Member postings for Kiwi Bloke

Certainly sounds puzzling, but we need to know more about exactly how you're setting up the job for clocking. How is the work supported? What is the reference surface for the clock? Have you measured table thickness (variations) with a micrometer - assuming the table top is truly flat)? When is the straight-edge coming? Might be a good idea to wait for it.

I don't like the idea that the pic shows blue-filled hollows, when there's almost no other blue to be seen. But I agree that sometimes you can get horribly misled by blue's antics. Last two sentences of Martin Kyte's last post is good advice - sanity check!

The scraping looks very uneven in depth, and scratchy as hell. Perhaps it's the photography, but I suspect the scraper (hopefully the tool, mostly, not the operator...).

Perhaps tap the holes, and fix from t'other side - to a sub-plate if no access from that side for fixing to whatever.

One wonders how stuff can leave the factory with such howlers...

One of the advantages of using hand/fingers to apply the oil-based blue is that you can sense the film thickness by the quality of the drag felt by the fingers. I'd imagine that, with a bit of practice, you could get a pretty even, thin film with your eyes shut. I've no experience of rollers or water-based media, so things might be easier, or at least different with them.

I assume you've come across the idea of pushing the scraper with your body, the handle having a suitably-shaped 'mushroom' load-spreading end. Most folk aren't strong enough to push hard enough, for long enough, with arms alone, on a job like your column's front face. For roughing, at least, where you need to hog off quite a bit of material, you can afford to, indeed need to, push downwards and forwards hard, creating deep furrows. It's hard work! This not only removes material, getting you towards the desired level, but it also breaks up the area of 'too high' material into smaller bits, which are than easier to scrape off.

Take heart - aiming is initially difficult, but it's a skill, and acquiring skills requires practice.

Sharpening has been mentioned. Different people have advocated different tip shapes. This suggests it's not critical, and, in any case, you will alter the contact geometry by the angle of attack you choose. The easiest way, I believe, is to hold the scraper vertically over the sharpening medium. Try to hold the handle's extreme end still between finger and thumb, fixed in space, but allow it to pivot, and then swing the blade sideways across the medium, from side to side (ie plane of swing is the plane of the blade). This will automagically produce a tip radius that is reasonably 'correct' for the handle length (but don't get too hung up on geometry). Carbide tips are wonderful, but the edge readily breaks down (in use and also when sharpening) into almost microscopic roughness, which causes scratches on the workpiece. A fine diamond plate works well, but not one of the 'perforated' ones - these can chip the edge. Check the edge with a 10X loupe.

Scraping an entire machine is a formidable task. As I get older, I'm increasingly aware that time is running out more quickly than is money (thanks to pensions...). My arthritic hands and wrists already limit some activities, and are only going to get worse, and I have a number of machines waiting to be restored. To hell with the expense - I feel a Biax coming on!

I'm no chemist (last real chemistry at school, to university entrance level), so could be talking rubbish. I think your suggestions are likely correct, and the presence of metallic copper is the clue. Copper sulphate solution in contact with iron causes copper to be deposited onto the iron. Copper and iron are at different levels in the electro-chemical series, thus, with an electrolyte, make a cell. Your pickling solution was copper sulphate solution. Perhaps, at a nano-scale, metallic copper attached to the iron-containing substrate, and the resulting millions of electro-chemical cells caused accelerated corrosion. Hopefully, a real chemist will tell us what happened.

Edited By Kiwi Bloke on 01/10/2022 21:39:19 (typos, and more typos)

Edited By Kiwi Bloke on 01/10/2022 21:45:01

Edited By Kiwi Bloke on 01/10/2022 21:45:49

Sounds good. I'm not familiar with HR Lamb's products. Just a reminder to think ahead: will the straight-edge be suitable to get into the 'female' dovetails, ie has it a bevelled edge? You'll probably end up making small masters for awkward internal dovetail work, unless your muscle development keeps up with your work...

Good luck. By half-way into this project, you'll either have been bitten by the scraping bug, or will vow never to do any more - ever!

Steve, your explanation is fine; the problem is that we're coming at this from different directions and run the risk of talking at cross purposes. Also, according to my wife, I'm capable of misunderstanding the simplest of things. BTW, I note the nice granite square!

The fundamental difference in our points of view is that I believe your 'factory reference surface' (FRS) is a poor choice for a plane to which everything else must be scraped into alignment. It's unlikely to be 'surface plate' flat, and it sounds like you've already discovered that it's not at right angles to the front face ways. Because it's neither a guidance surface, not subject to wear, it was probably milled or planed, with a less good surface than the ways, and probably never was really well aligned.

