Member postings for Martin King 2

Hi All,

We have been in our house now 20 years and love living here in lovely Dorset.

House was built 1988 by a local, now long defunct, company who were total; t*****s and left us a litany of problems as the second owner, most of which I was able to fix. A lot younger then of course!

One such problem was that one day we noticed a musty smell in our utility room and on lifting the lino floor covering there wwas a damp spot in the concrete floor. After careful excavation and a lot of swearing i got down to the offending copper pipe to be greeted by the finest mist like spray possible.

Cause: the idiots had laid the 15mm copper straight into the wet concrete floor with no hessian or protective covering whatsoever. It was REALLY difficult to find enough room to get some slack and cut out the bad section as it was close to a wall. Finally bodged a fix with some speedfit and flexible pipe. Not ideal but solved the problem.

All nice and rosy for the next 15 years...... UNTIL a week ago!! Got up to be greeted by the War Office saying there was no hot water. OK, out to the garage and sure enought the combi boiler (new 3 years ago) is showing a pressure of 0.2 Bar, below the cutoff at 0.4. Opened the filler valves to pressure back up to 1.4 Bar and all works OK.

Next day the same performance, after repressurising and using the system during the day all seems OK unless we go out for a few hours when same problem again on our return. Checked and bled all the rads, no air in the system. Goes down overnight every night now.

Got a heating engineer in today who thought it would be the PRV sticking but on breaking the union there was no sign at all of any water in the pipe so that is not the cause. He then puts on a doleful face and says I have a leak in the system! I CAN ONLY GUESS WHERE FROM.

The whole downstairs is the original concrete floor with new carpet in living room, very expensive solid oak in hall and dining room, ceramic tiles to kitchen /utility/

How on earth do I go about finding this leak which I am sure will be very small? When I find it what is the best way forward as I guess it will just happen again somewhere else?

When i 'fixed ' the first leak I was paranoid that I might have disturbed the pipe a couple of feet away under the concrete and caused anothe pinhole.

Any thoughts gratefully received, I can not begin to tell how depressing this is.

How do I stand with my insurance for which I have got plumbing cover?

Cheers,

Martin

Hi Jason, great paintwork! What is the colour please? Also the supplier if possible, method of painting?

regards,

martin

Now listed on the 'Bay!

Thanks to all for the info.

Martin

Hi All,

Despite having a VERY rudimentary knowledge of X-Ray diffraction from Uni many years ago I still cannot quite understand what this thing actually does and totally echo Mark's post above

I think this is destined for EBay as it is of no use to me at all!

Martin

Hi All,

Just got this is an auction lot of tooling along with some tractor models and about 15 very odd case drill bits with strange inserts by ISCAR. the bits have longitudinal holes through them, (for coolant?), they look expensive !

Have not been able to research any idea of what this is used for.

Any help here would be most welcome.

Regards,

Martin

Hi All,

Used Jason's metheod, turned 2 cones on each end of pieces of stock then over tto the mill using square collet indexer. Took my time creeping up on the first sqauare section then used the smae setting for all the others with a stop fro the projection wnd a rear stop fro the indexer.

Amazing how quickly you can do a job like this once set up for it; did 5 pairs in about 30 mins.

Thanks for all the help and advice, much appreciated!

I should add that I always mention that work has been done or parts replaced or made when selling.

Ian SC,

I'm not going to plate them, just not cost effective. The whole idea is that at least with a pair of tips the tap is in working order, otherwise of no use whatsoever and thus unsaleable. I know that no one uses them any more with the modern wired corks but collectors like them to have the tips.

Pouring with rain here so cannot refurb the CT-918 Warco I bought yesterday as it is outside so will snuggle up inside and have a go at these along with the 17 other smaller prepairs in the 'pending a rainy day' box!

new steel or brass roller for bookbinders roller tool x 2

2 new pivot pins and decorative nuts for USA Tailors shears x 3

several new brass ferrules for odd sized tools

mill the jaws square on some small table vices + make some alloy ones to replace wrecked items.

yet more small knurled screw caps for minute oilers, a job that initially took me ages but now can knock out a dozen in about an hour.

all good fun and worthwhile!

