Member postings for George Becker

I like to first coat or soak the disassembled tool or part with paraffin oil and then try and remove as much loosened oil and rust as possible, Depending on the degree of rusting and the nature of the surface to be cleaned that can mean anything from steel brushes, various grades of sandpaper and/or steel wool, to scrubbing with an old toothbrush.and working into corners with toothpicks. In the case of a precision tool like you gear calipers I often use a diamond sharpening card to clean off the surface rust. Unless the etching is very fine it won't be disturbed by the diamond card. Be aware however that the surface appearance will be changed from the original since you are now undoubtedly using a different grit and if the original is a pickled finish you will be changing it You may also be surprised to find that the original non.bearing surfaces are not particularly flat so as you work over them the newly finished areas expand in patches until the whole surface is leveled. If you are not willing to completely level the surface the resulting look will be most peculiar. Rather than that it would probably be best to just get off the surface rust with the gentlest treatment possible. As Hopper suggested you can use an oilstone to finish. I use razor hones quite a bit for final finishes. Should you use oilstones on flat surfaces they should be flat, not difficult to do using the three plate method. With a pair of oilstones you can get all four large surfaces flat with a little persistence, or even all twelve surfaces if you are so inclined, using nothing other than the stones themselves. I don't care for abrasive papers for anything past initial rust removal. I at least find it too easy to slightly round off corners if the paper is just laid on glass. Gluing the paper down is troublesome and doesn't give me the flat abrasive surface I would like. .Be very conservative when it comes to the actual measuring surfaces and bearing surfaces. If they are still true with only a slight bit of rust certainly nothing more aggressive than 0000 steel wool to just clean off the surface rust is called for. You will find wire brushing does a nice job in cleaning the knurled surfaces of the adjustment and clamping screws. As Hopper mentioned, citric acid has the potential to lift the filling out of the graduations and the numbers. While refilling the etched markings isn't particularly difficult, if you have left rust pits and rough areas on the surface, it is likely that they will to some extent get filled along with the engravings and you will have quite a time trying to remove the unwanted filling while leaving the filling in the engravings in place. As a final step I like to take the disassembled parts, gently heat them to drive off the surface moisture, coat them with a microcrystalline wax, let dry, buff and reassemble. The wax treatment seems to give good protection but only if the surface moisture is driven off first. Otherwise you may find rust redeveloping. Wiping down with lanolin is also a good approach as long as the tool is not kept on a surface that wicks the lanolin away. Have you ever tried Camphor in your tool boxes? I find it effective and far more convenient than keeping every individual tool in VPI. If you have any less valuable tools with a bit of rust, perhaps even an old sawblade or a trowel lying about, you might try some of the above approaches, citric acid, sandpaper, stoning, or steel wool and WD40, and see which give you a pleasing result, before starting on a somewhat rarer item.

Andrew,

Neil is right on the money. There are three problems that loom large with 3 jaw chuck runout. One is amount of runout at any given diameter, two is runout variability over the whole range of diameters, three is repeatability of setting accuracy at any particular diameter. If you are really looking for zero runout you are not likely to achieve it repeatably with the worn American chuck you mentioned. A worn mechanism is not likely to give the same results on retightening if the runout tolerance is really zero. I you are chucking up a single part a rubber or leather mallet with or with out shimming might be the easiest route. Even if rechucking the same or same diameter parts the mallet might still be the easiest. If you are talking about a long production run perhaps a hard look at tolerances is in order or maybe a look at an alternative workholder or both. A chuck that runs to tight runout tolerances consistently, especially over a large potion of its range is to be treasured. A question about you Czech chuck. Running out of true does it cause any vibration problems?

George

Andrew,

Glad to hear that Sheffield has survived with less pain than Detroit. In the 1950's Detroit proper had a population of about 1.8 Million. Now it is in the 600 thousands. You are quite right about corporate ownership, it just irks me to not call things what they are.

George

Welcome Charles,

Looks like two Americans in a row joined the forum. I just joined a couple of days ago. It seems to be a very knowledgeable and friendly group here. Did you happen to visit the North American Model Engineering Show in Wyandotte, Michigan a couple weekends ago? There were many very nicely done scale steam engines on display and a lot of modelers willing to share their experience with you. Speaking of museums if you happen to have a chance visit the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. It is a great place to view historical engines and machinery of the industrial revolution. Be sure to check the forum posts here. They are fascinating in their own right and contain many leads for further exploration. Who knows maybe you will get the machining bug yourself.

Once again greetings,

George

Roger,

Michael is almost certainly right about the pitch since 22 TPI comes out to 1.155mm pitch. I am guessing that the measurement .of .87 is a nominal 7/8" major diameter. I would expect a British thread cut in the 1920's to have a TPI specified pitch rather than a metric. Does the thread appear to be coarser or finer than 22 TPI? I came up with an American Extra Fine specified 7/8 x 22 thread. but that is as close as I could come to something that is not just a special thread.

