Member postings for Bill Phinn

If, in an emergency, you have to stop in the outside or any other lane of the motorway, and you're the first in line, it's a good idea to turn your wheel slightly to the left as you come to a halt so that you stop at a slight angle to the direction of traffic. That way, vehicles behind you have a bigger clue that you are not moving. Police drivers do this routinely.

Dave, I've owned a bog standard MF-70 for around fifteen years.

Although your spindle speed sounds about right for mild steel [I'm assuming that's what you're cutting], a 0.5mm DoC at 50mm/min strikes me as a little ambitious, chiefly because the motor has so little power and the machine lacks the mass that helps create the stability/rigidity that carbide calls for. There's a fine line between snapping and rubbing cutters with this machine, I'm afraid.

Whether the handle is plastic or wooden, you will still have to ensure that the hole in the handle is correctly drilled out to accommodate the specific dimensions of the tang on the file you want to mount. I have rarely found the holes in off-the-peg file handles to be a good match as they come for the tang of the file (or anything else) I happen to want to fit into them. The holes are, understandably, most often too small. If you leave them unenlarged, this is usually the perfect recipe for splitting the handle when you try to drive the tang home.

And then there is the related and arguably worse fault of not driving the tang home but leaving a fair part of it protruding. This is a recipe for breaking the tang at some later date when in the middle of a job and possibly having a nasty accident.

I've had to make a few parallels myself recently. In three cases "make" meant modifying parallels I'd bought but discovered that their edges were far from being 90 degrees to their sides. In the case of one 2mm thick parallel, one of its edges was about 20 degrees off from 90.

All of the pairs in question were certainly matched pairs for height, but the sloping edges meant they either fell over in the vice when setting up a job or buckled inwards when work was being tapped down.

Has anyone else noticed this sloping standing/supporting edge problem with sets they've bought?

FWIW, it looks like this is what Duncan's screen is trying to say [sixth image down]:

https://ameblo.jp/millimeter-wave/image-12308987583-14023174928.html

The two Chinese characters read Haoqi.

Edited By Bill Phinn on 09/06/2020 00:30:54

On the subject of gloves and safety, Getty Images are responsible for yet another lapse [featuring the same model as previously, I think]:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52877551

I think being prepared to do that kind of hard work before posting a comment is in itself a kind of compliment to the audience you're writing for.

Posted by SillyOldDuffer on 25/05/2020 13:42:31:

| But am I alone in remembering only one line from any famous poem, whatever it's about?

| Dave

You've done it now, Dave. You've actually started to talk about poetry, the mere mention of which can "disperse a crowd more quickly than a fire-hose" (Arnold Bennett). Only you, me and a bunch of tumbleweed want to haunt this thread from now on.

You're not alone; fragments of poetry are all I carry round with me too these days.

But that's fine. I met an American once who had spent his retirement memorizing the whole of Homer's Iliad in Greek. I think the effort may have been too much for him as he died not long after he'd got the final book off by heart.

To be frank, sitting in an audience one evening politely listening to him recite long passages of Homer in his metronome way nearly finished me off before him.

I suppose that makes me one of the crowd that can be dispersed by poetry as quickly as by a fire-hose - sometimes, at least.

Surprised to hear you say that that when your English is unusually competent. [Unusually again, perhaps, I make a study of these things.]

On the other hand, foreign languages were famously a closed book to Philip Larkin too, and yet what can we say about his use of English, except that it was masterly?

Thanks for your reply, Bazyle. I've uploaded some photos of traditional ploughs. Their design is very basic but they work well if used properly.

Another, more modern, kind of plough is the so-called plough plane. I don't own an example of one of these but there are sure to be some images of them out there.

Yes, the crenellations around the finishing stove are for the tool handles to sit in while their shanks/heads sit on the hot plate. The French favour a different kind of finishing stove - shown in the last image.

Yes, it's beech and was almost certainly made to serve as a bookbinder's lying press.

It's slightly unusual to have channels on both sides of the press for a plough, but then we don't really know what kind of plough it was intended to be used with - not a typical kind of plough, at any rate.

Having wing-nuts as a tightening mechanism for the cheeks seems somewhat inadequate to me; they would have to be tightened with an adjustable spanner or similar to get adequate pressure on a book for ploughing or edge gilding.

The photos show two of my lying presses. The smaller one is mahogany, and has a channel for the plough to run in. The bigger one is beech; it is 40 inches long, the cheeks are 6" by 5 1/2", and the wooden screws are 3" diameter. The screws are tightened with an 18" steel tommy bar.

