Member postings for Nick Clarke 3

If you are a club secretary, treasurer or similar you may need to update to receive security updates to be seen to be ensuring data security under GDPR - but that is an entirely seperate minefield still!

I am not certain these are available for retail or OEM customers - only volume licencing or Cloud Solutions

At school 50+ years ago the school Railway Society (an amalgamation of the Locomotive Society and the Model Railway Club) used to meet Friday lunchtimes and several times a year we used to show British Transport Films - free to the school except for the return postage. All are now availble on dvd and many on Youtube or BFI as well.

We used to charge a nominal fee as far as I can remember, but as projectionist (they were all on 16mm) I got in free.

Favourites included 'Elizabethan Express', 'Giants of Steam', 'Snowdrift at Bleath Gill' and 'Lets go to Birmingham' and of course 'Night Mail' if the Benjamin Britten score is not too modern for you.

'A Letter for Wales' is only available on dvd but has some good shots of steam locos and a Hunslet quarry tank at work in its original setting.

An amazing film showing exactly what NOT to do to stay safe near the railway is 'The Finishing Line' Full version is 20min with lots of fake blood and gore!'

Nick

Not certain what happened to me then, being a fifties model myself - and not only that, my late mother used to meet Cecil Moore, Myford founder at parties given by Patty Coleby, landlord (landlady??) of the Nottingham SMEE's workshop in the seventies.

Edited By Nick Clarke 3 on 12/01/2020 11:54:13

A Myford ML7 can (depending upon condition) be an excellent lathe but can it please be looked at in the cold daylight of its history.

It was designed in the later years of World War 2 and put on the market in 1947 - a long time ago! The comments about steel are not necessarily true, and in the case of a lathe where the major proportion of its construction is cast iron or zinc alloy probably irrelevant as well. Like many other products introduced around that time the choice of materials was probably decided as much by what was available in immediate post war years as by engineering need.

If you read the review of the Myford Super 7 in ME Jan 15 1953 it clearly suggests that the ML7 was designed to provide the best lathe that was affordable and the Super 7 was introduced to try to address some of those compromises. It specifically mentions the clutch as being necessary for 'a lathe running at high speed' suggesting that its inclusion is less important for a ML7 with its slower top speed.

Many Myford lathes are now of pensionable age and unless preserved in good condition may well be past it - I can think of two I have access to now - one has a bed worn to the state that there is 1/8th swing on the saddle when cutting and another with a parallel bore to the nose of the spindle because that was necessary to accommodate a job in the past.

The basic technology of a Myford ML7 is 19th/early 20th century while that of Chinese lathes seems to be more (but not that much more!) recent.

A Myford or similar lathe can be a joy to use - but in the same way that I find my ridiculously expensive Leica film camera more pleasant to use than a far cheaper digital SLR - but the quality of image doesn't differ in the same way. Similarly comparing a Myford with accessories and motor ready to run with a Chinese lathe at a half or a quarter of the cost may not produce better work. I certainly could not have afforded a Myford lathe for the price of the new Sieg machine I bought - and restoring one I could afford to accuracy would probably have been beyond my skills.

Please don't think I am against Myford lathes - but their age and older design, and the times they were designed for must count against them today, except in a few very well cared for or little used examples.

When I worked at a motor factors in the seventies we sold trim clips which came in boxes of 100 direct from Tucker's - the manufacturers.

One clip was a T shaped plastic thing that had a hammer in stalk and was used to hold chrome strips onto the side of cars. Round the corner was a Ford dealer and customers told me that this clip, if you said you wanted one for a Cortina or similar was twice the price there. Curiosity set in and after making a few enquiries over the phone I discovered it was dearer again at a Triumph dealer, and more expensive than that if you went to the other end of the counter in that same dealer where they sold Rover spares.

A friend (Chairman of the local ME club at that time) ran an independent Rolls Royce and Bentley garage and we sold him trim clips. I wonder what he charged for them?

I bought a Sieg SX1L from Arc which has since been updated. It is a bit small for what I might need at some stage, but I have occasional access to a larger one at the club and I could not fit a larger machine in my own workshop. It is very useful and extremely convenient if accept it's limtations.

From some hard experience in matching car paint (part of my job in the seventies before scanners were ever thought of) 'Some degree of colour matching would be required' reads to me as 'This needs to be exact but I can't tell you what colour it is'

I would go back and get it confirmed if I were doing the job.

One can possibly sympathise a bit with the person who uncoupled the train - They had probably done exactly what they should have done, just as they had been trained and quite likely in the correct order too - but did their training include the corridor connection as that is only found on a Gresley tender?

Unfortunately father daughter cashflow is unidirectional - and not in my favour 😥

I know it is a bit of an old thread and Aldi are not listing this saw at present, but after buying one a month or so ago this is the first time I have tried it out.

With the standard Aldi blade 1 1/4" round steel bar cut through (truly enough) in almost exactly a minute.

Sweating over deep cuts with an Eclipse 20T hacksaw is becoming a memory already!

My daughter likes to fix her own artificial nails an despite many reminders will do this at the dining room table - oak finished in Danish oil, but not reoiled recently.

The not unexpected has happened and a tube of superglue has burrowed underneath something else and been squashed and allowed to set.

Any suggestions on how to remove the glue (one part has even got some paper embedded in it) without having to refinish the entire table??

Her mother (SWMBO) has not seen it yet ………..

I have had an Ender 3 for a couple of months and am still climbing slowly up the learning curve (and at times it seems I need crampons and an ice axe …..!)

I had one issue when I tried to print a design downloaded from the internet and sliced it with the Creality software but twice it stopped halfway through at the same place (printing from SD card). Using Cura it printed OK.

I don't know whether it is a memory issue or a bit of iffy code in the downloaded design as I now have a good print and I don't want another. Since then I have stuck to Cura though.

A fair cop.

Spelt it wrong three times but only corrected it twice.

But as Meatloaf sang 'Two out of three ain't bad'

The Wikipedia article on the BBC Doomesday Project makes interesting reading, not just to show the issues surrounding the preservation and access to this information, but also the copyright nightmare associated with trying to do so.

BBC Domesday Project on Wikipedia

+1 for cloud storage

A separate issue for me as a photographer is the lack of a permanent record of digital images. On the trashier channels of cable TV one sees Hitler, Churchill etc in otherwise insignificant photos. With digital these will be deleted.

How will historians of the future manage?

Michael -

You will probably be able to get one secondhand in a couple of years - I suspect at the current rate of shrinkage they will be used to produce Waggon Wheel biscuits from next year and be out of date a couple of years after that as not being able to work small enough!

Have a happy, peaceful (and productive!) Christmas.

Nick

I have the opposite issue with a pair of 71/4" locomotive gunmetal cylinder castings. No names, no pack drill!

Not got there yet, but they have no cores so I am facing drilling them out to allow a boring tool to enter, where I am worried about drills grabbing and then seeing a not inexpensive amount of gunmetal swept into the swarf bin!

As I say, not got there yet, but as I write this I am wondering what is the chance that they will be very close to size on the outside dimensions to add to my cup of joy?

The Clarke machine is an older (but still current) design while the Arc is a more recent and more powerful one. Axminster will sell you either one of the options.

I chose Arc, but like Dave says above, all will sell you a good machine and provide backup, but stop dithering and start cutting metal!

Your tip sounds like a dream for anyone who cares about the environment - here (not naming town as it is unfair ) the council tip has only a single skip for 'metal'.