That would describe being present for the birth of my two. How I wished for the days when blokes were kept well away from the birth. First brat was 10lb 2 oz and the medics believed she was small despite the ultrasound scans - and they obviously knew better - so no need for much pain relief in a natural birth. The birth process at Medway was characterized by medical arrogance of the first water from start to finish and it was a thoroughly horrible experience.

Regards,

Richard.

I do not know of any and have never come across any.

In one of his books, Guy Lautard suggests keeping files permanently in cutting/tapping oil and re- dipping regularly. That way pins will never stick to the teeth. Others suggest chalking the file. I think both work, but I dislike the chalking idea, rubbing a file on rock strikes me as a good way to blunt it. And dipping the file in oil is messy.

Regards,

Richard

I made an A frame support frame from pallet timber about 10 years back. The main timbers were 3x3 and 4x2 info. Stressed it after building and ended up with a conservative 1.5 tonne breaking load, so rated it at .25 tonne with a reserve of 6. Home stuff can be very over designed. Left it outside over winter and wouldn't trust it after that - so it became firewood.

On the 'Backyardmetslcasting.com' site Lionel shows a lifting frame picking a motorcycle off his Ute. That one is strong enough, but not safe due to the risk of offset loads and swinging. Needs a couple of braces otherwise the welds could fail due to lack of triangulation. It's from simple scaffold pole.

Regards

Richard

I keep all my sticks in the airing cupboard and stick in the end of a blow torch flame just before using. The arc strikes a bit better when hot.

Regards

Richard.

Most beautiful 'thing'. There can only be one answer.

The view across Alaska and the Yukon from ''The Top of the World Highway' near the settlement of 'Chicken' in Alaska in late autumn (end of August). The highway runs along a ridge and you can see 50 miles at least on either side. The only indication of humans is the road. It's totally devoid of human made sound. The V shaped valleys in late autumn are cloaked in gold and scarlet as the leaves of the willow scrub change, interspersed with the sparce black stubble of centuries old pine trees struggling to make 5ft high. It is the most beautiful place (thing) I have ever seen. Absolutely breathtaking, but such moments are fleeting in such a wild area, the very fact that makes such jewel like memories.

Regards,

Richard.

I always drill through plastic into wood. Pallet timber is adequate.

Regards,

Richard.

Our predecessors managed by long apprenticeships and a lifetime of learning.

We have to make up for our time and experience poverty by more expensive machines. To get good results on a basic machine your skill has to make up for the lack from the machine. Not something that all of us can supply.

Regards

Richard.

When it came to ammunition/other 'bang' stuff, the packing methods for hot, humid climates were woefully inadequate and there were huge numbers of dud rounds as a result. The WD and later MOD response was to effectively create a packaging industry for these environments. Now the boxes are considered part of the weapon system for some of the more sophisticated fire & forget systems in more recent times - and the boxes are surprisingly high tech.

Regards,

Richard.

Just thinking,

If it doesn't work well, could you locally draw the temper with a jewellers torch and use a wet cloth to limit the area heated? Once the small area of drawn temper is done, it might be soft enough to mark more easily.

Regards

Richard

Good thing there are no cats about, because there is no way on earth one wouldn't find a way in. Have to ask - is the propensity for an astrophysics degree contagious, using a telescope as the vector? If so.. it'll be a loss to the hobby.

Regards

Richard

Reminds me vaguely of something I saw briefly once at university. A polarimeter. It was used for stress analysis of complex shapes before finite element analysis. A screw applied an accurately measured deflection to a clear acrylic profile via a point load, then there were two polarising sheets, one fixed and one rotated to make the stress patterns visible when white light was shone through the profile. Have to confess my recollection is hazy as I wasn't the slightest bit interested in it at the time, so I may be wrong, but this may be missing only 2 bits, the polarising filters and a clear acrylic profile.

Regards

Richard.

Edited By richardandtracy on 30/07/2018 23:00:25