Member postings for SillyOldDuffer

It might, but not necessarily.

This link discusses converting a garage into a living space. It's OTT advice for a workshop but there's good stuff about tackling damp in it.

The Thompson's you have is almost certainly the right stuff. Apply it to the outside of the walls first to stop rain soaking in. You may need 3 or 4 coats - brick can really soak it up.

Cheers,

Dave

I did one of my famous cock-ups.

Now that it's running well I removed the base-plate from the Pottymill engine I'm building to add a decorative chamfer around the edges.

Being me I cut perfect chamfers on the wrong side of the base-plate and created a mirror-image of what's actually needed. Yes it matters. Expletive deleted.

Dave

The chemistry of this is "quite interesting".

Firstly, ordinary rusting is due to Oxygen and Carbon Dioxide dissolved in water. This doesn't have much effect when a boiler is operating because the two gases are taken away with the steam. But if the boiler is left to cool with water and air in it, then rusting will be aggressive. This is why it's important to either dry out an unused boiler or to completely fill it with boiled water and an additive.

Secondly, rust already in a boiler from the first cause provides a site at which an electro-chemical reaction will occur. This together with trace impurities will cause rapid corrosion and pitting.

Thirdly, water is a powerful solvent capable of directly attacking slag or other impurities in the steel. Additives reduce this effect.

Fourthly, the presence of Iron-Manganese Sulphide in boiler plate was once a serious problem as it promoted the formation of rust cones containing sulphates and sulphuric acid that were very liable to perforate the plate. Additives and quality control reduce this effect.

Fifthly, water is decomposed by Iron at about 350C to make Iron Oxide and Hydrogen. The necessary temperature is reached if a tube is coated with incrustation, which is prevented by only using pure water in a boiler.

Ordinary rusting due to air and water occurs on the outside of the boiler as does electro-chemical rusting around impurities. The later mechanism has a strong local perforating action. Consequently some steels are better for boiler making than others.

In a large steam plant like a power station very elaborate precautions are taken to use suitably treated water and materials. For example Copper Alloys are not used at all because Copper is soluble in high-pressure steam (2400psi at 500C). Silica, Chlorides, Oxides, Organics and Sulphates are all carefully removed from the water, not because they corrode the boiler but because they erode the turbine blades.

A carelessly operated boiler won't last long, but good management will extend its life considerably.

Dave

Does your garage have any form of damp proofing? If it doesn't have a damp proof membrane under the floor or there's no damp course, or if the walls are porous, then it could get very moist inside. I fixed a similar problem in a garden shed by liberal application of Thompson's Sealant - floor and walls with special attention to where the wall meets the floor.

I don't have a rust problem in my garage which is part of the house and double-skinned, What helps me here is good ventilation and avoiding quick heat-cool cycles.

If you come into a damp cold workshop and put a heater on, water will be forced out of the air and condense on the nearest cold surface - like your tools. Then, as the heater warms the wet tools up, the combination of warmth and oxygen rich damp accelerates rusting.

My garage door leaks air like a sieve and - apart from lighting - I don't heat the workshop. When I start work the damp air warms up slowly and has plenty of time to escape, condensation is reduced, and a cold workshop slows down rusting.

It works for me because I live in the mild South West and dress like Nanook of the North during winter. Doing the same is a single skinned detached garage in the North might be too uncomfortable.

I developed a condensation problem in the sticky-out hall of my house after fitting double glazed windows and front door. It created an unventilated cold spot in the house where centrally heated warm air dumps moisture. There was no problem when the hall was draughty. A dehumidifier helped.

Dave

Thinking the same way, I did some experimental milling with a pillar drill and got very poor results.

The main reason, I think, is that my admittedly weedy pillar drill wasn't designed or built to resist sideways forces. If I'd gone to the trouble of replacing bearings etc, then I'm sure something else on the drill would have needed stiffening up. I concluded it was impractical to do an effective conversion with my limited skills, time and tools.

I learned from the experiment but decided not to throw good money after bad. I rarely use my pillar drill now that I have a milling machine.

I'm very much a beginner and will be interested to read if anyone did it successfully.

Dave

Just another example of Sod's Law in action.

Plastic bags that you want to decompose instead last 500 years and end up polluting the sea on a grand scale. Valuable tools, works of art or anything else worth keeping all start to degrade as soon as you've paid for them.

Not everything is intended to last. I'm not looking too good myself...

Dave

Very strange that small sizes of c channel are so hard to find on the web. I'm sure I've seen it about.

Very odd. I have similar trouble finding tools in my workshop: anything needed urgently becomes invisible!

