Member postings for Chris Evans 6

Thanks for the reply Clive, I will clean up all the connections and give it a try. Funny thing is it was working perfectly then all buttons seemed to stop working. Any ideas on supplier for a compatable head ? When I was working we mainly had Anilam and I got to know the local agent but he most likely retired before I did.

I have a Taiwanese copy of a Harrison M300. 14" swing and 40" between centres with a 40mm spindle bore, over 20 years old now and still does all I ask of it. I ruled out some good British lathes like Colchester students as some I looked at only had 1" or 1 1/4" spindle bore. Good luck with the search, let us know how you get on.

I have a Newall readout on my lathe that has worked fine for many years. Using it today and the function buttons have become unresponsive. The axis will not zero or let me input numbers. I have tried powering down and leaving it for a while. Any ideas from the collective ? It is the spherosyn reader type but the fault must be on the display console ?

MSC have vice's on their offer sheet this month.

Neil, I guessed it was something on the A38. I live on the A513 and it took three quarters of an hour to get from Alrewas to Kings Bromley, about three miles.

daveb, where are you based ? I use a foundry in the midlands for small one offs. Sometimes from a polystyrene pattern which is cheap and sacrificial.

I am fortunate enough to have a friend with a cutter grinder, I drop into his place a couple of times a year and grind about 40 various size end mills/slot drills. As I don't use the machine often enough to get quicker this takes me around 6 hours. With coffee's and chat of course.

I keep a fair bit of HSS for lathe tools but only a "Knife" tool is mounted up in a holder. All my other tooling is indexable or brazed on carbide. You do need a lathe that is happy at the higher end of speed range to get the best out of carbide though. I recently bought some DCGT tips for aluminium and light finishing on steel, they give excellent results and are not expensive.

You won't wear them out if you use black rolled bar. Avoid "O1" ground stock it is not easy to machine and expensive for no real gain.

Jason's method is how I make engine plates for motorcycles, does not take to long at all. With the job marked out with decent scribe lines it is easy to "walk the milling cutter" around the shape. If you master posting photo's show us some progress when you get there. We love photo's so easy to see what people are doing. Chris.

Look up a company called (from memory) "Dynamoe Regulators" I seem to recall details on his web page or a similar one. My 1929 bike is converted to two brush with a solid state regulator hidden inside an old Lucas regulator housing.

A truck mechanic mate gave me a bottle of liquid sealer used on truck air brakes. Like the railway comment above PTFE tape is now banned. If I can locate the bottle in the workshop I will post the name of it.

Hello Paul, welcome along. All questions posed are welcome, some very clever people on this site.

Hopper, not sure on original method. The tommy bar is broken off and the rest has 90 odd years of rust. Got to make six complete axles.

Agreed, lots of carburation problems are electrical. Whilst I restore the brass bodied carb on my 1929 bike (Bored the body and made a new slide) I am running it on an Amal monoblock. First kick starting comes by using electronic ignition.

As an observation I run my 3HP lathe from a Transwave static inverter. The motor on the lathe is not set up for delta/star so would require finding the star point in the motor or a motor change. If this had been done I could have used a VFD. The electrician who wired my static inverter could not get the lathe to run and I had to get the guy from Transwave to sort it for me. Once done it has been reliable for nearly 4 years of use but on some days sounds a bit odd, turning off and on again usually smooths things out. I run a Chinese VFD on a 2HP Bridgeport mill and it is very smooth.

Revisiting an old thread here. Just had the latest offer sheet from MSC they list "Interstate Forged Adjusta-Clamps" From £14.99 plus vat. These may be what we where talking about.

Thank you David, EN16T it is then. This is my usual go to grade for motorcycle spindles so the 1/4" diameter tommy bar will be of the same grade. I wanted reassurance of using something that did not bend easily at the small diameter. Chris.

Hopper, I also use drills. Amal jets go up in 10s for sizes Mikunis go up in 5s. I am now tasked with replicating Mikuni sizes in Amal jets in the quest to get good carburation using this dreadful excuse for petrol we now have with ethanol added.

Lots of suggestions but I am still searching for a grade of steel to use.