Member postings for Bill Phinn

To try to minimize deterioration, with new tins I do my best to

a). not deform the rim of the lid when levering it off

b). not let paint drip down into the rim recess, where it will prevent proper closure

c). reseal the lid after use as thoroughly and evenly as my adherence to a) and b) allows me to.

In practice, I seem to maintain my meticulousness for one or two openings, then it takes a bit of a slide.

I spoke to RS at 6pm yesterday. Replacement set (AOK) arrived 11am today.

👍👍

The drills came packaged very nicely in the red box depicted in your first link, Michael.

I've spoken to RS, and they've obligingly offered to send out a new set free of charge.

Thanks for the replies.

While we're at it, I'd be interested to know whether anyone else has ever received a defective Dormer centre drill. Since my existing batch of unbranded centre drills were a sixth of the price of the Dormers and had no obvious faults, it's a bit dispiriting to find that an upgrade in price has entailed a downgrade in quality.

Maybe I'm just unusually unlucky. On second thoughts, you can delete the first word in that sentence.

ETA: The thread title is meant to end with a question mark, but I can't edit one in.

I've just bought a set of 5 Dormer centre drills from RS Components. Being a curious type I got my 10X loupe out to compare the tips of my existing non-branded centre drills with those of the Dormers.

There didn't seem much difference in their tip profiles until I got to the smallest of the Dormers (BS1). One end of it looked like what I expected it to look like but the other had what looks to me like a defective grind on it.

I'd be grateful if people could share their views on whether the drill is faulty or not. I've added images to this post of both ends of the drill. I'm not sure what order they'll appear in.

Edited By Bill Phinn on 22/08/2018 16:55:30

Helpful though the Amazon link is, crucially that isn't the lathe the OP has asked for opinions on, because the seller is different. Those reviews are as relevant (and irrelevant) as reviews of the similar-spec lathes being sold by Warco and Chester, for example.

Hopefully, Neil's post will help the OP see that who you buy your lathe from is often as crucial (arguably more so) in determining how good it is for your needs as the spec of the lathe in the first place.

Yes, the seller's based in Zhejiang province, China.

If there was a serious fault with it on arrival and you needed to return it, you'd probably be asked to return it to China and pay the return postage on the promise of it being refunded if the seller agrees after inspection that the item is in fact faulty.

Posted by Neil Wyatt on 19/08/2018 17:36:48:

The only downside is I need to sort some M14(!) fixings to match both vice and drill press table.

Thanks for the information, Neil.

Yes, M14 fasteners will be a little difficult to come by, I imagine. Even M12 can be hard to source in some things, as I found recently when I wanted some M12 Tee nuts to make a new work bench with adjustable feet.

Edited By Bill Phinn on 19/08/2018 20:08:49

The thread title is in form a question but in function a statement, hence Neil's comment. The same meaning could have been conveyed by saying "not all so-called precision vices are actually very precise". Whether this would have produced less controversy is debatable.

Some useful "reviews", or at least pointers, can be gleaned nonetheless from amidst the discord by people like me who frequently need them. Today's post with phots by Dave was particularly well timed and useful.

Thanks to your recommendation also a while back, Neil, I now have a decent bench drill, which is turning out to be exactly what I needed. Now I just need to decide on the right machine vice - right for me, that is - which is why I came here today. Since I have the same drill as you, Neil, I'd be grateful to know what machine vice you use, or usually use, on your drill, assuming you do.

It's good to hear stories like this.

I'm not sure how our country compares with other countries in caring about its heritage, but I do know that much of the emphasis across both the state and charitable sectors has been on preserving the material heritage with little emphasis on preserving the skills that created that material heritage in the first place. Part of the problem is that the custodians of our heritage are rarely hands-on technicians or craftspeople themselves and they blithely and mistakenly assume that the skill-base for the creation of all sorts of handmade artefacts is as alive and well as it was say a hundred years ago.

Yes, that's right.

And now I'm going to have to repay your good-humoured pedantry and point out that I used the word "British" throughout my posts, and that the IOM is incontrovertibly part of the British Isles.

Edited By Bill Phinn on 06/08/2018 20:44:00

You've touched on a crucial question there, Derek. In my experience, most "British" manufacturers aren't exactly open about the degree to which their products are truly British made, and the same can be said for certain world-famous brands it was once taken for granted were made in Japan or the U.S., and maybe even Switzerland.

