Member postings for Bill Phinn

That's a Virgin train, I take it, Graham?

That kind of lame humour is painfully common in signs on their trains.

I'd be more forgiving of Virgin's failed attempts at humour if their overall service as rail operators wasn't even more of a failure.

Some more financial surnames:

Banks, Cash, Money, Bond, Spender, Coin, Note,

Purse, Spender, Loan, Borrow, Rich, Poor, Broke.

Authors are sometimes offered a final lump sum for their book in lieu of any future royalties. Your book does not have to be remaindered off for this offer to be made. The author's entitlement to ongoing payments under the Public Lending Right will remain regardless of whether the lump sum option was chosen.

Like many people, I'm sure, I have certain titles in both digital and hard copy formats. There are pros and cons with each.

The main drawbacks for me with scanned and digitised books are that they will always need technology, in addition to the human eye, to be consultable; that, given the pace of technological change, their long-term retrievability is difficult to be confident about; and, lastly, that they are more likely to have miscopied, illegible or missing portions that corrupt the author's original text.

I have used Bisley Gun Blue.

If rust is what you're aiming to preserve against, I don't regard this, or any of the other bluing agents commonly available, as having serious preservative properties.

I know two other people with the same style of roof as yours on their concrete sectional garages. Both roofs have suffered, after a couple of decades, from widespread hairline cracking and then inevitable leaks.

I suspect your own actions, Chris, aren't entirely to blame.

If the part you're stamping is flat and you can hold it in your milling vice, preferably some way below the top of the jaws, there's really no need for a jig at all in order to stamp strings of characters uniformly; you just need to use a threaded vice stop with some means of counting the number of turns of the screw (e.g. a hex head!) as you advance it for the next letter. You can even do multiple lines of text this way with just a bit of thought.

If you work with care, the only thing under these circumstances that will produce unevenly spaced stamping is if any of the characters aren't cut perfectly centrally on the shank of the punch.

My experience of six different brands of stamp tells me that buying even the most respected brand doesn't guarantee all the characters in the set will be centrally cut on the punch. Accordingly, in order to ensure you get evenly spaced and uniform stamping you need to be prepared to compensate for this manufacturing inaccuracy where necessary.

I've not tried characters on moveable-type-like bodies of the kind in Nick Hughes' link, so I couldn't say whether these are consistently cut more accurately than the punches; I'd hope so given the extra cost of them. And of course, as Nick suggests, you can't strike these directly with a hammer; they have to go in some kind of typeholder, made either for individual characters or for strings of them.

If you're using the latter kind of typeholder and you're marking a longish word on steel all in one hit you're going to have to be prepared to hit that typeholder very hard in order to get a good impression, particularly if you're using a biggish font size.

Sure.

Sadly, though, there are compelling reasons why authoritarian systems of government (which tend to be the seed-beds of tyrants) are still thriving in the world today. And authoritarian systems almost inevitably entail an uspurge in nationalism and the pursuit of irredentist ambitions*, such as we're now witnessing in Ukraine.

*This is a convenient and up-to-date introduction to that particular topic.

It's quite possible for people who have differing political views to discuss politics with one another without the conversation becoming abusive; the snag is that to do so often requires more self-discipline and focus than many people can muster.

This is the reason why political discussions on forums tend to turn into slanging matches and why moderators prefer members to steer clear of them.

Clive's corner rounding technique is a standard one in the restoration of antiquarian books.

If missing fly leaves or a missing corner of a page has to be supplied from matching old paper the repair will look very obtrusive unless the sharp tip of the page is rounded off to match the usually quite rounded profiles of the tips of the adjacent leaves.

Edited By Bill Phinn on 26/02/2022 22:05:23

Is it the testing that mostly accounts for the higher prices of higher priced ER collets? I always thought it was mostly the cost of the machinery required to make them, the expertise and employee commitment required to operate it effectively, the materials used, the extra time probably invested per unit item to achieve the required precision, and the inevitable reduced market demand for a relatively expensive alternative to much cheaper options - something that will always militate against economies of scale.

Sincere condolences to all Brian's family.

Michael, I've used these successfully with magnification to distinguish UNC from BSW but I'm usually defeated by sizes below 3/16" unless I sit down with the fastener clamped and use high magnification in very good light.

Can you give any quick tips on what is required to take photos like the one in your post and overlay a 55 degree angle of exactly the right size?

I've bought three ER20 collet chucks: one from eBay, two from shop-apt.co.uk.

Runout on all of them was markedly worse than the runout on my ER25 and ER32 collet chucks bought from Arc and apt respectively.

I'm half tempted to believe ER20 collet chucks cannot, for some obscure reason, be easily made to run true when other sizes can.

Only number 5 would induce me to want to actually leave a message.

Cromwell are consistently more expensive than their alter ego Zoro. Their prices for 1/4" x 3/4" x 18" ground stock are no exception.

Edited By Bill Phinn on 20/02/2022 18:04:19

Sadly, with many things there's a very imperfect correlation between price and reliability, particularly nowadays.

In the case of most established thread lockers at least, from the cheap brands to the expensive ones, reliability may more often be determined by the way the end user applies the stuff than by the chemical composition of the product.

I suspect at Nasa they apply the stuff in accordance with the instructions.

I've had to enter quite a few properties in my area using keys stowed in key safes.

My experience tells me:

• they are frequently badly sited and badly fitted.
• they frequently show signs of having been tampered with.
• the combination rollers can be sticky and/or very temperamental, meaning that even if you hit the right combination the safe won't open.
• The occupant is in but has locked the door from the inside by some other means that cannot be overcome with the key.
• The key is sometimes not in there because a previous visitor forgot to put the key back before they drove off. (Guilty myself of that one)

My conclusion is that if you live in a decent area a key safe is probably OK, and if the area is a high-crime one they won't need your key anyway in order to break in.

Yes, but they're very unlikely to be pleasant to work with if the cost is below around £500.

Can I take it you do know why dentists wear these flip-up or through-the-lens loupes rather than, say, Optivisors?

I have used quite a few of the Everbuild adhesives sold by Toolstation. They may be even cheaper than Powerbond in some cases.

For thread lockers I am currently using Visbella products, namely Visbella 6271 and Visbella 6642. They work very well indeed.