Member postings for Tim Stevens

The date of this engine puts it bang in the middle of a period of history when there was a huge demand from all sorts of people for a small source of power. Sewing machines are mentioned, but there were also printers, dairies, bookbinders, etc, all needing power but not all the time (which is what steam was good for) The electric motor was going to solve their problems, but they had to wait for national distribution systems. Simple engines like this could help, but tended to involve fire risks, so were difficult to insure.

Cheers, Tim

The soldering you can see here - round both ends of the pump tube - is soft solder. The extra blobs at the left end are likely to be the result of the flux, which can allow the molten solder to spread about. This means that with a small heat supply it should be easy to remove the end cap, and the rest of the tube, in stages. First, though, remove the pump piston assembly and wash the whole tube to remove traces of old paraffin.

If you are not familiar with the 'tricks of the trade' here, a small propane blowlamp (as used in kitchens to scorch the tops of some puddings) should serve to melt the solder, and it will help if you have smeared the surface of the old solder with a paste flux (be sure that your flux is for soft soldering with lead solder).

As soon as the end cap comes loose from the tube, tap it firmly down on a wood block, and this will shake off most of the old solder, ready for putting it back together. The tube which is split can then be removed, and this should only need a brief extra splash of the flame, as it will still be fairly hot. It should be possible at this stage to clean up the offending end including the crack, and using more flux, resolder the end cap, filling the crack in the process. A patch should not be necessary, but if you need one, use very thin copper (easier to form to shape) and hold it in place with fine wire twisted round, as you will use the torch in one hand and the solder in the other. If resoldering is not possible measure the tube diameter and length to see if a replacement can be found. If not, it should be possible to get a new tube bent from a flat sheet and hard soldered, but finding the right tools or the right craftsman or -woman is not at all easy. Or even a tube turned from a solid brass bar.

Or, if you are lucky, you might find someone on the forum who would have a go at it for you (but don't hold your breath ...)

Regards, Tim

Edited By Tim Stevens on 31/05/2023 16:04:10

When questioning the name 'French wrench' made in Romania, you might consider how many 'Birmingham Screwdivers' were made in Warrington.

And I promise that the bit you are straightening is not cast iron. In use it is put under tension, and CI is not strong in tension.

Cheers, Tim

Edited By Tim Stevens on 31/05/2023 11:33:18

A further problem relates to the reason for the split. If a soldered joint has come undone, what state are other joints in? And if it was not a soldered joint, then suspect 'season cracking' - common in the old days when horse manure was common, as brass can be attacked by ammonia fumes. If so, other cracks will exist, waiting to open up when you are not looking.

'Season cracking' was a serious problem in the trenches of WW1. Cartridges were regularly affected.

Sorry - Tim

Edited By Tim Stevens on 31/05/2023 11:19:36

I agree with Hopper - if you have a mishap, cast iron is likely to snap, just like that, while steel will bend. Good steel (like most of the bought ones) might be so strong that damage will be done to other parts, and needs careful heat treatment, so for 'delicate' use on a small lathe (etc) mild steel should be a good choice.

Cheers, Tim

SoD states: ... failed edges are quickly fixed by simply reindexing the insert. No skill is involved.

Not necessarily. It is much too easy to drop the tiny screw, and it falls, inevitably, into the swarf it has just generated. And the tiny screws look exactly like the scrolls of metal in the swarf. Exactly ...

Cheers, Tim

Thanks, Mike London

I was thinking of a response, but ...

Cheers - Tim

The problem you have discovered relates to the fact that cutting tools, to cut stuff as hard as steel, need to be rigid, unbreakable, heat-proof, and not subject to wear. Few materials come anywhere close, but there are alloys of steel which come close. But they are not as hard as some materials such as the carbides* of various metals, and diamond (which is so rare that its use is naturally restricted). The problem with them is that they are difficult to make (or dig up) in large enough pieces. One good trick is to use powdered carbide, stuck together into a solid block, by the use of clever brazing alloys, or the process of sintering - heating a compressed block to near melting point and increasing the pressure until the whole lump becomes solid. Either way, the result is not as fine-grained as steel, so cannot take such a fine surface finish. With tools that by their very nature have a rather rough surface, it is not possible to get a really razor-sharp edge, so they cannot cope well with a very light cut - but, with the advantage of their extra hardness, and heat resistance, they can cut much deeper and quicker than tool steel. As long as your lathe is strong enough and powerful enough to withstand the extra loads this creates.

* a carbide is a compound of carbon with another element. Several carbides offer useful properties which make them very useful in engineering. When old fashioned carbon steel is hardened, it is the iron carbides which give the desired properties, for example. Another 'everyday' carbide is Silicon Carbide, so hard and tough that it is used as an abrasive to cut and polish hard steel etc.

I hope this helps - regards, Tim

I hesitate - following comments elsewhere - to offer advice, but ...

If it is ordinary carbon steel (such as gauge plate, silver steel, etc) then you can heat it red-hot and quench it. It will then be glass-hard and, I'm sorry, will also be glass-tough. Use for tooling would be dangerous as it will snap leaving sharp edges and sharp bits flying about.

If you harden it and then draw the temper (also called just 'tempering' you can add toughness at the expense of hardness. The traditional way to do this is slow heating of the item, leaving a clean (ground or filed) surface open to the air. A range of colours will appear, starting with pale golden, through straw and brown, then blue and purple, and finally black. The 'best' colour depends on what you wish to use it for.

Thick books have been written on the process, and starting from a guess is not always helpful.

