Member postings for Mick B1

Coloured technical drawings certainly reached a high standard in WW1:-

Thank you for posting that - it made very interesting reading.

I was in Production Control management of an aircraft parts company in the early '80s. We had a number of issues with materials and process control, mercifully none as serious as this one. Problems leach into every aspect of storage and manufacture - for example, the laborious investigation necessary to establish whether a specific material called for on a drawing already existed in inventory (prior to introduction of computerised systems) led to new local part nos. being taken out to avoid the work of finding an existing one. Whilst implementing the computer system, I found that one type of cable was being held under 11 separate identities in stock, and nobody in engineering or inspection was aware of more than a couple of them. And there were scores of similar examples.

As Model Engineers, our materials selection and control issues are at kindergarten level compared to those in serious industry.

Spark plugs into alli cylinder heads - instructions might read something like "...turn to finger-tight washer contact, then tighten 1/6th turn only."

Plus I'm with Hopper on this - in the tool design office I used to work in, capscrews were specified in counterbores without washers, leastways that was how every drawing I ever saw or did was done. And some of the press tools did big batches. Toolmakers had a bit of licence though, so it's possible they sometimes added them off their own bat - but if they did I never saw 'em.

Edited By Mick B1 on 20/10/2022 21:08:37

I think it'd be easier to make 'em unless you need a serious quantity.

All that data access for a free burger? Bit like selling ancestral lands for a string of beads...

The 1912 Pattern date in the 9c advert suggests it was intended for use with Mk.VII 303 ammunition, which had a higher velocity and flatter trajectory than the Mk.VI it had begun to supersede 2 years earlier. The range of Lee-Enfields it fitted is shown near the top of the ad - most are known by slightly different names now, but the 'Short' is the SMLE that became the standard service rifle through WW1 and much of WW2 - until the No.4 mentioned above (a reworked Lee-Enfield design) superseded it.

I've never come across them either. The terms don't seem to me much use, as the actual value of the dimension would depend on the corresponding dimension of the mating part, which would complicate detailing considerably if there are multiple instances on a GA and it isn't instantly obvious which is supposed to be fitting what.

The Tool Design office I used to work in was in process of transition from Imperial to Metric standards - as indeed was the product - and in the Imperial case I *tended* to use the spectrum of fits from 'Loose Running' to 'Heavy Drive' with the mating Detail No. specified; whilst in Metric it would *usually* be ISO Hole Basis fits.

*My memory might be imperfect and I can't swear to've been totally consistent

It could get quite complicated sometimes when the component to be produced had Geometric Tolerances specified in Baroque detail. And I have to admit that I don't think I've seen any such since.

That looks a laff. I used to secretly open cap cartons in the shop so I could choose the fattest ones to buy - they did vary.

Do you have to clean the residue off the hammers and the table? It used to corrode mazak toy guns and especially any steel parts like anything...

You're not paying for the tonnage, you're paying for the reliable carbon content, the stable condition, and being round, straight, parallel and to size within tight tolerances. Those are worth that money.

I've always found these shows a bit random - you don't usually know who's doing bargains till you walk about and look at prices. You have to put the time in to find good value. That's why tight and crowded shows like the Midland tend to be tiring. Long queues at the caff as well unless you go in for an early lunch.

I got my milling vice for a nice price at an Olympia show at the last knockings before closing, and I've had a few carbide endmills, slot drills and the like too.

Download the free Gadwin Print Screen, set a rectangular area of the screen to capture, save it as a .jpg file or to the clipboard.

When I was working I used this method for a decade or more to stick sample screenshots into Word docs to illustrate how to use the business software I was implementing.

Example:-

Edited By Mick B1 on 06/10/2022 16:56:56

I bought the angle gauge a couple of years back but don't really use it, or think much of it for that matter. You have to zero it against a known flat surface, it seems to use its battery even when switched off, and its resolution is 0.1 degrees.

My motheaten old M&W Vernier protractor that someone gave me has slightly better resolution at 5 MoA, uses no batteries and doesn't need zeroing, so it's this that ends up doing most angle work that needs gauging.

