Thank you, Michael!

Many thanks for the further replies.

Yes, the one at Cromwell is even pricier than the one at L&S, but at least it's in stock.

Posted by DC31k on 24/05/2022 15:03:53:

"In neither your original post nor in the item to which you linked is there any mention of a left-hand BSP requirement."

My apologies for not being more explicit. I assumed when I said propane tank in the title it would be apparent that the 3/8” thread as well as the POL would necessarily be left hand.

The POLx3/8 having a Sievert part number is useful for further searches, so thanks to both of you for flagging that.

If I decide not to stump up for the Cromwell item, and can’t find it at a modest price elsewhere I may resign myself to continuing to use the particular torch it’s for with Bernzomatic style cylinders rather than Calor propane cylinders as well.

Many thanks for the replies.

So, DC31K, in addition to the POL female x 1/2" BSP female adaptor in your link I'd need a 1/2" BSP male (presumably RH) x 3/8" BSP female LH adaptor.

Any idea where one can be obtained?

Edited By Bill Phinn on 24/05/2022 14:15:42

Does anyone happen to know where in the UK (apart from here) I can get a POL female to 3/8" BSP female gas fitting, preferably at a more sensible price than the one in the link?

I unwrapped them for the first time three months after buying them, and after repeated testing just put them back in the drawer they're kept in.

I didn't say they're out of spec - I have no way of testing that infallibly - I just found them to be worse, on my chuck with my set-up, than the eBay ones.

If you want to PM me your contact details I'll send you one of them and you can test it for yourself.

I'm afraid my experience of APT collets is less positive.

My current ER20 collet chuck isn't an APT offering but a fourth-time-lucky chuck bought elsewhere. There is, happily, negligible runout with it when using most of the very cheap ER20 collets that I originally bought with my first, very untrue, ER20 collet chuck (off eBay) and subsequently returned. I still have these original collets.

Recently, thinking I could improve on the runout on the most often used sizes (6, 10, 12mm) I bought "superprecision" collets in these sizes from APT.

The runout on these is unfailingly between one-and-a-half to three times as bad as on the bargain-bucket collets that came with my first ER20 chuck. No amount of rechucking makes any appreciable difference to the initially observed discrepancy.

Edited By Bill Phinn on 09/05/2022 17:39:22

Good to see this evidence of tact on your part, Andrew - decidedly belated, but welcome nonetheless.

Edited By Bill Phinn on 30/04/2022 20:46:34

That's actually called the present continuous, Hopper.

English tenses are a pig for foreign learners.

On the first evening my German penfriend spent with us in the UK about 45 years ago he was sitting at the dining-table having tea with us and my father, wanting to be chatty, asked him:

"Fritz, do you swim?"

Fritz replied, "No, I sit in zee chair".

"Well, I can't argue with that", said my father, and shut up.

Mandarin Chinese is one of the most ambiguous languages under the sun.

Its sound "shi" is one of the most ambiguous. Some people here may already have heard of the "Lion-eating poet in the Stone Den" poem that consists of a sequence of 94 characters all pronouced "shi", albeit with inevitable tonal distinctions.

Apparently, on paper at least it makes coherent sense - sort of.

Thanks for the word from the street, Peter. I'll run this past my Canadian cousin too next time I speak to her.

A valuable anecdote, Duncan, and one borne out by section 4a of the entry for "shop" in the OED:

"4.a. A building or room equipped and used for a particular craft or manufacturing trade; a workshop (frequently as opposed to an office). In later use also (spec.): a room or department in a factory where a particular stage of production is carried out (frequently with distinguishing word)."

Slightly overlapping with this is section 2:

"2. A house or building where goods are made or prepared for sale and also sold. Now archaic and rare."

So it appears that if goods are sold as well as made in the place, calling it a shop is archaic and rare, at least according to the OED, which, language being what it is, can never be an infallible guide to usage.

My own limited knowledge of the difference between American/Canadian and British "shop" was until now confined to what we're told in the note added to 3a:

"In British English, shop usually refers to any building or part of a building where goods are sold, whereas in North America this kind of building is usually called a store (store n. 12), while shop more commonly refers to a place where things are done or made, or to a smaller retail establishment offering a limited range of goods. In British English store is usually a large retail complex, such as a department store."

Edited By Bill Phinn on 28/04/2022 23:33:09

"Shop" and "store" are two ambiguous words.

Is what Americans/Canadians call a "store" ever described as a "shop" over there? Can you say "go storing" or does it have to be "go shopping"?

I've noticed UK-based Youtubers with engineering-related channels referring to their "shop", by which they mean "workshop". This appears not to have been native UK English usage until recently.