If you were to stand the column on the FRS and somehow measure the vertical 'tilt' of the front surface ways, you may then believe that you need to remove say 4 thou from one end of the ways. However, because the FRS is only about a quarter of the length of the ways, this translates to having to remove only 1 thou from one end the FRS - much easier! Also, the dovetails and front face ways, and their alignment to each other, should be pristine at either end of the column, and can act as references, so scraping 'tilt' out of the front face ways messes up the dovetails, more at one end than the other, making their re-alignment more difficult.

So, if you need to bring the worn front face ways flat, try to scrape a surface that effectively remains parallel to the plane passing through the unworn face at the ends of the column. Of course, you destroy this reference as soon as you scrape it, but that matters less than you might think. You can rest the column on the surface plate, on the lugs, if you believe they are - or have made them - reference surfaces, and measure the height of the front face. Or you could rest the column front face down, supported at either end, on parallels, and measure the gap twixt surface plate and face. But then, you have to be careful about keeping the places where the parallels will go parallel to each other. So measurement has its problems.

In fact, you can abandon measurement and just scrape the front face ways to the surface plate. You'll get a good idea of how it's going by the way the blue-marked areas move together (assuming the face is hollow). It's bad enough scraping the front face ways flat, without simultaneously having to worry about their relationship to the FRS all the time. No measurement...

Then, it's time to do the dovetails - always a challenge... That's my main reason for suggesting that the front face ways are worked first, with no real regard to the column ends - try to disrupt front face ways to dovetail surface alignment as little as possible.

Then, use this new, 'local'reference plane to adjust the base surface. That's easy for the 'front-to-back' right angle, but the 'sideways' alignment will require a gauge to be made that bears on the dovetail surfaces. (Sideways tilt doesn't matter so much at the spindle housing end, but, at the base, a Leaning Tower of Pisa looks bad...). When that's done, work the spindle housing end, ensuring the ends remain parallel (or at least the 'front-to-back' right angle). You'll need some sort of improvised gauge.. So, work from the most critical surfaces to the least critical.

Incidentally, for bolting faces, as at the top and bottom of the column, there's no need to scrape for a high density of contact points, and the surface can be relieved in areas away from the bolt holes. Then, for correcting alignment, only small areas need to be scraped.

Hope that's clear and helpful. However, there's no 'right' way to do this, just a vast number of ways to make the job more difficult.

Well, I'm pleased you've tracked down a Spong(-oid). I hope you'll be very happy together. I discovered only after my recommendation, that they were defunct. What a pity. However, with no built-in obsolescence, they were doomed to death by accountant.

Edited By Kiwi Bloke on 25/09/2022 10:14:12

Just received MEW No. 319. In my opinion, not quite as bad as others have suggested. Damned by faint praise...

I may not have fully understood your intended approach, and thus your problem. However, here are some thoughts on what my approach to the task would be. There are, of course, other approaches: I'm not claiming mine is the best.

I would start by scraping what can become a 'local reference' plane, by scraping it to the (blued) surface plate. In this case, it would be the front face of the column. I'd try to remove roughly equal amounts from the unworn ends (and try not to think about what a sacrifice it is to remove pristine, unworn surfaces...). A made-up fixture or gauge would be used to try to ensure that the dovetail angles remained reasonably symmetrical - avoid lowering one side of the front face more than the other. No need to get too hung up about the dovetail surfaces yet, you're going to scrape them later. No measurement has been required yet, other than to warn you about the magnitude of the task. And if you think about that, you'll never start!

I'd then work the top and bottom to flatness, using a smaller, liftable(!) surface plate, checking squareness to the front face with a precision square. Get it reasonably flat first, then worry about squareness. The square could either bear on the front face, or the surface plate. The former is easier... Some form of fixture would be needed to check that the two ends were parallel to each other (their separation might be different on each side of the column).

Then the awkward dovetails. A gauge would be made up, to ensure the angle remains correct. Another gauge/fixture is needed to ensure they remain 'parallel' (their separation at top and bottom of column remain equal). The dovetail faces are scraped for flatness to a wide-faced straight-edge.

As you can see, most of the job is done without measurement. Really, that's the great joy of scraping - you can achieve great results with barely any measurement. Of course, there's more to it than this, and measurement can speed things along, but, often, you can think your way around the need for it. If you do get stuck on the idea of, say, plotting a surface's deviation from straightness, you then have to do some maths (spreadsheet!) to re-calculate the deviations from a carefully-chosen reference plane or line i.e. the desired end-point. I favour the lazy option of trying not to have to do this.

