Member postings for Bill Phinn

Duncan, a little reassurance that you've not (inexplicably) included me in the category of miserable buggers/whingers would be welcome at this point. It's a fairly drastic misinterpretation of my position if you have.

That's a completely understandable response, Gas_mantle.

Your thinking was anticipated by a few thousand years by Aristotle, who in discussing moral virtues in Book III of his Nicomachean Ethics deals with the virtue of "Liberality/generosity" in the section immediately before the one on "Magnificence"; by magnificence he had in mind such things as lavish spending on public projects such as temples.

Incidentally, one thing I've not seen mentioned anywhere in the news is the beautiful and diverse range of trees that were growing on the site and what damage these trees have sustained.

I could give you a long disquisition on various needs and yearnings that make us human, but Francis Thompson summed it up more eloquently in his sonnet "O nothing in this corporal earth of man...", particularly in the closing lines:

"...Our towns are copied fragments from our breast,

And all man's Babylons strive but to impart

The grandeurs of his Babylonian heart."

Notre Dame is one such Babylon.

It's rare that people of Theo's age (23?) with such impressive workshops and skills have achieved what they have without considerable parental involvement. It does look as if this is the case here too: https://forum.zerspanungsbude.net/viewtopic.php?t=14103

I say this not to detract from Theo's achievements but in order to put them in context, mainly for people like myself who had little or no parental guidance in any of the practical activities they chose to undertake in their youth.

People in my position can easily be demoralised by seeing such a young person with such a well equipped workshop and such an array of practical skills at his fingertips. However, learning how he got there at that age (i.e. thanks in no small part to parental involvement) goes a long way towards explaining why you didn't, and exonerating you (with your sense of self-worth intact, or maybe even heightened) for not having done so.

Very interested to see this, Alan. It looks very appealing.

I'd echo Roderick in liking to know what gearing it has.

Other questions:

• Is there any adjustment on the handlebars, whether up and down or towards/away from the rider? If not, how practicable would this be to incorporate into the design?
• Is there a tool-free wheel release system?
• Would it be possible to fit clipless MTB-style pedals and still be able to fold them in?

Jim, I've been using Stihl strimmer line for the last 38 years, and never had a problem with it even when used with my relatively powerful Stihl KM130 brush cutter. I've never had to keep it moist or resort to any other method to reduce brittleness, because it really isn't brittle unless I make the mistake of trying to cut excessively tough material with it such as thick brambles, which, as the manufacturer advises, I would normally use a (Stihl) metal blade to cut.

Just make sure you buy the right diameter line for whatever cutting head you're using. I use 2.4mm cord (orange coloured) but you may need a thinner one. Your manual should say.

The Colchester looks wonderful, David.

My initial thought was "he's got that nice Boxford and a Myford already. Why does he need the Colchester as well?"

And then I realised it was just my jealousy talking, and I might do exactly the same as you if I had the chance/space/funds.

Which is still jealousy talking, but amicable jealousy at least.

Dave, did you ever see this thread, particularly my post about punch cutting?

https://www.model-engineer.co.uk/forums/postings.asp?th=135629

Brass and steel moveable type and decorative motifs for the printing and binding industry are still made (or were until last year) by deep relief engraving on pantograph machines. CNC machines are the more up-to-date method, but cost prohibitive perhaps for most home workshops. Files and gravers are the cheapest method, assuming you can make the time to develop the skill required to use them to good effect.

I'd say it's legitimately pejorative when chasing microns means aiming for a level of precision that is considerably in excess of what is required for the satisfactory functioning, or satisfactory appearance, of the item being made.

On the other hand, though speaking pejoratively in these circumstances has reason on its side, it fails to take account of the potentially high levels of satisfaction experienced by some people when they aim for and achieve a higher level of precision than is strictly necessary for reasons of form or function; achieving such satisfaction might be rightly considered an end in itself.

And then there are circumstances, which perhaps few home machinists meet with in real life, in which very high levels of precision definitely are called for and to achieve which you may well have no alternative but to chase microns.

I'd say the generalisation is justified, Vic.

The manufacturing environment in the two regions is fundamentally different. Probably the most elusive yet important factor is the political situation in each region, and the degree to which this allows fair competition (healthy for innovation and quality assurance) in private enterprise to prevail.

Going back to Soba, I've got a three inch rotary table of theirs that I bought ten years ago, and it's been fine for what I've wanted to do with it. Maybe Soba's manufacturing standards were better ten years ago or maybe I'm just not a sophisticated enough user (yet) to have discovered its limitations..

Many thanks for your contribution, Nick.

One detail I didn't explicitly mention is that my current milling machine, a Proxxon MF70, accepts cutters with a shank diameter up to a maximum of 1/8", so I don't know that any woodruff cutter properly speaking would actually fit in my spindle.

Also, I'm not absolutely sure I've understood what you've proposed, but wouldn't passing the woodruff cutter along the channel when laid flat on the table produce radiused inner corners? Avoiding these was the main reason I wanted to be able to stand the channel upright for milling.

Thanks, David and Jason, for your comments.

David, yes, electrically heated typeholders are not unknown, but have always experienced a poor uptake among the binding fraternity. Factors against them are:

• Cost: the last new one I saw for commercial sale about ten years ago was around £400, as opposed to £100 (at today's prices) for a typeholder of the kind I've made. Typically you would want to have several typeholders on the go at one time to hold all the words you're lettering with on a particular day.
• Convenience: athough having the typeholder at the correct working temperature all the time definitely is convenient, having an electrical flex trailing off the end of your typeholder isn't. Anything that might interfere with the smooth motion of a typeholder across the spine of a book could create big problems; if at the first hit you stamp hot brass into leather in the wrong place (a mistake it's easy to make when accurate alignment of lettering or other tooling comes down to fractions of millimetres) it's very difficult to undo your error without starting again with new leather; and at around £200 a skin for properly tanned bookbinding leather, such errors can prove expensive. This steep learning curve is one of the reasons so few people nowadays even attempt gold tooling on hand-bound books.

