Member postings for Bill Phinn

It must depend partly on the manufacturer. I have a large number of recently purchased M4, M5, and M6 stainless cap screws that have knurled caps, among others of the same diameter that are not knurled. Some of the knurled ones have a manufacturer’s mark: “THE”.

I think I’m right in saying that grade 8.8 cap screws tend not to be knurled, whereas the 12.9 ones do. I’m not sure about grade 10.9 ones, as I don’t have any I’m aware of.

Are you thinking of "home/hone in on", by any chance, Mike?

My two Eclipse clamps and two newer ones all have holes for a tommy bar of some kind.

That's not really the case, Martin; the people who insisted on it were really just linguistic prescriptivists - a species that is clearly very much alive and kicking today, on this forum and elsewhere.

In any case, any classical scholar worth his or her salt would know that the periphrastic tenses of the infinitive in Latin, of which there are several, consist of two parts that are regularly split by classical Latin writers, as they are by Latin writers of all periods. Other tenses of the infinitive in Latin are just one word, which you can't split whether you want to or not. How we form and use the infinitive in English is completely different. It's not unreasonable to say English doesn't even have an infinitive as such.

The only sane viewpoint really is to say that how one language happens to work is no basis for saying how another language should work.

Posted by SillyOldDuffer on 17/09/2023 10:41:48:

You got the Greek almost right, Dave: the accent is in the right place but you should have used a circumflex, not an acute.

I personally know several people, Jason, in different parts of the world who didn't go to a posh school or study Latin there, but who have managed to become highly accomplished Latinists. They are autodidacts, essentially.

I suspect you are an autodidact too in large part when it comes to engineering and IT-related matters.

The wisdom of the ancients lives on.

Are you sure you didn't read Horace at school, Dave?

Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret

"You may drive nature out with a fork, but she will keep coming back".

Horace, Epistles, I, 10, 24.

David, it's a random Internet page on Whitworth cobbled together by an enthusiast whose enthusiasm for the topic clearly stopped short at looking up Whitworth's first name.

If it were a printed book issued by a reputable publishing house then the writer's indolence would be far more surprising and less excusable.

Edited By Bill Phinn on 27/08/2023 23:11:46

Margaret, your facing looks much better.

I'm not sure whether anyone has mentioned it, but when turning, even if your tool is sharp and set-up is good, if you move the carriage towards the headstock too quickly at a slow spindle speed it will be difficult to avoid the lines you can see on your part.

Try upping your spindle speed and, if this doesn't help, decreasing your travel speed as well.

They're not. OVO even set out the options for Alistair's neighbour themselves very clearly.

It sounds very much like Alistair's neighbour is being led a merry dance by the OVO employee on the phone because he or she is too lazy or callous to handle the matter in good faith.

Get the neighbour to write [signed for, as Duncan says] to OVO HQ, citing the page I've linked to, and, as Dave says, make a formal complaint, either separately or as part of the same communication.

Alistair, it looks to me like your neighbour has already discharged her [or rather her mother's] obligations to OVO. A letter to OVO re-stating your neighbour's position is the only further action I'd advise her to take.

If OVO insists on transacting business henceforth directly with her mother, your neighbour might like to tell OVO that they are perfectly free to do so.

We had a similar situation with a supplier in the case of my father, who has severe dementia and whom we have POA for. The company alleged there was a sum of several hundred pounds outstanding on his account. We told them there wasn't [and indeed there wasn't].

The company insisted on dealing with my father directly. We said they were free to do so, but that whether they dealt with us or our father they would never get a penny because of our certainty, on the one hand, that the bill was wrong and because of our father's incapacity on the other. Within three days we got a letter saying the matter was closed.

Another piece of advice I'd give your neighbour. Don't ring OVO - ever; write to them instead. There are several advantages to this, which I will leave it to others to identify. I have not rung a utilities company for any reason connected with billing on my own or another's behalf for around four years. My life is appreciably the better for it.

Like Jason, I'm not that keen on the pre-ground deeply grooved HSS tools for facing or turning, though they do the job well enough when kept nicely honed.

Try having a look at Tom's Techniques.

He has some print-offs [under "reference"] on grinding HSS lathe tools, as well as videos. The first tool I ever made was his facing tool, which gives nice results in brass.

Edited By Bill Phinn on 18/08/2023 14:47:44

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Edited By Bill Phinn on 18/08/2023 14:45:50

There are hundreds of mutually unintelligible Chinese dialects, Fortunately, however, there is also such a thing as standard Mandarin Chinese, based on the Beijing dialect, which a large number of speakers of other dialects can also communicate in to greater or lesser extents.

I'm unsure how this experience leads you to conclude that the Chinese girl couldn't speak Chinese; her confusion was probably largely a result of the highly non-standard nature of the written Chinese you presented her with. She also probaby didn't want you to lose face by telling you, to your face, what I was less hesitant in telling you about it.

Incidentally, an appeal to all readers: please never emulate newsreaders and others who pronounce the "j" in Beijing like in the French "je" etc. There is no such sound in Mandarin. The Chinese Pinyin consonant "j" is pronounced, very straightforwardly, like the "j in the English word "jingle".

Edited By Bill Phinn on 18/08/2023 13:57:14

I’m not sure how or why Brian raised the Zoro/Cromwell topic. Was it from Zoro’s eBay account that Michael bought his scriber? I can’t tell.

Zoro/Cromwell/Grainger aren't just drop-shippers; they have several of their own brands covering a huge range of products, e.g. Sherwood, SwissTech, Kennedy, Senator.

Zoro/Cromwell have a very large distribution centre in Leicester.

Chris could have bought a nice Sherwood ground flute 13.5mm jobber or stub drill from Zoro for nearly £2 less* than his German purchase of unknown branding.

Chris’s positive experience with cheap drills as opposed to e.g. Dormers sadly doesn't reflect my own.

*Provided his order qualified for free postage. I have never paid for postage on a Zoro order.

Edited By Bill Phinn on 18/08/2023 12:26:24

Nice work on the jig, Tony. It's a big one too.

Credit to you for trying Chinese characters as well, though you've wrongly divided the first two characters into four by separating the radicals from the rest of each character, and the Chinese isn't really idiomatic, e.g. 筆刀 means pen-knife, which is not really a jig, is it?

Also this Chinese machinist, in talking about grinding or sharpening drills, uses the common verb 磨 rather than 削, as you have done. See the video from 26 minutes in.

Edited By Bill Phinn on 17/08/2023 22:47:07

Interesting to see those, Tony.

On the white one (and possibly others) the chainset appears to be out on a limb, so to speak, i.e. at the end of a length of box section that is only braced about two feet down where it emerges from the main frame. Have you found this gives adequate stiffness when pushing hard on the cranks?

OK, Jason, you shamed me into it. The clamp screws are 5/16" UNF.

I've acquired a QCTP as well in the meantime, so eventually I'll be in a better position to decide which I prefer.

Thanks for the further replies.

Jimmy, gluing the lid in place wouldn't be much good if I wanted to clean the swarf out that inevitably accumulates in the bottom of the pot.

Nick, the magnet idea is a good one, though again I wouldn't want to have to clean the swarf off it each time I come to renew the oil. I suppose you could put it in a small ziplock bag.