Member postings for martyn nutland

A very basic question I'm afraid, but something about which I'm not sure.

How 'steady' should a fixed steady be? I run a Chester Super B and a couple of years ago I bought a fixed steady and a traveling steady for my machine from Chester. Thus one can assume I have the right part for the model.

But when I use the fixed steady I find it very difficult to get a solid set-up. I.e. the steady's fingers never grip the workpiece very firmly nor its feet the bed of the lathe. I use packing between the gybs on the steady and the underside of the bed and that does help but I'm never very happy with the arrangement.

So, question very simply is, are we looking for 'solid' or is 'slop' what one would expect?

Thanks in advance for any guidance.

Martyn (and a reflective Christmas and a peaceful, safe, and above all, healthy 2016 from Paris and this troubled world of ours.)

Howard

Many thanks for that.

Much food for thought and a lot to be studying before even considering whether such a thing could be made.

Thanks again.

Martyn

Dear Chris

Did they really never tell you what it was you were machining? Bearing in mind schools don't normally have huge budgets for this sort of thing, it can't have been from a wide choice.

Let's see now... black, maybe grey, cuts like plastic? Something 'ny-lony' it has been suggested? Sort of thing they are making troll suits from these days, I imagine.

Best

Martyn

Thanks John.

Encouraging. Before I was put off, I thought of using something like 'Cog' Wheeler's air-pump as the body and adapting it.

Not sure, from your message whether he replicated the 'tiny Shorrock' or bought it. If it was brass I guess he made it himself to a Shorrock design as that make was very popular at one time. I seem to remember you used to see 'ads' for them in magazines like Motor Sport.

Austin, as I'm sure you know, supercharged one model of the Seven - the EA Sports commonly known as the 'Ulster'. They used the French make of 'blower' - Cozette. I think it was the Cozette number two, but I'm not sure of that and I've never actually seen one on the bench.

Thanks again for the comments.

Martyn

Thanks again for all the input. Really appreciated.

Of course, I know about putting on an SU carburettor, opening up the ports, increasing the compression ration, fitting a Phoenix or some other species of non-original crankshaft and all the other bells and whistles like Honda pistons. The question was, could I make a supercharger.? The answer is clearly NO!

Best leave it there now methinks.

Thanks for the views.

Martyn.

Throw it out now. If it's anything like my uncle Arthur's brew it'll be vile and underpin what already promises to be a dismal Christmas.

Get round the 'offy'.

Martyn

Thanks Chris.

No way will I be going ahead with this. I've been sufficiently put down and put off.

By the way, the Seven crank is steel. I'm not that daft after 50 years around them.

Thanks for the input.

Martyn

Thanks all. Much wisdom. Consensus: 'Don't try it'. Conclusion: I now won't.

Thanks again, everybody.

Martyn

My modest machining skills no way measure up to this at the moment - and may never. But my ultimate goal is to make a mechanically driven supercharger for an Austin Seven. (It would need to 'blow' at no more than 7 psi)

Do members think this would be feasible for a non-professional i.e. someone who, unlike many of our distinguished forum participants, hasn't served a formal engineering training?

Has anyone done it!

Has anyone ever seen a drawing?

Is the amount of material (e.g. for the body) so great as to make it financially unviable, or, might a steam engine cylinder casting be an economical start point.

Any views appreciated to help me start thinking rationally.

Martyn

You most certainly do need to worry about this.

I have the same type of push on/off tap on the Austin Sevens' under-bonnet tanks, that if they leak (mine do), can deliver very accurately a drip directly onto the hot exhaust. Then it's whoosh! No car and perhaps no me.

Don't faff about with wine bottle corks, or Teflon inserts (I have and it doesn't work) or with trying to over-tighten the joint with Mole Grips. Get new seals or, better, a replacement tap. These are readily available for the Seven and I expect they are from the specialist suppliers for whatever it is you have.

Good Luck

Martyn

And I was confused as a child by signs that referred to 'Track Laying Vehicles', notably on bridges over the Abergavenny-Brecon canal.