Whether the 'lugs' you indicated would be useful reference surfaces, I don't know, but I see no need to use them. The gauges and fixtures I've mentioned are explained by Connelly - it's all there, somewhere!

I suspect you may need to expand your toolkit - you'll need a second, smaller surface plate, a precision square, a straight-edge and made-up gauges.

Thanks for all the comments. I'll respond to a few.

The devolution of the ID verification to a third party is presumably so that, when (not if) things go wrong, the bank can shrug its shoulders, and dump all the blame on the third party.

As far as I can tell, this NYC (Know Your Customer) process is designed to bring the bank benefit, not the customer. Bureaucracy begets bureaucracy: the individual's interests are bottom in the priority list.

Can someone please suggest how the images in this process are supposed to 'prove' my identity? As far as I can see, all it does is show that a face on a document matches a face in front of a camera, and links both to a name on the document. Surely, these images are only of use if they can be compared with those already in an international database. Orwellian?

Nimble, good suggestion. I might try that, but the mechanism has been put in place by the British bank, which doesn't seem interested in offering alternative methods. I fear it's a case of 'Do it our way, or get lost.' Te Reo, what's that? Woke?

An Other: clearly you're further along the path than I am. Expensive 'phone calls just connect me to a script-reader, and end up at a stone wall. Insistence is met with obstinate refusal to deviate from the script.

Tony: yes, you'd think that if 'my' NZ bank 'knew' its customer, it could share its confidence in my identity with 'my' UK bank. But no, I explored that. Whilst banks move millions around the world at the touch of a button, they claim not to 'share' any information with any other bank. So it's 'Let's re-invent the wheel', and companies spring up which are only too happy to provide the service. Consensual identity theft?

Peter, I wish to retain the account. If I fail to 'prove' my identity, my funds will be transferred into some sort of holding account, which I won't be able to access. Goodness knows what obstacles will then be put in my way, should I want to withdraw my own money. I suppose I could withdraw all but one pound, whilst I still can, but the account receives a few, occasional, small pound deposits. These can't be paid into my NZ pound account (why the hell not?), so I'd be out of pocket because of currency exchange fees, etc. However, there's a certain malicious attraction to the idea of getting the deposits paid elsewhere and leaving the account to sleep with a one pound in it, just to annoy. (Yes, I'm that small-minded!) Grrr!

You might think that, by monitoring account activity, laundering might be detected. I suppose that didn't occurred to NatWest. The recent debacle, and their massive fine, has presumably raised banks' sensitivities. Perhaps the banks should first put their house in order, before suspecting us all of being crooks, terrorists and money-launderers.

It's not so much the principle of ID verification to which I object, but the method the UK bank (which I won't name, but you can hazard a guess at) has chosen.

Edited By Kiwi Bloke on 17/09/2022 07:43:14

As I said, a scan is no good, and a passport is one of the documents I don't have!

I did! Spong!

Is there a quiet corner in the tea room where the grumpy old gits congregate? I'll take up permanent residence there, if there is one...

Although in New Zealand, I retain a UK bank account, which I opened about 50 years ago. The bank has now decided I have to 'prove' or 'confirm' my identity. It has devolved this process to a third party firm. The only way offered is for me to send a photo of some photo-ID document, but I don't have any of the stipulated documents. The photo has to be 'live', so I can't upload a scanned image file. Then, I'm also supposed to send a live 'selfie' - again, I can't upload a file. 'Sending' seems to have to be done real-time, direct into the security firm's web site.

How would this 'confirm' my ID? Surely a school-kid could spoof the process.

I'm moderately aware of the risks of the internet and the difficulty of ensuring security. Identity information is surely some of the most sensitive, warranting strong security measures. I don't use a computer with a web-cam, and neither possess nor use a smartphone. So I can't do what I'm being asked to do.

The help desk suggests I 'pop into [my] branch'. Realization dawns that this might be difficult, so the suggestion is made that I get a friend or family member to use their 'phone for me. This is ridiculous! How can I know whether the 'phone is secure, or has been compromised?

I'm being asked to abandon all attempts at internet security, just so the bank can go through some bureaucratic exercise. UK law accepts several methods of identity confirmation. I'm happy to co-operate with the bank, to confirm my identity, provided it can be done securely, but I won't use a method which seems ridiculous. The bank has made no other method available.

As things stand, I will lose access to the account, and so will my wife, because it's a joint account. She has not been involved in the process at all. So she suffers because of my inability to complete an impossible task.

It's one of the main UK banks - they're coming to get you too!

Howi, I'm not sure whether you're agreeing or disagreeing with me. I don't think my post was as clear as it should have been, however.

