Member postings for Bill Phinn

My rubber guard on my WM18 is disintegrating too after three years from new.

I'll be replacing it with widely available nitrile sheet when I get round to it. This, hopefully, will be better quality than the stuff Warco used originally.

Working on the assumption for now that it should be readily machinable with good quality drills and taps, what are your taps exactly, i.e. brand and type? Are the holes blind or through holes? How deep? Can we see an image of a now dulled tap and a hole it struggled with?

You say you're trying to thread 5/16" BSF x 24 TPI. But 5/16" BSF is 22 TPI.

Stephen, the way it works is that if you want to know a material's machinability you need to know exactly what it is. "Bright steel" (sic) could be one of countless different steels. "Bright mild steel" would bring us closer, and EN1A, for example, would more or less nail it.

If your supplier didn't give you a code such as EN1A and, what's worse, described it merely as "bright steel", it's impossible to say exactly what it is you're trying to machine and why it's causing you problems.

Thanks to André (and Ketan) for giving us this fascinating reading.

And the "super precision" ones.

Could you explain how you arrived at that translation, Jon? It's not only hard to interpret but very defective.

All from "C Bennis Supplies & Services":

Hydraulic oil.

Slideway oil.

Neat Cutting oil.

I've used several of their greases, and they were good quality and value.

Emmanuel, bien que vous soyez français, vous parlez très mal le français!

Edited By Bill Phinn on 01/05/2023 14:20:57

Page 87 of M Machine's catalogue has it.

I think the catalogue used to describe it as "mild steel", not simply "steel". I assume it still is mild steel. It certainly behaved like it was when I bought some 1/4" a couple of years ago.

Edited By Bill Phinn on 01/05/2023 13:57:09

I don't know whether it's the same seller, but this example appears to show the same maker mark as yours, i.e. the logo with "Portugal" below it. I wouldn't have much reason to think it is counterfeit.

With some makers there is wide variation over time in the marks they use.

As Dave says, how do your files cut?

If you're looking at the eBay page PipesandStuff is looking at, it doesn't, John:

"This is the stock model. It comes without tooling or a motor however we can build it to your specification."

Edited By Bill Phinn on 27/04/2023 21:31:00

This is bound to be the case with certain specialised items in any country, but regarding HSS twist drills, there are some very decent quality manufacturers in China selling the best they're capable of to Western and Asian consumers alike.

Two names to look at are Heygo and Muye. It's quite possible that these, or Chinese companies like them, whose names most of us have never heard of, are also the manufacturers of drills we've long been used to thinking of as Western brands.

Edited By Bill Phinn on 27/04/2023 19:12:26

Perhaps you'd be good enough to tell us who it was.

I bought several multipacks of long drills from Prostar/UK Drills about ten years ago. Half were shaped like bananas. They were the second worst drills I've ever bought. The worst were some Forstner bits...from Prostar/UK Drills.

These were good experiences in a way, because they persuaded me to stump up for better drills from then on.

The problem I found with Lidl and Amazon unbranded digital calipers I used is that whilst they worked absolutely fine for a while, they failed terminally after a year or so of use. I now mostly use a Kennedy dial caliper and a Mitutoyo Digimatic 196-30.

I think the idea that a micrometer is always going to give you a more accurate reading than a caliper is too rigid; it depends on the part you're measuring and the circumstances in which you're measuring it.

Edited By Bill Phinn on 26/04/2023 12:54:57

Simple answer: lower torque is required to achieve the cut - useful with the bigger sizes, and it reduces the risk of bending things with the smaller ones.

Maybe, as long as you leave commercial landscapers out of your generalisation; I don't know many commercial landscapers who have made the move to battery powered mowers yet; for the pros there are currently too many cons with them when compared with gasoline powered alternatives.

That situation may of course change if battery-powered equipment becomes an economically more viable alternative or draconian legislation forces the change-over.

On eBay I only got 11 results, including this one. They were all double coil spring washers.

Did you put the search terms within quotes?

Edited By Bill Phinn on 16/04/2023 15:07:50

It's not just for holding a Pyro-Master tool, Nick. The fold-out stand that comes with it is no different from the one that, as I said above, comes included with low cost soldering irons.

I was given my Pyro-Master tool set 14 years ago. It was my only soldering iron until recently. It works fine for small jobs.

Sadly, it's becoming less easy to identify products made in Taiwan or by Taiwanese firms with factories in mainland China because the PRC government has introduced draconian measures to stop "made in Taiwan" or "Taiwan" et al. from appearing on finished goods.

A recent example is this tap wrench. The older versions of it say "Taiwan" on the top: the newer versions are identical except for being minus the word "Taiwan". Both versions are pictured in that seller's listing.

My version is minus the word Taiwan but is very nicely made nonetheless, and certainly streets ahead of the smaller Facom ratcheting tap wrench I bought a couple of years ago, which struggles even to hold taps squarely in its jaws. I don't know where the Facom wrench was made.

But did the context actually require anyone to mention it explicitly?

Dave Halford said: "That is because the ROC government pays for most of the shipping of Chinese products, so defrauding the ROC might lead to unpleasant consequences."

And I replied "Dave, do you really mean the government of the ROC, i.e. Taiwan?"

Was that not an explicit enough approach? Should I have said "Dave, I think you will find you mean the PRC not the ROC"?

I wasn't 100% sure that he didn't mean the ROC, and I was trying to prompt him to have another think if what he really meant, as seemed probable, was the PRC.

Maybe I'm old-fashioned in believing that the best way to teach people things is often to point them in the right direction rather than to hand them the whole answer on a plate.