I've now completed this project. I ended up hand-filing the long edge flat. I'd have liked to be able to make knurled thumb screws, not use bought ones of the kind pictured, but I've no metal lathe to knurl with (or do anything else with) at present.

The tool handle is made from a Magnolia that I planted 22 years ago and lopped some branches off last year.

Perhaps the newest aspect of the project for me was hardening and tempering the spring steel (sold annealed). My technique seems to have worked in producing the desired elasticity, but I'm slightly unsure what the optimum tempering method is for spring steel, i.e. what colour to look for in the steel. Some say straw coloured; some say blue. I veered towards blue without managing to retain it exactly in the finished look.

Thanks again for everyone's advice.

Cemented and galvanized. Good to know.

I've fond memories of travelling in my mother's corrosion-prone Mini in the early 70s and being able to see the tarmac whizzing past through a hole in the passenger footwell. Yeah, Minis were cool.

Martin, in spite of your frustrations, I'm very impressed with your restoration work. I hope the press goes to a deserving home.

For the record, these sorts of presses were originally marketed as copy presses for document duplication, not as bookbinding presses, though many ended up being used as binding presses, particularly the ones with generous (i.e. above about 3.5 inches) "daylight" between the platens.

In the pic is one of two dedicated bookbinding presses (known as nipping presses) I own. Its platens are 21" x 15" and daylight is 15". I've also got four copy presses dotted around the house.

Edited By Bill Phinn on 26/02/2019 18:51:05

Thanks for your reply, Ian.

On all of the many commercially made typeholders I own, some going back possibly 150 years, the shank and inner body (i.e. the brass channel) are either an integrated casting, or in a few cases possibly cut from a single piece of metal; I have never actually seen one where shank and body appear to be connected by brazing.

The few examples I've seen where a mechanical connection was employed were all recent and rather naff home-made affairs, and the connection used was only questionably up to the job of dealing with the constant heating and cooling and the considerable forces that are applied when the typeholder is in use.

I've resorted to brazing basically because I don't want to employ the services of a caster, and brazing is the next best thing after a casting (or possibly equal to it) in terms of its strength, permanence and, not least, trustworthiness in the eyes of the end user.

Which brings me to commercial considerations. I could try a mechanical connection, and I'm fairly sure I could make it a reasonably strong one, but I wouldn't expect the finished item to have the same appeal or trustworthiness as a casting or brazed connection in the eyes of other bookbinders if I came to sell it on. There simply are no precedents I'm aware of of a typeholder that was widely or even sporadically used in the bookbinding trade that employed a mechanical connection to join shank and body.

Bookbinders are a conservative breed, or at least used to be; the phrase "hide-bound" aptly sums them up.

Trevor, Axminster seem to have ceased selling Creusens some time ago. Does anyone know the reason for this?

The images show two typeholders, one made commercially many years ago and one still in the process of being made by me.

As you might expect, typeholders like this are used for holding moveable type, but specifically bookbinding type, which is typically brass.

I milled the brass channel (about 2.5" long) out of brass bar, and would have liked to do this after brazing the shank on to it, not before, but since, in order to get square not rounded inner corners, this milling needs to be done with the open side facing upwards, and the tiny Proxxon milling machine I have doesn't allow me to stand everything upright once the shank is in situ, I had to mill the channel on its own before brazing.

The reason I'm posting this is that I noticed after I had brazed on the shank that the formerly perfectly flat, long internal edge of the channel was no longer perfectly flat, but was ever so slightly convex. I'm fairly sure this is a result of brazing with the open end facing downwards and the weight of the channel and shank being supported by the "arms" at each end. Essentially, I think the channel sagged slightly once it got to a very high temperature and stayed that way after it cooled.

My question is, if I do this project again but this time lie the channel down for brazing rather than standing on its arms bearing the weight of the shank above it, will the perfectly flat, milled long edge stay as flat as it was before brazing, or is there still a chance movement will occur?

Many thanks to everyone for the great answers!

My question was prompted chiefly by a desire to know whether the seller was justified in describing the bars etc. as "stainless". It looks like the answer is "in a way".

Anyway, since the bars are not intended for outdoor use (I vaguely intend to make a bookbinding press out of them, or maybe just one of them) the degree of corrosion-resistance they appear to have (they came to me as new old stock and there was no evidence of rust on them) will do me.

Posted by Michael Gilligan on 08/02/2019 08:24:06:

If you can afford to buy M36 then BP might be a personalisation

.

For the curious, the two 22 inch lengths with eight nuts and washers cost me under £20, and they are quite noticeably magnetic, which I know doesn't in itself necessarily preclude them from being a variety of "stainless steel".

That's good to know because only a few weeks ago I looked at a six inch rule of mine marked "stainless" that I've had for over twenty years and found a few rust spots on it. I was assuming I'd been had. Maybe we have been.

The image was actually orientated the way I wanted and saved on my computer before I imported it into my album.

Contrary to what I implied initially, I see that the image was flipped automatically when it entered the album, not when I inserted it from the album into the text box on this page. I don't know how to counteract this flipping problem.