Member postings for Jon Lawes

Funnily enough my technique is to measure twice, forget the first reading, measure twice again.....

Utterly fascinating. Thank you.

I did wonder about that but some of our lot are a retiring bunch and might not want people to know what they are spending, or if things haven't sold! It's worth considering though. It would certainly be easier I think.

Same for me. Wild horses etc.

Dave, good point, about the 2 bids the same, however I will be bringing and bidding so will have to find a way of being isolated from the process to keep things fair!

NDIY, we are not a huge society and I doubt we will have piles of stock inbound,

A good point. Maybe insisting that all items must have a reserve price, and that Caveat Emptor applies and therefore people to carefully inspect items before bidding. I'll have a look into the finer details on that side, thank you.

I'm looking to organise a silent auction (or similar concept) for our club members to bring along their unwanted tools, castings and parts to auction to other members. As we wouldn't have any real overheads I thought of charging a nominal fee to register as a buyer or seller (say, £1) for the clubs coffers.

Broadly my idea was to have an envelope with each item, then allow registered bidders to put their offer on a note they place in the envelope. Highest offer over reserve wins the item at the end of the evening. I've not attended a silent auction myself, so I'm going on second hand information as to how this might work. Improvements to my accuracy of understanding is welcomed.

Does anyone have any experience of running one of these please? Are there any pitfalls to avoid? Obviously I'd like to keep the admin side as simple as possible so people are not waiting around for ages to find out the results.

Thanks for any help you can give.

Jon.

While trying to machine the back face of some poppet valves yesterday I suffered some unusual breakage of my carbide inserts. They would shatter, but in a laminar manner, coming apart almost like shaley slate. I tried various tool angles, speeds, and kept breaking inserts. I can usually get many hours of use out of an insert and suddenly this was beginning to look like an expensive exercise.

You've probably guessed what the issue was. Once I restarted the lathe in the right direction it all worked fine.... what had further confused me was the machining I had done immediately before this was using an HSS tool and it cut fine.... it's worrying I didn't even notice it was in reverse, especially with a myford chuck being a screw thread!

Just one of those days.... please tell me I'm not the only one....

I doubt most people would appreciate it unless they have seen it first hand, the age is irrelevant.

Now THIS is model engineering. You should serialise it in Model Engineer!

Superb work.

Welcome Tom

I agree.

I can sharpen HSS, but find carbide suits most things I need to do. As mentioned, it's useful for unusual shapes or form tools, but for the most part my pile of HSS cutting tools is gathering dust.

I'm sure most people could operate a treadle lathe rather than an electric motor, but who wants to do that if there is a better option?

The last reversing nut I made was steel, then I pressed bronze sleeves over the pins.

I chose R8 when I bought my mill and I'm glad I did; Primarily due to the extra headroom you get above the table.

I'm in the process of doing this so don't actually have a photo yet, but I have made a bronze fitting which can be easily swapped out for a new one (I'm wary of future proofing my locomotive) which goes between the steam pipe from the dome and has a thread which my ball valve mounts onto. The allows me to mount the ball valve at the nose of the boiler in the right place. To enable me to drive the ball via the lever I intend to use a hollow shaft with a long screw through the middle with the same thread as the screw which currently holds the "domestic" lever on to the ball. With the correct slot in it this means I will be able to attach this shaft to the ball valve through the side of the smokebox. I haven't finalised the details but I suspect I will make a small plate with a closely fitting tube through which the shaft will go. This will allow me a little lattitude with alignment and make future changes of valve easier to accomodate.

This arrangement will not accomodate the full 90 degrees of travel of the ball valve but my initial experiments suggest that a full opening of the ball valve is very unlikely to be needed anyway. The ball valve will not be the greatest impediment to flow even at quite small openings, though it did seem to give a surprising amount of finesse on compressed air.

I do have quite a stock of the old gas cylinders to get through so my preference is for something that is compatible. Thanks for the options though.

Ok interesting, thank you both for your help. I will investigate. I'm not usually one for slavishly following brands but my Sievert burner is easily 40 years old (handed down by my grandfather) and is just lovely to use.

My Campingaz TH2000PZ Piezo Ignition Blowlamp just failed in spectacular fashion (the connector parted company with the plastic base of the body and dumped all the gas at once while lit.... that was a fun few seconds).

I use my sievert propane burner for anything big, I tend to just use this one for silver soldering boiler fittings etc. I don't want to drag the big bottle out every time so like the convenience of the built in bottle you get with a traditional style gas blowlamp.

Does anyone have a recommendation for a good quality gas blowlamp that will last? I have quite a few of the screw thread canisters used by the Campingaz unit (GoSystem branded) so would like to retain that bottle type. I think its fairly standard anyway.

Every unit I've found looks like plastic junk, as seen on some of the more terrifying photos on amazon reviews of melted blowlamps sat on scorched earth! A built in Piezo starter is nice but not essential.

I don't fancy going back to paraffin but they did seem better made....

The books are no longer available new but I think at least one is around as a PDF.