Member postings for Bill Phinn

Another corker is the Stihl MS881 chainsaw they're selling at $89.99, when the price in the UK starts at around £1500 for the bare saw.

I'm not sure either what the words "Copyright 2022 © Costco" are doing at the bottom of the page, just under the page links headed "Customer Satisfactor" (sic) and "Intellecture (sic) Property Rights".

Anyone who's prepared to do what Fred is doing here at 4 minutes in can play to the camera as much as he likes, as far as I'm concerned.

I seem to remember Fred's personal health and safety protocol consisted of running away very quickly whilst sounding a klaxon and shouting "It's goin', it's goin'."

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.

You are correct about eBay's position. However, there can still be comeback for the seller if the buyer pursues a chargeback with his card provider, and the card provider for their part are satisfied the item was not in fact delivered in spite of the RM tracking claiming it was.

You've strongly suggested you have a faulty understanding of what Darwinism is.

Given that insects are estimated to outnumber humans by 1.4 billion to one, quite a few, I'd imagine.

That sounds more like social Darwinism than Darwinism.

Darwinian natural selection doesn't necessarily favour the survival of organisms that face reality and get on with life [whatever is meant by that]; it favours the survival of genes that, in spite of or because of the environment in which the phenotypes carrying them live, happen to get passed on.

They think of an impressive sounding round number and calculate most people aren't going to know any better.

Yes, most economy magnifiers and loupes are definitely not the magnification they're claimed to be.

I use a Schweizer magnifier, and Eschenbach and Belomo loupes. I have the Belomos in 8X, 10X, 12X, 15X, and 20X magnifications, though I only really use the 8X to 12X ones most of the time.

Edited By Bill Phinn on 12/02/2022 20:56:30

Wall-mounted Anglepoise-type lights either side of the machine that can be pulled down close to the work if needed, and an angel eyes ring light around the quill.

What I haven't yet managed to illuminate adequately is the small quill DRO; it's so dim and so close to my eyes that I can never satisfactorily see both it and the thing I'm working on. If it was LED like my main DRO rather than LCD it would be much more user-friendly.

Is there such a thing as an LED quill DRO?

No, though I suppose few of them grew up sharing their bedroom with chickens and have degrees in philosophy.

The very idea of a mancave is an alien concept to me if what is meant by it is somewhere you're required, by the female partner in your life, to confine your workshop-related stuff and activities. In our house, an angle grinder on the dining table for a few days, a socket set on the microwave, or even a lawnmower in the hall scarcely raise an eyebrow.

As long as you keep the living areas clean, reasonably tidy, and still useable for other everyday purposes, I do not see what there is to object to. Fortunately, my other half agrees.

Interesting.

Far more interesting to me, though, would have been learning how someone so young acquired the knowledge, skills and workshop necessary to make it.

As usual with Youtube child prodigies you don't get to see the back story.

Regardless of whether you can physically do the Dutch reach [I can't do it when sitting on the left side of a car, and can't not do it when sitting on the right] you won't be prosecuted for not doing it.

You may, however, be prosecuted [as you may be already] if you "open a car door, or cause or permit it to be opened, so as to cause injury".

So, legally speaking, not a lot has changed really.

Yes, though an added complication is that sometimes a sign in the back of a moving vehicle [e.g. a police car] is intended to be heeded by motorists.

The trolley problem isn't the only thing limiting the safety of autonomous vehicles; there is also the reduced capacity of autonomous vehicles to read the intentions of and take cues from human road users [something human road users do a lot more than they're probably aware of] as well as the pronounced inability of autonomous vehicles to make what to us are very easy distinctions, but to them almost impossibly difficult.

An example of this is the autonomous car that was following a truck transporting directional road signs and visibly obeyed the road signs in the back of the truck when all other road users were safely and logically ignoring them.

Autonomous vehicles will only be viable en masse, I think, when they are allowed to share the roads with nothing other than fellow autonomous vehicles, i.e. when human drivers have been removed from parts of the road system only autonomous vehicles are allowed to use.

This will almost certainly be piloted first in China, where the legislation required to close off a city or part of one to human-driven vehicles can be obtained and enforced literally overnight without the need for niceties like parliamentary debate or public consultation.

The question for us is whether local authorities in the UK, in their haste not to be left behind by the Chinese, will end up forcing human drivers off the roads with the same sort of draconian measures that have been foisted upon us over the last few years to create so-called Low Traffic Neighbourhoods.

Thanks a lot for the further replies and images.

I do do some of my screwdriving these days with a Dewalt DCF886 impact driver. I should probably do more. I still like to use hand drivers for some jobs where more feedback on the torque you're applying seems called for. My preferred bits are Wiha Maxxtor 49mm. Any specific recommendations for longer impact-rated bits or long bit holders like in Jason's photo would be welcome.

