Member postings for Trevor Crossman 1

Hi Jolyon, I would suggest go to your nearest Smith's Metals who may not have in stock of the high strength aerospace alloys such as 2024 & 7075 at the branch but do hold it at their main warehouse, so you may have to make a minimum purchase of a stock length. Another stockiest is Wilson's though you'd probably have to approach your local engineering business to get it for you on their account as I don't think that Wilson's do retail sales.

Trevor.

Nige, as has been said earlier plastics are not necessarily cheaper than metals, indeed many are very expensive and can be tricky to machine well, PEEK for example. If you try and practice with whatever cheap stuff you can find you may be uncertain of its specification and its workability . I would suggest that Aluminium alloy 2011 bar would be a much better practice material because it is cheap, easy to obtain, cuts cleanly and easily with short chips and gives an acceptable finish. If you are set on plastic then perhaps this link will give you some guidance .
https://www.theplasticshop.co.uk/plastic_technical_data_sheets/engineering_plastics_machining_guide.pdf

For what it is worth, I have had several ""dig ins "" ripping work out of a chuck on plastics but none with metals.

Trevor.

Well now I am totally lost and may as well be blindfolded and walking around on the dark side of the moon for all the sense that this rather ethereal digital comms speak means to me!

So to get myself back to reality, well as near as I'm likely to get in this crazy world, what I did today was to tackle some maintainance in the Hack'n'Bash section of my workshop. The recent application of some serious effort to a particularly recalcitrant piece of equipment had left my large vice rather skewed on the bench so these 1/2"bolts couldn't cope...……...some nice new ones are now fitted, I hope they are not this new fangled ductile Chinese steel that most stuff seems to be made of!

Trevor

Ah Neil, that explains why, no matter what I open the picture with to edit it, the eventual upload is inverted. My laptop default picture editor is Irfanview 64 but I also tried the inbuilt Paint, both gave the same result.

The picture was taken with my Moto G5S android phone which tends to reorient the display screen if I rotate or tip it with a sudden motion, this is quite annoying sometimes. I have only moved to a 'smartphone' ?? recently from my 10 years old flip-top mobile and I've not totally got the hang of it yet. I lack the motivation really as my preferred use of a phone is using it to talk to others !

Trevor

Hi Dave W, I do have that product amongst my vast armoury of potions'n'lotions which I use to help keep my skin supple and unbroken, and I also use many other natural products which we grow such as Aloe Vera and Comfrey which I find to be more effective than synthetic/petroleum jelly based products. As Mick Charity has said, trying to have productive discussions with one's GP about eczema/dermatitis is very difficult because the condition has so many possible causes there are simply not the resources in the NHS systems to investigate everyone in detail and so the stock remedy is ''emollient + steroid ointment'' which only ameliorate the condition, but will not cure it.

After extensive reading on the subject over the past few years, I have found that in my own case extra amounts of certain vitamins and minerals will keep the skin on my hands rash-free and in very good condition and without the danger of excessive thinning posed by the use of steroid creams, provided of course that I am absolutely strict about PPE as soon as I unlock the 'shop door. No exceptions! Period!

Trevor.

Thanks for putting the picture almost right Dave, funnily enough the mill used to be to the right of the lathe, though that wasn't a left-handed one , ha-ha!

Trevor.

Samsaranda, oh dear! I shudder to think how much carbon tet, how many pints(gallons?) of trich. and mek and alochrom ,and chromic acid have I sloshed around during my aircraft repairing days, and not always wearing gloves, because they usually disintegrated after a few minutes, or perhaps the frequent case of not bothering to don gloves just for a quick wipe of the structure with some mek before spreading the prc1221 jointing compound. 20/20 hindsight doesn't help a lot when a bad skin flare-up happens

I don't care how much I spend on barrier cream and vinyl gloves now, I consider the cost to be utterly irrelevant when set against avoiding the excruciating pain of severely sore and burning skin!

Trevor

So it is!!! That's really strange when it's the right way up in my W10 picture file?? Not a particularly important or interesting picture though, but I'll certainly have to pay more attention in the future.

Trevor

Hi Muzzer , picture was taken on Android phone and sent to my W10 laptop and posted from there. It appears the right way up in my forum album, but then inverted when posted. I even tried inverting the original , and saved it in my computer files and uploaded that to the album( where it was inverted , but that stayed inverted came out the same way. I'll play with it when I've got more time/ more in an IT mood.

Trevor.

Just as some others have mentioned ,the lack of awareness of the dangers of many of the industrial liquids that I was required to work with in the past now means that I suffer recurrent bouts of excema on my hands and forearms which sometimes prevents me from practical work. I really do echo the pleas to use gloves and barrier creams when handling any industrial chemical especially liquids, and I always use both as soon as I start work and I can strongly recommend the Polyco Orange nitrile gloves which I get from https://www.justgloves.co.uk/ ( the usual disclaimer, I have no connection other than being a satisfied customer) These gloves are much stronger than the average blue versions, are a little thicker and have a textured surface for better grip, okay a little more expensive but wear better. It is much better not to get persistent and harmful materials on your hands in the first place rather than use aggressive cleaners to get it off- - - -maybe it doesn't appear as macho as gnarly, oily, stained hands but it just might make your skin healthier in old(er) age!