Edited By Bill Phinn on 28/04/2022 19:58:08

Steve, your opening point was that it doesn't cost much to populate your workshop if you buy at boot sales. Here you seem to be saying going to boot sales is only for the financially fortunate.

Jason's two points came across as sober observations to me, and he even sugar coated the second slightly with an emoji to atone for his trademark laconism. I'm not sure you're correct either in saying he "never shows his mug".

On the subject of disrespect, it's not very respectful to sneer at others' perceived impecuniousness or to effectively claim, as you have done, to have a greater intellect than others have.

For the record, I enjoy, and derive benefit from, watching both your and Jason's videos.

Edited By Bill Phinn on 28/04/2022 17:45:38

Did things not work out for you with the small lathe you picked up on 7th November 2020?

Dress technically, Mick.

A goose-down or heated body warmer and hat. When really cold, thermal base layers as well.

Just avoid long, or at least floppy, sleeves at all costs.

Edited By Bill Phinn on 28/04/2022 12:51:31

I'd love to have the time and freedom to be a regular, or even a once-in-a-while, car-boot sale truffle hound; sadly, I don't. Having things delivered is really the only option for me.

I know I miss out on potentially fabulous serendipitous discoveries as a consequence, but at least the stuff I need is usually available somewhere on the Internet. Even then, though, buying what I need comes with no guarantee that I will have the time to make use of it anywhere near to the date of purchase.

For anyone connected with engineering, perhaps the most salient ambiguous word is "boring".

Me too. See the one pictured, which consisted of two large folio volumes both in an equally horrendous state, even though the rusting wasn't too advanced. The machine that did the stapling was called a Brehmer wire stapler, I believe. I was tempted to buy one when it came up for sale recently on eBay just so that I could destroy it and have my revenge.

Duncan, the task you're faced with there is a cloth re-back. Have a look at Angela Sutton's video of the process. The image quality on the video isn't good but Angela is a Society of Bookbinders member and won't teach bad habits.

That's interesting, Peter. I visited Bayntun's a couple of times about twenty years ago. Do I take it you worked as a forwarder rather than a finisher?

Tim's spirit of staying faithful to the original methods and materials as well as maintaining as much of the original binding as possible is [with a few notable exceptions] more or less the orthodox position today, in bookbinding and many other restoration crafts. This runs alongside the minimal intervention approach that is now prevalent in many institutions that are custodians of old books. This approach often means nothing more than putting a disbound book in an archival box - a safe option, for sure, except that the craft skills that created the bindings in the first place grow increasingly hard to come by because they're no longer in demand.

Sometimes I set out to save as much of the old as possible, but sometimes the old binding is so crumbly that the only sensible intervention is to re-bind in period style.

Below are before and after shots of an early nineteenth century edition of Samuel Johnson's works I did a few years back. The books are in hand-stained calf and tooled in 24 carat gold leaf.

Edited By Bill Phinn on 20/04/2022 21:19:04

That's a nice example of period decorative case work, and the outer joints and textblock sewing appear sound.

I would carefully slit the mull and tapes at the inner joints, remove the textblock from the case, use starch paste to soak off the original spine linings, reinforce the sewing if necessary, re-line the spine adding a calico hinge on both sides, lift the paste-downs for a couple of inches and insert the textblock back into the case, pasting or gluing down the new calico hinges underneath the lifted paste-downs to strengthen the inner joints. The original paste-downs can then be re-pasted down over the new hinges and the splitting of the endleaves at the inner joints disguised with carefully toned Japanese tissue.

The binding will then be sound, and as much of the original as possible will have been preserved.

It's difficult to know what adhesive, if any, to recommend without knowing the exact purpose you'd be putting it to. Are the books section-sewn or just perfect-bound? What sort of repairs do you envisage, and on what kinds of books?

On a book of any lasting value, if a PVA-type glue is appropriate I would never recommend Evostick W, but rather a reversible, conservation-grade PVA such as this, or better still Evacon-R.

For certain purposes, traditional animal glues or starch pastes are sometimes preferable.

Maybe my area is just unusual, but none of the hundreds of calls I've received in the last twelve months from medical professionals, including the two GP surgeries I have regular contact with, have been made from withheld numbers. Maybe some of these callers did try to reach me previously from a withheld number but found that I didn't answer [I never would], and so thought better of it.

I can't recall any occasion when a medical person has contacted me on an important matter and revealed that they had previously tried to ring me on a withheld number but I didn't pick up.

I find that if the GP surgery phones me and their reason for doing so is even remotely important and I don't pick up, they leave an answerphone message, or send an email, or, in the most important cases, write a letter. The idea that they would call me on an urgent matter from a withheld number and not follow things up if I didn't answer strikes me as implausible.