Member postings for Bill Phinn

We're remote from civilization, yes, and simultaneously less than two miles from the centre of a UK conurbation that has six times the population of Leeds.

It's a little academic for me which mailorder suppliers are open for business and which aren't because the postal service in my area is barely functioning; we haven't had any letters or parcels delivered for over a week though we are expecting several.

Some of the youths local to me have long been very respectful of the face mask rule.

There are far worse breaches of the lockdown rules going on than two people having a barbecue on a beach.

In my area, well over a dozen people are congregating several times a day to play basketball, smoke weed, and just hang out. Police intervention, such as it is, is failing to deter them.

I'd be grateful if anyone who does buy the latest edition could let us all know whether its 2996 pages are section-sewn or merely "perfect-bound".

Thanks for the information and link, Martin.

Unfortunately, I can see no way of actually buying the item from the Mitutoyo site. When I click on the Ordering and Payment tab at the bottom of the page I get the message: "Warning: Potential Security Risk Ahead. Firefox detected a potential security threat and did not continue to mitutoyo.co.uk. If you visit this site, attackers could try to steal information like your passwords, emails, or credit card details."

I'm in the market for the same thing as Henry. My DTI is an old Verdict with a quarter inch diameter stem as well as the dovetail. Does anyone know whether any of the Nogas or Mitutoyos will accept the quarter inch stem? I've not researched things very thoroughly, admittedly, but I haven't yet spotted any that do.

Robin, if you do decide to inlay by mechanical means rather than using solder [you'll still need to solder the ring shut and size it accurately first], below is a diagram of the choices open to you.

Keith is talking about the choice of silver solder there though, Robin, not the metal itself [925 or fine].

On the choice of solder, I'm not sure where Keith is looking [I'm looking on the CUP Alloys Low Temp Silver Solder page] when he suggests 55% solder [e.g. the 455] is cheaper than 67% solder [e.g. Cookson's Easy silver solder]. Whether you opt to buy Cookson's Easy as a 9g strip or the slightly more convenient 30g, 16.25 metre reel of 0.5mm wire, it appears to work out considerably cheaper per gram than the 455.

Counterintuitively, Cookson's own 55% solder [Silverflo 55] is also marginally dearer per gram than their higher silver-content Easy. Perhaps higher manufacturing costs are a factor.

Personally I wouldn't attempt to inlay the ring of silver by bashing it into an undercut groove; I'd use solder. Make up the ring as near as possible to the exact size of the groove and solder shut using hard solder. Pickle it. Round it on a mandrel and if necessary enlarge or reduce it slightly for a snug fit in the groove. Don't push it all the way down into the groove when test fitting or you will struggle to get it out.

Next, sweat solder the bottom of the groove using medium or easy solder. Pickle the brass. Flux the groove and the sides of the ring. Lightly tap the silver ring all the way into the groove. Heat the workpiece from below until the solder flows all round; the solder should stay mostly below the surface of the brass unless you used an excess when sweat soldering. A buff with 1200-grit wet and dry should remove any small amounts of solder that may have flowed on to the surface.

...or a genius?

Neither, probably, but he does look like a rather single-minded exploiter of the age-old relationship between publicity and sponsorship money.

Afraid I can't report normal performance levels from Royal Mail in my area, notably for parcels rather than letters.

I've placed 8 mostly small orders with 8 big UK commercial sellers over the last three weeks. One didn't arrive at all, two sent out first class took over ten days to arrive, I'm still waiting for three others between six and nine days after dispatch, one went to the wrong address, and one was only ordered on Tuesday so it's perhaps too soon to be pessimistic about its non-arrival.

I think my local sorting office/postman is the problem. My usual highly prized postman has been doing a different round the last few weeks. Before he left he confided in me that in addition to sustaining an increasingly heavy workload these days he is "carrying" various junior colleagues who can't get their act together. It seems these junior colleagues are now the people delivering my mail - or not, as the case may be.

I wish you and your daughter the best of outcomes, Dave - and soon. Hang on in there.

Yes, the parent of a colleague of my wife's has just died of it.

I've had to deal with numerous rodent infestations, some very serious, where for instance in broad daylight in an occupied house queues of mouslings have been sitting in line waiting to be fed on the curtain rail over a front door. In the worst cases the only thing that works ultimately is poison bait laid out in generous quantities every day for two weeks at least; longer if the bait continues to be consumed even partly after that time. Traps of any kind don't work in the worst cases because the rodents learn to avoid them.

The best remedy is prevention: don't leave a sniff of food anywhere that they could get to in the night, and maintain scrupulous hygiene.

Spare a thought for the elderly who cannot self-isolate because of their extensive care needs and cannot shop for themselves either online or in person. Spare a thought also for their relatives who are unable to persuade the supermarkets to let them buy rationed commodities such as toilet rolls on their parents' behalf even though their parents are incapable of doing so themselves and their condition means their toilet roll usage is much higher than it is for the average person.

Presumably because the fiddle of not having a qctp ranks higher for many people in the hierarchy of inconvenience than having to take lots of small cuts [as opposed to fewer big ones], and overcoming the first inconvenience by buying a qctp is more feasible for many people than overcoming the second, namely by buying and housing a machine that can cope with industrial feeds and speeds.

Edited By Bill Phinn on 24/03/2020 19:31:38

I bought ten of these for my garage to supplement the main strip light and machine lights already there.

They are light as a feather and take minutes to fit. I've put them in a three-sides-of-a-square formation over my bench where my milling machine sits and likewise over my main work bench. Only neg. is they do seem to have gone up in price a lot since I bought them. Hopefully they last as long as the manufacturers claim.

Pedant alert: "À la Recherche du Temps Perdu".

Unless perhaps this is the real title of a parody like the parodies "Barry Trotter" and "Bored of the Rings".

What am I reading? Well trying to: my DRO manual, which would have been more intelligible if it had not been translated from Chinese.

Just to update, my £4.99 C spanner has arrived and is a good fit, albeit a little short-handled for me to exert the required leverage with it.

While I was waiting for it I bought another, cheaper, ER25 chuck, this time with spanner flats, which I will use at some point to mill flats on the first one when I've worked out how best to set it up for 180 degree cuts.

I have to say that the strap wrench I was using (a Boa aluminium-bodied one) to get round the problem is actually able to do the job of locking the spindle very well indeed - only downside is it's not quite as convenient as spanner.