Trevor.

Edited By Trevor Crossman 1 on 28/05/2018 00:03:27

Well I never thought that I particularly lacked social skills having been quite a party animal in my mis-spent youth, and needed reasonable ones to run my own business, but today I used my other, rather limited woodworking skills to fashion a pair of duckboards while alone in my workshop so that I did not have to paddle about in the swarf, oil and coolant spills while standing at my mill and lathe. This, hopefully will enhance my domestic social skills by reducing the amount of swarf and grot that follows my work-boots from shop to house .why is the picture uppsy-duppsy here when it's the right way up in the album, and I see no way to correct it- (probably due to lack of key-board skills!)

Edited By Neil Wyatt on 28/05/2018 23:13:45

+ 1 for the bog standard built in Windows Defender and all the other inbuilt security settings I gave up paying for the likes of AVG, Norton and the appalling McAfee several years ago and I have never had any problem and my computer runs faster too.

Trevor.

Ketan​ , your last two paragraphs raise a very pertinent point about the limited knowledge and it is difficult to see how this situation can be remedied now that schools have largely abandoned metal/wood work teaching and UK plc has much fewer small scale engineering enterprises. Those that there are do not seem to want the hastle of training school leavers and in this area seem to be staffed by a lot of grey hair! I doubt if there are many Adult Education classes around the country for the enthusiastic young working man who now has some disposable income to take up this hobby and so 'dives in at the deep end' so to speak. There is perhaps an attitude issue as well, for many years education has told all children that all learning has to be 'fun'​ and as in the recent case mentioned it was declared almost laughingly, that 'it's only a hobby'​ preumably meaning that it's some sort of play, fun, activity. Would it perhaps help if model engineering and similar magazines made their indexes of instructional articles much more obvious and more readily available to the newcomer who, having little if any knowledge or nearby assistance, can quickly learn some basics?

Trevor.

Having just tapped nearly 200 small holes in a crankcase and luckily without any breakage, I would suggest that you buy the highest quality set of taper,2nd and plug HSS taps that you can find regardless of cost. I have another 36 holes to thread 2-56 and again will use a new high quality set. Why risk scrapping an item that is an investment of several hours careful work for a broken tap. Trevor.

Ooo a Comet! That'll be a nice project though I hope that you get the mag timing better than on my pal's Comet back in the '60's, it sometimes had a real mean kick-back if one didn't jump on the kick starter with every ounce of my massive nine stone frame!

Hi Robert​ , why not construct a smoke generator which uses diesel as the smoke medium which although it will be gey and not blue, will certainly smell like diesel exhaust. You could take a look at http://www.modelboatmayhem.co.uk/forum/index.php​. somewhere there are threads discussing various smoke generating schemes. Trevor.

I would think that the old of cheap = no good should apply here! In my experience the only​ thing that works long term to prevent wood rot is genuine creosote, none of the modern ''green planet saving eco friendly'' substitutes work over the long term, so do not be confused by the product 'Creocote', it's not the same stuff . You will have to find a friendly fencing contractor to get proper creosote as it is no longer available for retail sale to the general public. Perhaps the next best thing to prevent rot on the underside of your shed floor would be Black Bitumen paint, this does not have such a long term smell as creosote, I think you'd get this okay from a builder's merchant. Farm buildings that I constructed 30 years ago with properly creosote treated timber are still in good condition ,unlike some of my current neighbour's rotting 7 year old fence posts treated with a modern product. On the other hand, why not use a concrete floor?

Trevor.

Hi Simon​ , I'm not sure if aluminium primer would much improve an already very good product. I live in a wooden clad house which has been painted with Cuprinol shades and not one board has rotted over the past 15 years or so,the I repaint the 'weather' side annually and the remainder bi-annually. My workshop is similarly constructed and painted and that too is okay, only one board has had rot where a hidden ants nest piled a load of soil up inside the wall void due to my less than perfect damp course under the bottom timber. Make sure that the tin is very well stirred before use because it does settle out in storage. Trevor.

Good progress Craig​ ,neat finning , what do you plan to put it in for its first flight? Trevor

Hi ​David , as others have said, that is a fine piece of work presented in a very well thought out web-site and I agree with you that this method of presentation can be much more useful to a first-time onlooker than the more usual forum build log, which as you rightly note, frequently strays off topic. Your excellent photo sequence on the boiler construction shows just how much work there is in this component, maybe commercial items aren't so expensive after all!! Trevor.