Completed a dozen Gauge Frame Valve Spindles for the railway's S160s:-

They're in 304 stainless - which sort of half-deserves its 'free cutting' description, but workhardens locally. Mercifully not very deeply. The only bit I didn't do on the WM250V was the 3 right-angled flats at the little end - the divvy head on the Bridgy clone offered too easy an alternative to setting it up in the vice on the vertical slide. Cutting the through-slot in the major diameter was not too difficult, but a bit time-consuming - I tried three ways using jobber drills, slot drills and four-flute end-cutting carbide endmills, but none of 'em were significantly better, quicker or easier than the others.

Major diameters I was trying to hold within +0 -0,01 mm - they go into a sort of squashable bush that I'm not really familiar with, but seems well-established in steam circles. There're one or two of them that go to -0,02 or 3, but I think they'll still be OK.

Perhaps because of his German origins, my dad fed me East African coffee at least from when I was about 4. I can still remember toddling downstairs with the smell of it in my nostrils, thinking "Ahhhh - coffeeeee!"

I think the best I've ever had was Chagga AA, from Kilimanjaro.

I saw a video of some Chagga tribespeople making coffee. They ground it with a tub and a stick - you couldn't really justify the expression 'pestle and mortar'. And they put the smashed-up coffee in the water before boiling it, decanted it to a jug and let it settle before pouring without straining it.

You could tell from the faces of the tourists as well as the makers that it was b100dy marvellous.

There's no point in becoming too preoccupied with the equipment.

The .451 Whitworth was a percussion rifle, so accurate loading would involve weighing each powder charge and controlling compression and therefore ramming depth.

At distances where trajectory becomes significant - which it certainly would be at 500 yards - however good your rifling might be you'd never get results like that if your load consistency wasn't as near technically perfect as the best equipment of the period could provide. Victorian black powder could certainly reach very high standards of quality and consistency.

1 minute of angle is about an inch per hundred yards - the claimed group size is a bit under 1 minute. There are certainly target rifles today capable of grouping in much less than 1 MoA.. For reference, a decent but unexceptional Lee-Enfield .303 is typically regarded as a 2-minute rifle.

I've been using a Warco WM250V for 7 years now, both as a lathe, and with a Myford vertical slide, as a small milling and co-ordinate drilling machine.

It works well and any problems have been of my own making and resolved by my own fixing. I previously owned a Myford Speed 10 for 20 years, and I think the Warco is at least as well-designed.

I've found that cheap blade grinders are perfectly capable of producing a dust-fine grind if that's what you want. My objection to them is that the friction of the blade through the grounds locally overheats them and 'darkens' the flavour.

Nevertheless they're cheap, widely available, and able to produce a drinkable grind if you run them in bursts with a couple of seconds' cooling-rest between, and stop when the biggest grounds are about sugar-grain sized.

I'm unhappy with the length of time this takes, but unwilling to pay the higher price for a burr-grinder until I can see one that works to my liking - but it's very rare to see one in a shop rather than online, less still at a sensible price. All of which means that up to now I've more-or-less decided it's easier to live with the blade grinder.

So many things in engineering end up being a compromise...

Guess that's because nothing is ever perfect, nor can it be.

Edited By Mick B1 on 16/09/2022 16:33:51

I don't know whether unpolished powder is available in graded granule size, but AFAIK polished is usually preferable for consistent performance in smallarms.

In my day FFG (sort of granulated-sugar fine) was usual for longarms, FFFG (a bit more like table-salt fine) for pistols.

But I used modern substitutes like Pyrodex and H777 which took a proper primer flame to ignite, because I didn't want to be storing in the house something that could go with a random spark ...

Edited By Mick B1 on 14/09/2022 20:19:22

Or start with a small charge and fire over some pale background where you can see unburnt powder granules. Keep increasing the charge by small increments until you see such granules lying in front of the muzzle. The increment before that represents the maximum charge of that specific batch of powder that'll burn in that specific barrel, with the ball you're using.

More powder won't blow up the barrel, increase pressure, or velocity - just waste the extra powder.

I call this the Davy Crockett method - with NO historical justification I know of, just that I heard it's what the old backwoodsmen used to do every time they came back from town with a new keg of powder.

Edited By Mick B1 on 14/09/2022 15:11:37

That's probably a pretty fair application of vehicle inspection and repair experience.

Plus sometimes it's not just the nature of the fault itself but what it exposes of the skills and understanding of previous workers on the vehicle, and what other matters might have been affected.

I'd rather trust a vehicle to somebody who works like that than one working solely from a ticksheet.