One further comment: If you hope to make tools for lathe work (etc) where the rate of cutting is enough to heat up the tool above about boiling point, the sharpness will be destroyed. There are fancy steels with added ingredients, which will stand such heating, though. They are called Tool Steel or HSS, and tend not to be left lying about to get rusty.

PS: anyone feeling the need to pick holes in my grammar is invited to stick something large up an orifice and leave it there. Especially if they are a moderator.

Regards, Tim

Edited By Tim Stevens on 17/05/2023 14:50:06

No, Jason, I will not accept your premise that my output here needs to be 'professional' (ie as good as an editor should be) as I am not paid for what I write.

Pay me for my input and I will be sure to take more care, and if you don't pay me, then don't pick holes (lest your own holes and those, eg, of Nick, become the subject of disdain).

The use of commas is, in any event, a matter of fashion. I make no claim to be fashionable, I try to be clear.

Tim

Edited By Tim Stevens on 17/05/2023 14:29:46

And then I sat down to read ME which had just arrived. It has obviously been assembled by a relative of Eric Morcambe - all the right pages but not necessarily in the right order ...

Tim

The Editor, Dear Sir

I am shocked, nay flabbergasted, to find that a mistake has occurred in your hallowed journals, not in one edition but twice. The second time is on page 35 of the latest MEW number 328. The first was in ME number 4715, page 549. Perhaps the first error could be excused as ME seems to concentrate almost obsessively with railways, and even then mainly with steam, but MEW is committed, surely, to serving a wider readership, with a less restrictive, and more broad-based, point of view.

I was tempted to write to ME when the first error appeared, but I was persuaded (from the kitchen) that surely, lots of sharp-eyed readers with less to do in their garages would wield their pens, and a correction would follow. Well it didn't, so here goes.

The car engines which are modelled so effectively by Mike Sayers, and shown at the Harrogate exhibition, were made by DELAGE - thus. Not Delarge. No R to be seen. Its not as though the firm was one of those here today and gone tomorrow makes (like Hesketh Motorcycles with which I was briefly involved), Delage started their endeavours in 1906, and survived two world wars, and you can still buy a new one today. Don't take my word for it - Wikepedia tells all.

Regards, Tim Stevens - Knighton, Powys

The earliest 2LS brakes on motorcycles had the linkage within the drum - on the inside of the brake plate. I think this was mainly on racers and perhaps a way of avoiding questions from scrutineers etc.

And I can be fairly sure it won't work backwards, whatever is done with the linkage.

Just before disc brakes become de-rigeur, even on mopeds, there were one or two systems where the brake cams could float, allowing the shoes to slide and giving a 'leading shoe effect' in both directions. BSA had this about three days before they went down the plug-hole.

Oh happy days ...

Cheers, Tim

Do remember to tell your insurance company that you have fitted a home-made front brake assembly which is not very effective at holding on a hill (ie at a time when you are stopped and cannot apply much force to the rear brake pedal). You might think you can get away with it, but if they find you have not told them of a safety critical change, they will void your insurance.

Regards, Tim

Looking at what you show, I am not convinced that these are LEDs. Here are my clues:

The filament is almost clearly visible;
The outside layer (glass or plastic?) looks like glass, and is strongly coloured. With LEDs the colour is produced within the diode itself, and does not work by having a white light and strong colour covering.

And Mike Poole seems to have come to the same verdict ... Sorry

Tim

An old-style non-smart charger may well provide a useable output, but I would beware of anythig too old. The main concern for anything from before about 1970 is the rectifier. The older transformers should be OK, as long as there is no 'hot electrics' smell in the box, and no blackened insulation. But early rectifiers (which turn the AC from the transformer into useful DC) relied on Copper Oxide, did not last very long, and were not very good when new*. This fact was one of the main things which held up the change from dynamo to alternator in cars, and especially motorcycles.Silicon rectifiers were the 'great leap forward', and it is fairlyeasy to fit a modern rectifier into an old charger to give it a longer and more reliable performance, but it does need a bit of expertise in working out what you have got, and what to change it to, in some of the early devices.

* failure of the charging system on some models of motorcycle led to a nickname for the rectifier, which was fitted immediately below the seat. It does not need much imagination to realise where the term Rectum-frier originated.

Cheers - Tim

Edited By Tim Stevens on 05/05/2023 07:53:17

In my experience, it will not produce a voltage unless it is connected to a good (chargeable) lead-acid battery. But it doesn't need to be a particularly big (or expensive) battery, just be sure that if you need 12 volts, you use a 12v battery, But that said, the charger is likely to produce about 13.5 volts - as this is what a battery needs to charge it - just like on a car with a modern alternator. I'm sure you can still get non-automatic chargers, which would work.

Cheers, Tim

It might help to know that such micrometers are used to measure the thickness of gear teeth. So, perhaps asking about a gear-tooth micrometer might open a door for you?

Cheers, Tim

A reminder: You certainly won't need a 5/16" if you already have a useful 8mm. The difference is a mere 0.0625mm (or two and a half thou in proper imperial inches).

Tim

If you are seeking advice or parts in England, you will need to be clear whether your device is a blow-lamp - intended to provide heat (which has been overtaken by eg a propane torch), or a Tilley lamp (intended to provide light). They work on the same sorts of fuel, and in very similar ways. A piston pump pressurises the fuel tank, and the heat of the flame assists with vapourising it. The term 'blow-torch' is (in my experience) applied to more modern heat devices, usually with butane or propane gas in a separate tank, and no need to pump. And I admit that a blow-lamp should - from its name - be for lighting. But no. English is like that. Just don't get me going on carbon brushes ...

Cheers, Tim

Edited By Tim Stevens on 02/05/2023 18:19:05