Hollowpoint, it may be that you do actually want a cut 2 needle file set. Most people do, as cut 2 is good for general purposes. Personally, I like to have the commoner profiles in cut 4 and cut 6 on hand as well. My Vallorbe 4s and 6s were all bought as individual files, not in a set. Sets of cut 4 or 6 are rather hard to come by.

I notice Arceurotrade's Swiss Pattern needle files sets are available in cut 4 as well as 2, which is a welcome option to have available.

I'm a turn off oxygen first man myself as well. Turn off propane first with a big burner on a large torch [i.e. a much bigger torch than this Little Torch] and you risk a popping sound that will deter you from extinguishing propane first ever again.

Did you get the Smith manual, and specifically the pink leaflet giving the pressures recommended for each of the tips? It serves as a bit of a guide to what to use each tip for.

The video you saw wasn't this one, was it? The demonstrator says he uses the smaller torch tips almost exclusively. I don't know why this is, because nearly everyone I know who uses this torch mostly uses only the larger tips [5,6,7], as I do. Maybe it's something to do with the fact that the guy in the vid is using acetylene, whereas I and other users I know all use propane.

If this is the video you're referring to, did you see the horrendously unsafe condition [14 minutes in] of the "new" hoses he put on his old torch? He said the new torch was given to him by a friend. Some friend! I suspect the torch was a counterfeit.

I did suspect my contribution might be misinterpreted. I'm still not 100% sure that it was, but as someone with all-Chinese machine tools in my workshop and, more significantly, close family connections to China, including someone who was a female lathe operator in a Chinese factory in the 1970's, I tend not to take the mickey out of Chinese stuff.

Certain people, on the other hand, with absurdly contradictory viewpoints about China/Chinese stuff, who routinely express outdated, wholly negative views about it and then in the next breath drool over new Chinese machinery like the SX3.5, are fair game for a bit of joshing, in my book.

Posted by Steviegtr:

"Just the result of working for a pot noodle is never going to be quality. Have you seen these guys and gals in there shorts & sandals working a million hours a week..........the Sieg SX3.5 twin turbo model looks absolutely stunning".

Just to increase your buyer's remorse, Steve, here's a photo of the Sieg factory taken last week. The guy on the left says if you come to China and pay him a visit at the factory he will defo make you change that outdated "British is best" mindset.

Thanks for the info, Ketan.

I'd looked at the deburring tools on the U.S. Grainger site. The country of origin given was Israel, so I did wonder whether they might be made by Noga. Your mention of a "well known company" makes me more confident I might be right.

One other question your post raises is what "made in China" can actually mean. I'm unsure whether products that are made in Taiwan are ever referred to as "made in China" by people in the trade [who aren't themselves of Chinese origin] or whether they would always be referred to as "made in Taiwan". Naturally, I'm excluding products made in PRC manufacturing facilities for Taiwan-based companies, which would rightly be described as made in China.

Posted by Steviegtr: "Jason B says they will have never seen Switzerland , but I beg to differ."

It looks like Swiss+Tech is a brand name used by W.W. Grainger Inc. for a big line of possibly largely China-made products sold most notably by its subsidiary Zoro/Cromwell.

I'm sure some of these tools do get to see Switzerland, but probably only after, not during, their manufacture.

Edited By Bill Phinn on 03/05/2020 05:12:17

Frances, the international trade in pangolins, for both food and medicinal purposes, is colossal:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/opinion/coronavirus-china-pangolins.html

http://www.china.org.cn/environment/2015-11/03/content_36962678.html

China appears to be taking cases of pangolins and other wild animals being sold for meat quite seriously. The following article, which a desultory search threw up, dates from February 2020 and discusses a haul of prohibited meat, including a pangolin and snakes, that was seized at a restaurant in Fuzhou, a few hours' drive from Wuhan.

I've not tried them, Michael. Might be worth a punt, but I think I'd want to know the manufacture and expiry dates before buying.

It looks like twenty cost only £1 more than ten.

They're made in the place where nine tenths of the world's merchandise seems to be made these days - Shenzhen.

BTW, you have to keep them in a "tray"; it says so on the packet. 

Edited By Bill Phinn on 29/04/2020 01:58:20

Is there any Chinese address given on the outer packaging, Barrie, or any indication of an address in emails/Ebay messages you've received?

I'd be interested to know whether the seller is Hong Kong-based or on the mainland. The quality of his English suggests the first.

I don't use a drill or bar, but a simple £5 edge finder, Steve.

There is no need to do any subtraction when using the edge finder in this way with the 1/2 button; just edge find on one side, zero, move to the other side, edge find, press the x or y axis button [depending on which axis you're working on] press the 1/2 button, then move the handwheel until you get to zero, which is the mid-point between the two edge-found sides.