Member postings for Bill Phinn

Posted by daveb on 03/01/2020 21:51:55: I now have so many skills that I can make anything except money.

Priceless!

Jon Berk said" "I have done this type of thing before but would like to have a ‘less crude’ way of drilling hard steel."

I'm quite fond of "cobalt" drill bits as a way of getting through hard materials faster than standard HSS bits. They are a little more prone to breakage than plain HSS bits but not as brittle (or expensive) as carbide.

I'd try a LH drill bit first (not necessarily cobalt), as Dave suggests, then if this fails tentatively try a high quality screw extractor (poor quality ones will do more harm than good). Lastly, if this too fails, drill out with cobalt, and if necessary retap the hole.

Edited By Bill Phinn on 03/01/2020 17:33:43

stevie, I too have a ring reducer/expander of the lower type. The dies are where you do the reducing (by driving the ring into the hole that is the minimum increment smaller than the ring's current diameter). It only really works with D profile ring shanks, not flat profile, which would get excessively marred.

It's always best to anneal a plain band before sizing up or down if you're going to resize by moving the metal using main force rather than by cutting and resoldering. In most cases gently heating a plain band is a useful way of revealing whether it has been soldered anywhere - a solder line will become more obvious when heated.

daveb, relatively few high street jewellers these days fabricate rings (as opposed to having them cast or buying off-the-peg castings) and even fewer fabricate them on site. This means that even routine jobs like resizing increasingly have to be sent out. "Sent out" can mean somewhere like www.makermends.com or as far as Hong Kong.

Edited By Bill Phinn on 03/01/2020 01:18:48

I've never worn heat protection on my hands when silver soldering or bronze brazing and never needed it.

What torch with what length of neck tube are you using? And assuming you stick-feed the solder into the work rather than lay on paillons before applying heat, how long a stick of solder are you using to feed with? If you do use short sticks you can hold them in mole grips to keep your feeding hand well away from the heat.

Posted by Robin Graham: "the axis on which the arm swings is not parallel to the vice base".

This was essentially the same problem I had with my Aldi metal bandsaw, which I sent back only a few days after buying it.

I am presently without any metal bandsaw, and my view is that unless a metal bandsaw of this type has at least a few degrees of adjustable sideways tilt at the pivot point, wear between moving parts at the pivot point will eventually cause cuts to stray from dead vertical - that is if they were vertical to begin with, i.e. when the saw was new.

I don't know whether metal bandsaws with adjustable tilt at the pivot point exist, because I've not really looked into it, but if they don't surely they should.

Edited By Bill Phinn on 21/12/2019 02:36:51

BT to a Chinese person's ears sounds exactly like the Chinese word for "snot".

https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=auto&tl=zh-CN&text=snot

What about this set?

Will they deliver these to Canada, Jeff?

I bought a set six months ago (gone up £2 since then!) and they've been fine for what I do.

Edited By Bill Phinn on 27/10/2019 12:02:37

I could try that, Pat, and if they don't send me a return label I might have to.

The only problem is it says on their website that they "do not accept in-store returns for products marked with a * on your delivery note", and my two delivery notes both show a * next to the item. Also, if you knew my local Aldi branch (in one of the most socially deprived areas of Manchester), and you were familiar first hand with the general level of enlightenment among the staff (not high), you would be doubly doubtful of success at getting a refund in the branch.

I disassembled the pivot assembly this morning. Basically it's been machined in such a way that when you snug down the axle bolt with the lock nut it pulls the saw into a slight skew and there is no means of compensating for this I can think of except shimming the base plate or reboring the hole for the axle (straight this time) and putting in a thicker bolt.

I've given up and initiated a return through Aldi, which is a saga in its own right, involving 6 phone calls so far, and we're not done yet. In response to my request for a pre-paid return label (none was included in the package, when it should have been, apparently) they've just unhelpfully emailed me a copy of the delivery note.

I've just put a square on the vice, with the saw blade near the bottom of its travel and the vertical of the square just touching the edge of the saw blade. I raised the saw up until the edge of the blade was level with top of the square - distance betweeen saw blade and square at the top was approx 3/16", whilst being zero at the bottom, hence the angled cuts I am getting. Am still hopeful of a solution before committing to a return.

Thanks for your reply, Ian.

I'm pretty sure the workpiece isn't moving; I cut half a dozen different pieces of material in succession and all showed exactly the same small degree of unsquareness (as seen in the pic) after cutting.

I can't really tell at this stage whether the blade lean is a fault with the blade twisting or is being caused by the support arm/pivot mechanism not holding the saw blade perpendicular to the base. I've tried to remove as much slop as possible in the pivot mechanism by tightening the 19mm domed nut at the pivot point as hard as possible to still allow unhindered pivoting up and down, but it made no difference to the blade lean. If the mechanism is what is causing the lean the only thing I can think of that might cure it is to put packing under one side of the arm's base plate, but I'm not sure how satisfactory a solution this would be.

Did you have an alternative idea about a fix for this?

I've just taken delivery of mine.

Either I'm being very stupid or the saw has problems.

First "problem" is that the vice jaws don't meet or clamp parallel. I took the fixed jaw plate off, and tellingly there was a grape-pip sized piece of swarf mashed between the jaw plate and its mount, but unfortunately removing the swarf only improved the problem slightly, it didn't cure it. Short of shimming the fixed jaw (am unwilling to) I can't see a solution.

Second problem is that the saw blade leans out, i.e.doesn't come down perpendicular on to the work. The outcome of this can be seen in the image with the square. The brass bar in this case was cut standing on its edge - partly to minimize the ferocious jaw lift when anything under about 1/2 inch thick is clamped in the vice.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Ian, can you reassure me that the company collecting the ground rent and making you the offer is not Simarc Properties Ltd?

I've bought items from both of the immediately above companies. I was unfortunate to get a duff product from the first company on my first order but the customer service in dealing with the problem was very good. I've bought small diameter milling cutters from Rennie Tool and they were certainly good enough for my needs.

Thanks. That's good to know. I rashly assumed they'd be non-standard in some way.

I'd be tempted by one of these, as long as it can cut cleanly, squarely and reasonably quickly, and keep on doing so for longer than its guarantee.

"Saw blade 114cm" - interesting!

Does anyone know how much a replacement blade would be?

Edited By Bill Phinn on 26/09/2019 23:14:50

Was there a separate cylinder (now missing) that fitted the cavity and held (4 stroke) engine oil for top-ups?

Mr Burtynsky is following in the tradition of artists such as Loutherbourg with his "Coalbrookdale by Night".

What both of them capture has been aptly described as the "horribly sublime".

Many thanks to everyone for the further replies.

Taking my cue from Brian (eta: thanks, Bill - only just seen your post), I put the regulator in a vice so that I could get better hand leverage on the dial (I've got limited use in one of my hands). I'm pleased to say that it did turn further than 5 and after a few vigorous back and to turns it now opens all the way to 10, albeit with some difficulty (for me at any rate).

Brian and Meunier's talk of fires is prophetic; I was at my parents' house this evening and my wife was cooking on their twenty + year-old electric cooker when the cable connection at the rear caught fire shortly after the cooker had terminated with a loud bang. The flames were licking up the back of the cooker in quite a lively fashion by the time I opened up with the powder fire extinguisher.

Has anyone seen the mess it leaves when you've used a powder extinguisher in your kitchen? We were still cleaning up three hours later. I suppose, though, it wasn't as big a mess as it might have been if I'd not insisted on my parents keeping a fire extinguisher (two, in fact) in their house for just these sorts of eventualities.

Edited By Bill Phinn on 18/09/2019 23:10:57