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 12/09/2016 20:21:22

How about 20 x 10 x 3 in Stainless? Metals4U

Dave

I found milling on a mini-lathe to be very limited in comparison to a real mill.

The size of the part that can be milled is reduced because what can be mounted is constrained by the dimensions of the slides. Likewise cut lengths are limited by how far the slides can travel - not far.

Holding the work firmly enough in the limited space can be a challenge. And if the tool is held by a chuck it tends to unscrew into the work - not good.

With all that sorted, I found milling on a lathe needed extra skill and patience because the set-up isn't particularly stiff. I was only successful when taking very light cuts. I would probably have done better with more practice.

In conclusion, milling with a vertical slide on a small lathe was hard going for this beginner. Although useful up to a point, the limitations confirmed that - for me - a real mill was needed. As always much depends on who you are and what you're doing. Many people do great work with vertical slides.

Dave

In 'sad person' mode I found it interesting this morning to analyse the published IMLEC results using other criteria to rank performance.

IMLEC rewards thermal efficiency, which resulted in first 'BR Proposed', second 'Duchess of Abercorn' and third 'LMS Patriot'

On the other hand:

• Most powerful: first 'Big Boy', second 'Hunslet Dholpur', third 'Duchess of Abercorn'
• Best Distance: first 'LMS Patriot', second 'Duchess of Abercorn', third 'LNER A4 Wild Swan'
• Fastest : first 'Isle of Man Peveril', second 'Duchess of Abercorn', third 'LMS Patriot'
• Best passenger distance: first 'Big Boy', second 'Duchess of Abercorn', third 'Hunslet Dholpur'
• Best passenger distance per pound of coal: first 'Duchess of Abercorn, second 'BR Proposed', third 'S&D 7F'

The 'Duchess of Abercorn' stands out as a top three performer as determined by six different performance criteria. This is a substantial achievement. 'LMS Patriot' does well too, being 'top three' in 3 categories. 'Big Boy' is a more useful engine than 20th Place in IMLEC might imply. If only it burned less coal!

'Duchess of Abercorn' came second in IMLEC due to a 0.03% inferiority in thermal efficiency compared with 'BR Proposed'. As the measurement errors must be larger than this I think it would have been fair for the Duchess to have been awarded joint first.

If the other performance criteria I tried were relevant to the competition (which they're not), then the qualities of the 'Duchess of Abercorn' are even more impressive.

Health Warning: All conclusions assume the numbers used are correct and that I did the calculations properly!

Well done to everyone who took part and many thanks to IMLEC for running the event and publishing the results.

Cheers,

Dave

Edit: can't spell...

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 12/09/2016 11:19:11

You memory is good. It's very unlikely that your gears are actually Meccano as these are on the small side for a lathe.

Lucky you getting up to Set 9, I never had enough parts to make a big model. Aged 11 I spent a couple of weeks in hospital and the Children's Ward had a pristine Set 10 with several boxes of motors and other bits. We weren't allowed to play with it!

Dave

Find a supplier of brass, aluminium and steel that's intended for machining, either locally or on the web.

When I first had a mini-lathe I fed it with anything that came to hand and the results were often disappointing. Most of the scrap metal in my garage was bad news. Sticky aluminium, gritty steel, tough welded pipe, and work hardening stainless. DIY store metal is mostly horrible too. Cutting decent metal with sharp tools made a huge difference.

Tip two: don't get discouraged when you make mistakes. It's all part of the fun.

Enjoy,

Dave

Just wondering if there is any manufacturing information marked on the case that might identify the plastic? It might be biodegradable, or something like that.

Some plastics are easily damaged by solvents but if that's the cause you seem to have an extreme example. Perhaps something went wrong during manufacture and the plastic is decomposing prematurely. I've no idea if it's dangerous or not.

My kids took 20 years to confess they were responsible for the mystery of the melted polyester carpet. Aged 7 and 9 their angelic denials had me conned completely.

Dave

Could it be a Maraging Steel, as used to make ultra-centrifuges and golf clubs?

No doubt Neil would think of an ultra-centrifuge as being a "Traditional Tool". They were much used in the past to make ye olde enriched Uranium.

Dave

A common misunderstanding!

The PC was IBM's reluctant entry into an already burgeoning Microprocessor market. At the time profits from selling traditional mainframes and mainframe services were being seriously undermined by competition from minicomputer makers. It was fairly obvious as 8-bit microprocessors joined the gamethat not only could money be made from these devices, but that their future potential was huge. They were a major source of competition and opportunity.