I've had one of those older-style, mainly black Stanley ratchet drivers for many years. It seems bomb-proof and has one of the best handles going, in my view. You can use it two handed quite easily, making the need for a hex bolster almost redundant. Bahco seem to have borrowed this handle design for their bigger Ergo drivers.

I believe the newer version (which is more yellow than black) of this old Stanley isn't as good for various reasons. I've only got the black one to go off, though.

Rob, the Chapman sets look high quality. Some of the bit holders appear to have opposing flats milled into them as an alternative to a hex. The snag with the sets from my point of view is all the bits seem to be short ones, they have ball bearings in their sides (which may mean you can't use ordinary 1/4" hex bits in the holders/handles?) and many of the sets seem to have a larger number of slotted bits than I'd really want and/or a big range of imperial hex bits I'd probably never use most of.

Nicholas, I'm interested to see your flex-shaft screwdriver. I don't think I've seen one as long as that. I assume, as with a lot of these, it's only safe to torque hard (-ish) in one direction, and in the other there's a danger of the braided wire shaft uncoiling.

Edited By Bill Phinn on 04/02/2022 18:31:54

Thanks to everyone for your replies.

Just to clarify, it's not a standard fixed screwdriver with a hex bolster I'm bemoaning the rarity of but driver handles that take bits and also have a hex bolster.

Jason, yes, I tend to use 50mm bits as standard these days. One drawback with having to put a spanner on the bit itself is that you're quite close to the screw head, and so room for a spanner can sometimes be an issue. There are of course considerably longer bits than 50mm out there, but long ones aren't as easily available at reasonable prices as the shorter ones.

The other slightly less than ideal thing is that a 1/4" hex is a rather small AF size to be winching on by hand with a spanner. This is no doubt why many of the screwdrivers you see out there that do have hex bolsters have shafts that are hexagonal in cross-section anyway. If the shaft's hex was felt to be adequate for putting a spanner on why would they give you a bolster as well? I've got some old Gordon screwdrivers with square section shafts and these don't have bolsters but the shafts are usefully thick at, I think, 3/8" and 7/16" AF.

Martin, I wasn't aware of the existence of the Dewalt, so thanks for that. I recognise the handle on it, and, if it's the one I'm thinking of, it's substantial and grippy, so I might give it a go.

The only other bolster bit driver I know of is the Wera Vario 80. Very unhelpfully, though, this takes 6mm hex bits, not 1/4". I'm also not keen on the Wera bit driver handles generally, as they're inconveniently small when compared with their standard Kraftform screwdriver handles on, say, PH2 and PZ2 drivers.

There is one other way of adding torque when screwdriving with a shaft-shaped object and that is to use one of these with a bit adaptor on the male square drive and a ratchet or breaker bar in the female drive in the end of the handle. The only drawbacks with this are that, again, the handle is too dinky for me and it's not as ergonomically satisfactory in my view adding torque to a screwdriver at 90 degrees to the shaft from the far end of the handle as it is doing so further down where the shaft begins.

I get by with what I've got, yes, but I do wonder why standard screwdrivers with bolsters are reasonably common whilst bit drivers with bolsters are as rare as pins in puddings.

It's reasonably common to find screwdrivers [particularly pound-through types] with a hex bolster where the blade meets the handle to enable a spanner to be used and so create more torque on the screw, but I'd appreciate it if anyone could add to the very short list of 1/4" [or 5/16"] bit drivers I've found with hex bolsters:

Picquic - I have one of these, but they're Canadian made and not widely available in the UK.

Rolgear - a Canadian ratchet bit driver that I haven't tried.

There was also this one. I say "was" because the manufacturer has now done away with the bolster.

And that's it. It looks like only the Canadians have thought this one through.

I hoped I'd covered that with my point about a "need-to-know basis".

I'd like to think that users who advertise things or ask for location-dependent help from others without at least indicating their own general location have, in most cases, simply let the need to do so slip their minds.

I'm ok with site administrators knowing my location through my IP address, and I'll happily share it with other members on an ad hoc need-to-know basis, but I would prefer not to have my location blazoned on every post I write.

What is to be gained by it (for the individual concerned, I mean)?

No, it's not a wearing surface, and shouldn't be used as such. And it's definitely not as hard as concrete.

I put the Mapei Ultraplan on my old garage floor three years ago, precisely because I didn't want to raise the height too much. I topped it with Ardex K80, which does provide a wearing surface.

The Ardex K80 is also not as hard as concrete, but it's a lot harder than the Mapei alone, which would eventually crumble and flake if used as the top layer.

ETA: I posted about it at the time here.

Edited By Bill Phinn on 30/01/2022 16:38:54

My apologies, Frances. I couldn't give the thread my full attention. I've read your post properly now.

All the best, Bill.