I do have the square indexer that takes my ER25 collets so that bit is good to go. I like the idea of doing the operations 2 at a time at both ends of the stock.

Thanks guys, The construction of HH's Square collet looks like it might be within my capability so will have a go at that having first tried Jason's method.

The Milne pattern taps almost never have the 2 points they were supplied with which were plated brass I think.

I guess that you had to rely on the butler to retrieve them from the empty bottle!

Somewhere (?) I do have one original for final measurement IF ican find it

Thanks again for the help.

I meant, ML7, WM18 & collets!

Martin

Hi All,

I need to make approx 10 small brass tips to fit several Milne Pattern Champagne Taps that I have.

As they have a conical end and a square shaft I am not sure the best and easiest way to go about making these very small items.

It is possible that I may need to make quite a few more in the future.

Any thoughts will be much appreciated, I have an ML&, WM16 and collets

Thanks guys, I like the idea of 'casting' an araldite sleeve over shellaced core, will give it a go and report back.

regards,

martin

Sorry guys! First thing I did was to take out the three screws! Inside its just a piece of brass rod with a hole through it. At one time there would have ben (might !) a hexagon shape to the hole but very hard to tell. Will take it apart again and post a pic when I have a moment.

Neil: I suppose that it is possible that the end plate had filed gooves (points ) to fit into the spiral I will ;look more closely at it under a glass.david: like the idea of resin casting!

Michael G: Yes a particularly nice one, hence worth taking the trouble over, came from a french goldsmiths shop with a lot of his other tools.... yummy!

Hi all,

Just got this rather nice Archimedes Jewellers Drill from France.

The sliding section is a brass insert in the ebonised beech wooden part.

It should engage in the twists in the central spiralrod to rotate the shaft when pushed down but is completely worn out.

Anyone have any thoughts as to how I go about replacing this part? It does not matter if I have to turn a new wooden part in ebony or whatever.

The shaft ia approx 1/4" diameter and a very 'slow' spiral as shown.

Hi Vic,

I am in Broadmayne near Dorchester and would be interested in it, could pick up etc. 01305 854072

Regards,

martin

mANY THANKS jOHN, i DO HAVE aCCESS BUT IT IS NOT INSTALLED, i WILL GIVE IT A GO ON A COPY OF MY FILE.

ops sorry about the caps lock.....

Martin

Hi all,

Possibly not the best place for this here but I'll give it a try!

I have a large Excel spreadsheet that I use for my stock book for our little EBay business. It lists what we have paid for tools and what they sell for, works out all the costs of sales, Ebay fees, postage etc

It is about 20,000 lines long, stuff added every day or so.

We are always using the Find dialog to search for items, usually by text content & fill colour, ie RED for for sale, GREEN for sold pending payment plus colours for vaious auctions, suppliers etc.

This works very well for what we need, most of the time.

What I would like to know is if there is any way in excel FIND that one can search within the find dialog?

For example if I FIND 202 items that have Barnsley, is there a way I can search those for the one that also have, say 'hammer' as well while staying in the find list just generated? Kind of Find within find?

I cannot make the whole sheet a database as it is constantly changing, lines are always getting added, inserted or deleted.

Cheers, Martin

SGDG = Sans Garantie Du Gouvernment

Hi Simon,

VERY nice level in pretty good order. Should you want to dispose of it may I suggest that the best place to realise the top dollar would be the nex International Tool Sale of David Stanley Auctions where I think you might be surprised what it will make...

Do not do anything to it at all is my advice, leave EXACTLY as it is. Level collectors hate them being messed with in any way.

I buy and sell (not collect) a LOT of levels and it is a rarified area of collecting.

A pic of the makers mark would be helpful if it is what I think it is...

Regards, Martin