Above all else the IBM PC made the Personal Computer respectable to accountants. The idea that it wasd supported by the world's most successful computer company meant that decision makers could buy them in large numbers without having to argue the case for buying the same thing from an unknown start-up. (They were confident about IBM's future even though IBM's accounts were starting to indicate the need for major restructuring.)

IBM didn't have an operating system for their new PC but there were two candidates they could buy in. CP/M-86 was in pole position. It was based on by far the most popular microprocessor operating system, CP/M-80. The other candidate was the much less well known MS-DOS. Back then Microsoft was a tiny company best known for their successful BASIC interpreter and compiler.

The story goes that that Digital Research's Gary Kildall was on the golf course when IBM rang to offer him the contract and, over-confident of his position, he gave them the run-around. IBM weren't impressed with DR and went to Microsoft instead.

My point is that neither IBM or Microsoft was essential to the development of personal computing. There were and are plenty of alternatives that would have put us more-or-less where we are today. A slight twist of history might have us all bashing evil corporate Linux at the expense of the brave little Microsoft and their Open Source offering.

What's most interesting to me is that technical merit often plays such a relatively minor part in events. Money, politics, risk, greed, chance, ignorance and emotion were all more significant factors in the PC revolution, at least from where I was standing.

None of this is new. James Watt got nowhere until he was partnered by Matthew Boulton. Boulton's access to money and his credibility in the marketplace were essential to trigger the steam revolution. It's why successful salesmen get paid more than successful techies. What people believe is more important than what people know.

Cheers,

Dave

More likely that the people publishing the results aren't aware of, or don't care about, the convention.

Too many significant figures in this type of endeavour doesn't upset me at all. I know without the need for a formal assessment that there must be many inaccuracies in the methodology.

By the way, I hope no-one takes the statement that there must be inaccuracies as a criticism of IMLEC. It's an interesting event for Model Engineers rather than an experiment at CERN. As such I like it very much.

Now if we organised an "IMLEC for Geeks", things would be different. It would be possible to tighten up the experimental conditions to obtain more accurate results and better data.

The trouble is that "IMLEC for Geeks" would be time consuming and dull. Better numbers at the cost of human interest. Perhaps this sort of Model Engineering is an acquired taste. I suspect that relatively few forum members are interested in theory, alas! For example no-one has commented on Neil's use of r-squared, or his observation that there must be errors in the table.

Cheers,

Dave

PS I still haven't seen this year's IMLEC results. I'm one of the victims of the ME4542 catastrophe, apparently the worst thing to happen in publishing since the Wicked Bible hit the streets. I'm having counselling...

Well that's just typical. My deliberate attempt to start a ruckus fails and then I put my foot in it by accident.

Sorry!

Dave

Mike and Neil - you are both far too gentlemanly!

I do my best to attract fulminating content and millions of hits, and all I get is violent agreement.

And Neil using the LIKE word on me is a deadly way of defusing a good row. How could I possibly take issue with someone who likes something?

Back to the drawing board...

Dave

Before my mini-lathe went to a good home I experimented extensively with the effect of bolting it down versus not bolting it down. So far as I could tell it made absolutely no difference.

My new (bigger) lathe is different. It would probably benefit from being bolted down as there's evidence of slight vibration at certain speeds. I put this down to the bigger machine being proportionally relatively less massive than a mini-lathe and, on it's stand, having a comparatively high centre of gravity. It also has more power and heavier work to do.

Another job for my list.

Dave

This is a really good subject for one of those "I've come for an argument" discussions!

I would argue that Office is a classic example of the "Proprietary Trap".

There's no technical reason why a word processor should generate files containing features that are incompatible with another word processor. There's a profit motive for compromising inter-operabiliy and some vendors repeatedly fall foul of anti-trust legislation and the like. It's revealing that they can afford to keep paying fines running to billions of dollars.

An enterprise will have big problems escaping from a proprietary trap. Once addicted it's painful and expensive to give up such software once it's deeply embedded across the organisation and it's partners.

Not using incompatible features is a good strategy. Word processors have been adding features ever since Mr Wang hit the market in the 70's. Nowadays very few people are capable of using all the capabilities of their word processor. I wonder what it is that new versions of Office provide that's so essential?

In the spirit of starting a row, I declare that proprietary software will end civilisation as we know it; it's only used by people who've been brainwashed; people who like it won't be invited to the rapture; they'll be drummed out of the regiment; and we should all be using quills anyway.

If anyone wants to punch me there's no need. I'm only online causing trouble because I have a messy nose-bleed. Ho hum.

Cheers,

Dave