Roger Smith the watchmaker merits a shout-out.

Edited By Bill Phinn on 06/08/2018 14:48:01

In the cycle manufacturing line, besides the world famous Brooks, who incidentally used to make a popular lightweight adjustable spanner [see Ron Geesin's monograph "The Adjustable Spanner - History, Origins and Development to 1970"], there's the bicycle frame makers Mercian (going since 1946), and Brian Rourke (since 1972), as well as the world's leading manufacturer of folding bicycles Brompton.

Edited By Bill Phinn on 06/08/2018 14:31:03

I've got one of the Mitutoyos with carbide-tipped jaws as well as a "Max-Measure" Chinese made cheapo. When measurements really matter I sometimes decide I need to measure with both calipers consecutively. The readings are always either identical or one or two hundredths of a mm apart, with the cheaper one always the one that reads shorter (when it does).

Which is the more accurate I have no idea. The nice thing about the Mitutoyo is that the sharp edges of the bar have been very slightly "taken off" to give a wonderfully smooth feel in the hand. The Max-Measure's sharp edges have not had the same aesthetic treatment but it's still been a perfectly acceptable workhorse for the last four years. The only neg. so far is that it seems to gobble batteries at about five times the rate of the Mitutoyo. The Mitutoyo's main neg. was the price.

Thanks! I did wonder about that possibility, but had the feeling the straight through type might be as rare as hens' teeth.

ETA: Where I said "column" in my earlier post, I meant quill.

Edited By Bill Phinn on 04/06/2018 18:45:25

Edited By Bill Phinn on 04/06/2018 18:45:50

After buying a Wolf 9 speed 500W bench drill last year, sending it back within two days of purchase, and being without a bench drill before then and since, I'm encouraged by that recommendation. I see there's a slightly bigger counterpart as well sold by Machinemart.

I've got a few newbie questions about bench drills if people can bear to hear them.

I'd assumed until now that a good milling machine of comparable capacity to any given bench drill would be able to perform the task of drilling as well as or better than a bench drill. Am I wrong about this? Put another way, if someone has a fairly big milling machine already, and space is at a bit of a premium, is buying a bench drill still a good idea for certain tasks?

Secondly, I notice that the standard chucks on the bigger bench drills tend to be 3-16mm capacity, whereas smaller bench drills often have chucks whose capacity starts at 1 or 1.5mm, or even less. Can I assume that if I bought a bench drill with a 3-16mm chuck it would be a very straightforward matter to substitute a chuck that can accommodate smaller bits?

Lastly, and a long shot this one, does anyone know of a manufacturer who sells a bench drill that has the handle for raising and lowering the column on the left hand side as opposed to the right hand side? I ask because a permanent injury to my right arm in a road accident many years ago means I have to use my left arm for pulling down on levers, whether they're on the left or right, and when the lever is on the right, the position I have to adopt relative to the machine when pulling down isn't exactly optimal from the point of view of either visibility or safety.

Yes, the gritty yellow Swarfega that smells a lot nicer than the green stuff of old and seems to work better.

Computer technology continues to make all sorts of tasks easier as well as all sorts of things possible that weren't possible before. But there is a downside, which is the loss of hand skills and the products of those skills. In the craft of bookbinding, which I'm familiar with, there are very few people left who can competently tool a book by hand using gold leaf, and no binding machine has yet been invented or ever will that can produce work that can compete aesthetically with a skilfully hand-tooled book. This is not just my opinion but something that every custodian or historian of bookbindings who's ever expressed an opinion on the subject acknowledges to be the case. Foil blocking machines are in nearly every craft bindery today, and the ability even to letter a book competently by hand (a skill that takes a long time to develop) is now almost extinct. Old and often valuable books that get re-bound today are typically the poorer for the loss of these skills.

If engineering moves increasingly towards CNC production, will the hobbyists or professionals of the future still be able to competently saw, file, grind, drill, tap, measure, and most importantly see and judge things without the aid of machinery? Won't the loss of such skills, whether partial or complete, be the very reverse of progress in more than one respect?

"Threadlocked"?, though this may have the same ambiguity as Loctited in suggesting one of a number of substances used, or even no substance at all.