Member postings for Georgineer

You'll find that the original diameter of the lace isn't critical - they can be manipulated (within reason) to be shorter and fatter, or longer and thinner.

George

I can't tell what size your hoses need to be, but I'm experimenting with cotton shoelaces for recreating 1920s braided wire harnesses. (It's not an original idea - I've swiped it from the interwebs).

There's a huge variety available in terms of length, colour, diameter, materials, density of weave. All I do is snip off the aiglets, pull out the inner strings, and push the braid over the wire. It takes a bit of practice, but it's really easy once you've developed the knack.

And if you fancy a bit of bling, there are pink and other bright colours available, with metallic threads in the weave!

George

Mine never went away. I've used it with a cheap-and-cheerful fan for many years, and it gives smooth progression of speeds from nearly-nuffink to full-whiz. It has never given any problems at all, and on the occasions when I need it for a workshop project I choose a cool day and borrow it back from the living room.

George

Interestingly, Chris, I spit feathers when I'm parched, but I spit tacks when I'm angry. There must be a genetic mutation somewhere in one of our ancestors!

George

I really enjoy the series, which I watch with my wife, and agree with John Doe 2 about the presenters. Yes, they are a bit over the top, but I feel it's because they love their subject, not because they are being presenterish. In particular, I enjoy Siddy's deep knowledge of the subject, which sends a message that it's OK for a young, attractive woman to be enthusiastic about engineering things.

The only time I have fallen out with the programme was when an expert from the London Transport Museum stated that passengers changed from electric-hauled to steam-hauled trains (and vice versa) at Rickmansworth on the Metropolitan line. Nonsense! The passengers stayed put and the locomotives were changed. I was at school at 'Ricky' in the early sixties and caught the train every day, and there was always either an electric loco or a steam loco at Ricky station, waiting to be coupled to the next train. Schoolboy heaven!

I saw the introduction of the new 'silver' trains and the gradual disappearance of the old brown slam-door trains. It was an interesting time.

George

Before the war a friend of my Mum's worked in the Smith's factory at Portchester and her job was to wrap up the salt in those little screws of blue paper. She got paid some tiny amount, like 2d a hundred. The supervisor used to sample each batch for tightness, and if one leaked salt the whole batch was rejected and she didn't get paid for it. Eventually the work was done by machine.

I still miss the delicious smell when I drive past the site. Much nicer than the sickly smell of chocolate when we lived downwind of Cadbury's factory on the Wirral.

George

Is there any other sort?

I have to confess that I didn't realise that I was answering an ancient thread. I would also ban the exhumation of hundred-year-old threads for the sole purpose of raising contentious points about political issues in another country.

George

Ban toast. It contains cancer-causing dioxins!

George

From my observations, I think that thermal expansion is a real thing. The hotter the weather gets, the longer the girls' legs become.

As far as today's heat is concerned, I had to walk home at about four o'clock from the charity shop where I do PAT testing. I was fine for a while, then suddenly I came over all faint. By sheer chance I was outside an air-conditioned ice-cream parlour at the time, so it all turned out well in the end.

George

Dad showed me an article about forty years ago - I think it was in the Civil Service Motoring Association magazine - reviewing a number of fuel-saving devices. The author found that they were all as effective as their makers claimed but also found that as a result he could no longer use his car.

The problem was that they saved so much fuel that every time he used it, he ended up with petrol flooding out of the filler cap.

George

I would have thought that washing soda, being quite strongly alkaline, would be tough on your skin. We used sodium sesquicarbonate as bath salts, which I presume is half way between sodium carbonate and bicarbonate (more properly known as sodium hydrogen carbonate). Probably still tough on the skin, but we were young and resilient then.

George

It's probably too late for Rik, but I've just come across this useful page in Engineering Workshop Data by Arthur W. Judge (Caxton 1950). I'll add it in case it's of use to anybody :

Though I am reluctant to exhume a thread which died eight years ago, I feel it's important to correct some incorrect information within it to avoid misleading future readers of this thread

The original diagram comes from the website of the American firm Gage Crib Worldwide and is based on a lot of incorrect assumptions, not least of which is that the truncated Whitworth thread didn't comply with any standards. In fact it was fully specified in B.S. 84-1940 (Amendment No. 3, August 1945).

In particular, the thread root was not a V, but had the same profile as the 'normal' Whitworth thread.

I have emailed Gage Crib to offer them corrected information. It will be interesting to see if they respond.

George

I wouldn't use scrap, which tends to come in the wrong sizes. Instead use dry sand, lead shot, ball bearings, small nuts and bolts, aniseed balls, hundreds and thousands.... even Hopper's coins, if he will lend them to you.

Andrew is right in saying the question is incompletely specified; you didn't tell us the tolerance, Neil!

George

Possibly one of these:

https://cpc.farnell.com/deltron-enclosures/590-0520/5-pin-domino-locking-din-plug/dp/CN00046

George

My rivet snaps are marked (by the manufacturer) with the diameter of the rivet shank.

George

Various points from the discussion so far:

According to the display shelves in my local Halfords, there is a range of products sold under the WD-40 banner, so referring just to "WD-40" is meaningless these days, similar to specifying paint by calling it "Dulux".

If you approach the fan blade from the front it will try to throw your finger out, and you would have to be very careless to sustain an injury. Approaching it from behind is a whole other story.

The principle behind lubricating locks is to avoid using anything liquid, because that picks up fluff and grit from the key and eventually gums up the works. Powdered graphite is both solid and slippery but æsthetically unsatisfying. Two out of three isn't bad.

George

I don't know what the top-hamper on the bench gizmo, but the cast base is a standard pattern for retort stands and similar lab equipment, so the glassworking explanation sounds convincing.

George

Are you sure about that? I think you may be thinking of carbon dioxide, which when dissolved in water becomes carbonic acid.

Sodium carbonate dissolved in water gives an alkali (either that, or I taught my science classes wrong for all those years, and my chemistry master before me).

I presume that the black finish alkalis give is caused by the alloying elements which aren't dissolved by the alkalis, but I stand open to correction on that.

George

Just throwing an idea out, without any idea at all if it could be useful - a lot of alkalis (such as washing soda (sodium carbonate) and caustic soda (sodium hydroxide) will blacken aluminium, or at least turn it dark grey.

George