The bottom (!) line is that Colon cancer is one that's worth screening for, and, fortunately, UK still seems willing to offer screening, although you may need to ask...

Edited By Kiwi Bloke on 16/09/2022 09:54:26

Bit off topic, perhaps. I used various Mint versions (Cinnamon desktop) for many years. It was mostly entirely satisfactory, and pleasant to use. However, something went wrong with an installation on a laptop with a touch-screen, so I explored other distros which were said to be more likely to be compatible with odd hardware. I settled on MX Linux, which has worked even more reliably than Mint, and even comes with a built-in manual. When upgrades are due, I'll be moving to MX Linux on the other machines. Worth a look...

Agreed - fine is best reserved for for espresso.

How about an old-fashioned, hand-cranked Spong? No electrickery bits to fail, and the built-in failure time limit must be a century, at least!

As for a statutory BER age cut-off, thank goodness it would be political suicide to go public with one. However, like all public policy (real or fantasy), it's complicated...

My friends and I watched one of 'our crowd' slowly getting feebler. A stoic, we didn't know he was getting increasing angina. Eventually, he went to his GP about something else, but mentioned his chest discomfort was now more-or-less continuous. Ambulance from surgery to hospital and multiple coronary artery bypass grafts the next day. He was 81. He's now about four years older and transformed. The problem is that he never expected to live for so long, and is complaining that he's rapidly running out of money. He's not happy about it. He claims he would have been happy to have slipped away four years ago.

Moral: you've got to go sometime; interference sometimes misfires.

It is not true that the likelihood of developing colon cancer decreases after 74. Please substantiate any claim to the contrary.

Whether or not it may be true that the majority of colon cancers in people with a genetic predisposition or a predisposing co-morbidity have manifested themselves before 74 isn't very relevant, because these represent only a small minority of colon cancers. However, the risk of developing colon cancer if you have ulcerative colitis or Crohn's disease increases steadily with the time you've had the disease - and therefore age. So, the idea that it becomes a lower probability with age in these circumstances is a myth. The reason for the upper age limit is for the reasons I have previously alluded to.

It's probably true that most colon cancers occur in the 58-74 age range, but that's not a probability statement. It's the number of cancers in the population. People, and thus their cancers, get fewer with age, so it's entirely what you should expect. Think how small the absolute number - not the proportion - of cancers is in the 100-year-plus population. Very few, because the population is so small (even if they were found all to have cancer). So, yes, in the population, the number of colon cancers will reduce with age. That tells you nothing about the probability of being afflicted, however.

I don't think that's correct. The probability of developing (most types of) cancer increases with age. However, the risk of dying from the cancer may decrease, because you'll perhaps die from any of the other causes of death, which are waiting to get you. It is true that some cancers (in some people) are less aggressive with age. It's complicated. And, as you get older, you're more likely to suffer complications from treatment, because you'll be generally less robust than you were. Isn't getting old fun?

Posted by Michael Gilligan on 15/09/2022 00:18:37:

I recently did a Bowel Cancer screening test ... Obvious conclusion being that it’s not worth testing people over 74

MichaelG.

Well, you've certainly opened a can of worms. The obvious response is, "Not worth it to whom by testing people over 74?" Clearly, the individual may think it's worth a lot, but the funding organisation may consider that, for each life saved, the cost per added year of life, plus the treatment cost, plus the added pension payouts, etc. isn't good financial value. The purely medical aguments around screening programmes are complex enough, without considering finance and politics.

To illustrate some of the problems around screening, a screening programme is only appropriate if it causes an acceptably small amount of harm, AND if the disease's natural history is known, so that it has been established that early diagnosis increases survival significantly, AND if there is effective treatment, AND if the disease is 'sufficiently' prevalent in the screened population, AND if the performance of the screening test(s) is (are) good enough. (Capitalised AND to indicate logical AND). This onerous requirement makes prostate screening rather dubiously beneficial to the population, mainly because treatment often causes significant disruption to a symptomless individual, and lots of old men die with cancer cells in their prostate, but not from the disease.

Another problem is that, if the prevalence of a screened-for disease is low (most are), and the screening test is not very, very nearly perfect (none are), the maths generally results in the number of false positives and/or false negatives significantly exceeding the number of true positive diagnoses. This isn't because of medical failings, it's just maths.

If you are found to have a condition predisposing to colonic malignancy (some inflammatory bowel diseases, polyposis coli, etc.), one would hope that you would be offered life-time screening, even by the creaking NHS. And, if you were not, paying for it might be medically wise, but financially a difficult decision.