George

Neil,

By decent disposable income I meant that audiences had money to spend on entertainment and support numerous venues, and musicians, especially those starting out, had a way to make ends meet, by means of relatively well paid employment, without being totally reliant on earning from music. Certainly artistic inspiration can be found in the surrounding material culture, but it becomes a bit easier to achieve artistic goals when ones time is available for art instead of simply working interminable hours at subsistence wages.

George

Richard.

Hello. Regarding Detroit housing prices. The city has been aggressively demolishing totally deteriorated housing of the past couple years. I believe speculators and rehabbers have bought up most of the marginally liveable or restorable housing while what remains on the market may some of the better properties. Much of the vacant land has been purchased by adjacent property owners to expand their lots I even read a few years ago that there as a tree plantation being started in the city on a farm sized portion of land. There is also redevelopment in the central core in some areas that has driven up values somewhat in those areas. However large swathes of the city still remain pretty desolate.

George

Neil,

"what is the link between heavy industry and music?" A decent disposable income perhaps?

George

Mike,

You are quite right about Motown. About all that is left in Detroit is the Motown museum, Hitsville USA, which is located in the modest former residence and studio of Berry Gordy and a few aging Motown musicians and performers.. Ted Nugent while originally from Detroit first made it musically in Illinois. After moving back to Michigan he located near Jackson which is about an hour and one half drive west of Detroit. If I remember correctly he had some 3,000 acres of land out there which he may still own even though he has long since left the state. Funny you should mention foreign ownership I still hear Chrysler being referred to as an American car company when it is in fact only a Fiat nameplate now. Under the iconic Jeep brand we now have the Jeep Renegade which is built on the Fiat 500 platform. Of course that is no farther from the original Jeep concept than the bloated Jeep Wrangler which weighs in at around 5000 pounds. The Wrangler is a far cry from the World War Two vehicle that was less than half that weight.

George.

Edited By George Becker on 04/05/2017 11:04:56

Edited By George Becker on 04/05/2017 11:11:07

Andrew,

Thanks for the welcome. Windsor certainly has a reputation for nightlife especially among the younger set. A lot of it is due to the disparity in drinking age which is 18 in Ontario but 21 in Michigan so there is quite a bit of cross border entertainment traffic. About being questioned about guns many years back somewhere around a dozen Baptist ministers on a bus were arrested attempting to cross into Canada while in possession of their handguns. That despite signs on the American side warning that handguns are not permitted in Canada. If nothing else the driver should have known and warned them.

George

Neil,

Thank you for welcoming me. Detroit has indeed been hit hard but I don't know that is worse than other locations. The steel industry throughout the nation has been devastated. When I was a boy I lived close to the Detroit river and during the summer there was always at least one ore boat, (800-900 foot long iron ore carrier) in view on the river and very often 3 or 4 at the same time. They were carrying ore from Lake Superior to the mills in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. Nowadays you can often look down from the bridge crossing to Windsor, Ontario Canada and not see any in either direction. I was recently told that all that remained of the Bethlehem Steel Works was a portion that had been converted into a casino. Funny, I really never cared for Alice Cooper. Much more a Hendrix fan.

George

Geoff,

Thank you for the welcome. I still have some Moore and Wright and Shardlow precision instruments and tooling, some of which is among my favorite kit. Is the steel industry in Sheffield all in smaller plants now or are there still some large works operating?

Chris,

Thank you for the welcome note. You are lucky to have visited in the 90's. That is about the last time that the smaller engineering firms could still make a go of it and even then the decline was setting in.

George

Hopper,

Thanks for the welcome. I presume you are still in Australia. I am a bit curious. Before the great influx of Chinese tooling what countries commonly supplied machine tools to Australia and was there a large machine tool industry native to Australia. I can't recall seeing much here of Australian manufacture except some drafting equipment.

George

Andy, Thank you for your welcome message. Detroit proper is showing some minor signs of recovery but the population decline is still continuing. Manufacturing seems to have somewhat stabilized in the metropolitan region, partially due to some consolidation in the auto industry where plants in other areas have been closed and the work moved to Detroit. Partly also there is an uptick in automated manufacturing. However overall manufacturing employment is at a lower level in both numbers and pay levels as lesser skilled workers comprise more of those employed.

Brian,

Thank you for the warm welcome. Re: Steel City decline. I guess the hollowing out of older industrial cites is quite common. Advancements in manufacturing have taken their toll on the skilled trades.

George

Hello,

Having been a lurker for some while I am now looking forward to full participation. Not to be mysterious I am located in Detroit, Michigan USA, a onetime paradise for the engineering arts. After starting in lost wax foundry in the late 1960's at age 16 I have watched the decline of small shops for about 50 years. Once there were countless small tool and die and numerous local industrial suppliers in the Metropolitan region. Now most of it has gone. The only positive thing I personally gained was access to used machinery and tooling at rock bottom pricing as Detroit's industrial base faded away. The manual skills that were once abundant mostly resided in the heads and hands of machinists either retired or close to retiring. It is precisely sites like this that offer some chance for the old skills to be recorded and hopefully applied by an interested younger generation. Retired myself ,my current interest is in restoring old scientific equipment. and creating specialized tooling to help in that pursuit.