And on the hill out of Abbeville, to this day, there is the ghosted remnant (just) of an Austin advertisement in script from the BMC era.

Martyn

Neil

Totally understand. Guess I'll never now get the joke! Not to worry.

Joking apart. Maybe I was being over sensitive and venting my spleen inappropriately. But you can imagine what it's like here. The atrocities were our side of 'town' and the drama and desperately sad outpourings continue hour by hour. Not many laughs!

I thought it might be nice if somewhere in the ME firmament - forum, magazine, whatever, we could have just a sentence expressing solidarity. We are, after all, a global community and this is the land that gave us all Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Eiffel, Bienvenue and dozens more, including - although I've forgotten his name - the man who invented the steam injector!

All the Best. God Bless.

Martyn

I'm still waiting, here in Paris, to 'split my sides' on the dot punch joke, whatever it is.

Why doesn't Peter Shaw refer to General Engineering by R L Timmings (Longman 1995) and on page 158 he can discover exactly what a dot punch is.

Maybe he should 'try harder'; at least at being funny.

Martyn Nutland

We're a bit light on humour here in France at the moment.

So what was the b----y joke?

Could we give sort of nonsense a miss?

Martyn

Thanks for all that. Both the laser and edge finder seem 'doable'. But I reckon for my purposes Steve Withnell's approach will suffice and, of course, comples with Marc L'ecuyer's advice - move the head as little as possible.

Martyn

I took John McNamara's advice and watched Marc L'ecuyer's videos and they are, indeed, excellent. Everything John described.

In the ones I saw Mr L'ecuyer describes at some length setting the head on a column type 'mill' then trying not to move it again. I have a Warco Economy machine with which I'm very pleased and use a lot. As members will know, this is a round column design (not like a Bridgeport with a 'knee' where you raise and lower the table) and I wind the head up and down fairly frequently to accommodate different tools and jobs.

What I'm now wondering is whether this is bad practice.

Mr L'ecuyer tells us to use the 'long tool method'. That is, fit your longest tool to the quill as accurately as you can - in my case that would probably be a collet arbor and about a 20mm end mill - tighten the head with it in position then leave it alone and only use the quill thereafter.

Makes sense?

However, I guess if you don't adhere to what Mr L'ecuyer advises you might swing the head around the column to some extent to access some jobs. But if you do follow his rule couldn't you normally reach the work by winding the table on the X or Y axis or both?

Martyn

Don't want to get too drawn into this.

John

Don't buy a bike (too dangerous). And don't, in despair, sell all that expensive kit.

I know how you feel.

I live in France and I did when I started at this game, and all I could get my lathe to produce was steel dust. And as you'd expect, I couldn't find a soul to help and really did want to ditch all the seemingly useless stuff I'd bought and had wanted all my life.

But two super engineers, one from New Zealand and one from the UK, who were passing through the country, stopped by for a weekend and put me on the right track. I will be eternally grateful to them.

However, to me, a beginner myself, what you want to do sounds tricky by any standards. Would it be easier to make something very simple for starters? I made brake camshafts, road spring anchor pins, oil filler caps, oil pipe blanking caps, all for my Austin Sevens. They gave me huge satisfaction to produce, but even then I found these 'simple' parts harder to execute than I supposed.

And I also wonder, if you're 'into' bikes - I'm not - if there might be someone in that fraternity, possibly of the 'old school', who might show you? For heaven's sake, we're talking human kindness here not turning a quid. Finally, and as I see it, these model locomotives/traction engines etcetera, that we see pictured all the time, really are master-class stuff. I've never met anyone who has built one, and in a fairly long life have met very, very few who could, so I guess you are asking for help from a rather elitist band.

Hope that gives encouragement.

Martyn

Bob

Many thanks. I can go from there.

Wasn't sure you had involved a milling machine. Now I know you did, much more obvious.

Thanks again.

Martyn

Hello Speedy

Congratulations on a very neat starter dog. I had to make a couple of these and at the time could only perform the operation by saw and file.

If it's not too much trouble I wonder if you could tell me how exactly you set up the tooling to cut this as I would like to learn for the future?

Thanks in advance.

Martyn