Member postings for Robin

Experimenting with a 0.5mm rib cutter in aluminium, featuring a Bic biro tip and a thread of rolling tobacco.

Hatches and latches, tight and secure. Radio on, functional, frequency selected. Brakes, on, off, pressure exhausted. Red dangly cloth string things, gone...

I think we are all wondering what you are pushing against?

The answer depends on the angle of that driving face.

Approx 1 ton

I had a similar problem with some worn out bellows on my Roland, desk top, CNC mill, They had gone stiff and didn't want to stay in place.

As usual the problem was, what to search for in ebay?

Eventually I searched for Accordion bellows, then clicked Business, Office, Industrial to get rid of the accordions. Bingo. China gets £10 of my hard earned and I get 1.5m extended

The best defence against corona virus would seem to be quinine based malaria treatment. Some bod spotted that anywhere malaria is endemic they do not have a corona problem. How odd is that?

I didn't know you could grind aluminium. About 54 years ago I was told aluminium would clog the stone and if I was seen grinding brass something heavy would be flung at my head from behind.

This is a really good website, wish I could contribute more but I am seriously out classed.

I've been buying my Thermite on e-Bay...

I think I will be hiding the Dormer bits in my car boot for Sunday best, the hoi poloy can make do with the cheaper sets

I just got a message from Amazon to say they are out for delivery today which certainly warrants a plug... (touch wood).

I am still hopeful. Not quite as confident as I was but hopeful. The bits may have rather wishy washy Brazilian plastic cases but that I can live with...

Back in the day Picador made lovely, snug fitting cast alloy drill stands, but I suppose they all predated the 0.1mm sets.

I got cheap drill bit sets, 1-6mm and 6-10mm in 0.1mm steps, good price.

I hate busted sets and religiously return drill bits to the case, usually the moment they come out of the chuck. Sadly other people are not so caring, the abhorent empty slots appear and I buy another two sets, they don't cost a lot.

But yesterday I was using my 0.1 step set as shim and started measuring them. In the 6.0 to 10.0 set I found 10 repeats. Most odd, surely the measured diameter needs to be within 0.1mm of the stamped on diameter for this 0.1mm set idea to work? You would think?

I have also been caught out in the past by sets having strange helix angles and dubious HSS chemistry. Caveat emptor indeed.

Whatever, I just bit the bullet and bought 2 plastic cases of 118 degree Dormer Jobber bits from Amazon for £194, but will they be up to expectation or am I in for another disappointment? I am still buying on price and hoping the Dormer brand will protect me from my own foolishness.

Am I right?

Edited By Robin on 09/03/2020 12:22:45

There was a lovely theory...

The plants each wanted to grow higher and reach above the canopy to soak up the sun. Tricky because they were all a bit floppy until one of them invented lignin and suddenly the sky was the limit.

Unfortunately the bacteria and fungi that ate dead trees did not know how to digest lignin so the dead trees piled up and then got buried eventually becoming great seams of coal, taking most of the atmospheric carbon with them.

Now the bacteria and fungi have gotten their acts together we neeed to release that carbon back in to the atmosphere, restoring the natural levels in which the plants evolved and adapted to.

In the UK cold WInters come in fours. We remember the cold ones more than we remember the warm ones.

Ice in the Arctic comes and goes with the seasons and it is only very recently that we have measurement of it. The Americans used to bring their new fangled nuclear submarines to the surface at the North Pole just to prove they could,

Sea levels are not moving uniformly everywhere. Land rises and falls. All mid Pacific ocean islands are temporary, the volcano that made them moves on up the chain. One inch rise in seven or eight years is an extra 10.66"" by 2100, will anyone notice?

Polar bears have survived much warmer than this and are becoming a real nuisance.

The climate scientists have made many predictions over the last 30 years to back up their carbon dioxide theory and not one has come true. We have snow in Winter, there is ice in the Arctic, New York and all the Pacific islands are above sea level, we are not overwhelmed by climate refugees, the polar bears are thriving.

The climate scientists made a guess, computed the consequences of that guess, compared those consequences to nature and nature disagreed.

They have failed Richard Feynman's test so they are wrong.

The Appeal to Authority argument, 97% of scientists agree, is one of those logical fallacies we are supposed to rise above using our superior intellects.

So what has gone wrong?

The more I looked in to it the more I realised that we are still in an Ice Age. The glaciations killed off our million year survivor ancestor h.erectus and very nearly wiped us at the same time. This interglacial will end on a fairly gentle slope down, if we can figure out what ends an interglacial then we might be able to fix it. Soot is good at absorbing heat that would usually reflect off the ice sheets back in to space, I think soot could be our salvation. We need to understand the problem before we do anything to try and fix it.

I don't think anyone would call that top piece free cutting.

I just bought a UNC die and a bar of EN1A from GLR to avoid exactly this little snag, I still have faith.

Hmmm.

In days of yore I seem to remember that RS did two kinds of iron bar, EN1A which was not case hardenable and the one with the green paint on the end that was. Taxing my brain here, didn't the EN1A contain lead to make it free cutting and that precluded case hardening?

68 years may have weakened my brain but it comes with nearly a full tin of Kasenit No. 1 so it's not all bad

In 'The Boy Electrician' they glued the glass plates of the Wimshurst generator to their wooden axles using wood glue mixed with Pottasium Bichromate.

Not suggesting for one second that anyone should try this, just wandering down memory lane while I still have a memory lane to wander down

Bravo chaps. I have ordered 100gms of 99.99% pure tin, this is in lumps rather than rods and I am fairly confident it is the real McCoy this time.

Also some Stannol liquid flux, just because it claims to be for tinning steel and isn't a solid lump like the rosin turned out to be.

I think I will experiment with new iron rather than diving in on the 200 year old expensive stuff.

This will be my Christmas entertainment

Re- case hardening would destroy the antique finish. How to do this seems to have been engraved on the back of those tablets Moses brought down from Mt Sinai and they say "Thou shalt solder on a new face with tin".

Rapid have a solder cream that melts at 138C and solders at 215-260C Edsyn CR11 No-Clean SMD Solder Paste Content 10 g

I spend my life soldering which is why I am expecting this will be a real cow to do. I was rather hoping there would be something miraculous about tin. I suppose a splash of Baker's would also destroy the finish, I will need to experiment.

I was weighing with the postal scale so 7.6 may be a bit of an approximation. 5m lomg 1.61mm diam 78gms

I'm trying to buy tin so I can solder hardened carbon steel without tempering it. Apparently tin is the stuff because it melts at 272degC. If you haven't guessed my flintlocks have worn through their case hardenings.

So I bought some on that auction site. What arrived was not tin, I worked out the SG at 2.5 so I'm guessing aluminium.

I found another vendor promising me almost clinically pure tin which just arrived.

I bent it listening for the so called 'cry of tin'... deathly silence.

I tried melting it with my soldering iron and it laughed at me.

I tried melting it with a butane gas lighter and burnt my fingers.

I tried melting it with the gas hob and eventually the end fell of.

I worked out the SG at 7.6 which sounds right so I am now really confused.

Robin