Member postings for Tim Hammond

I've never had much success in bonding metal to metal with superglue, although "Chris" uploaded a video on YouTube under the name "Click Spring" recently specifically about using arbors for supergluing workpieces, and he seems to obtain excellent results.. On the other hand I've had very good results bonding 0,5 mm brass sheet to 10 mm thick plywood to cut out various shapes on my milling machine with a 3 mm dia. cutter at 2000 rev/min. At the end of the job it took a LOT of heat to persuade the adhesive to relinquish its grip on the parts.

I have a Clarke CL300 mini lathe, and although the dials are graduated in Imperial measurements, the various screws have metric pitches. Hence 0.040" on the dial (one complete revolution) is actually only 0.039" ( 1 mm = 0.03937"  ) Could this be the source of your problem?

HTH.

Edited By Tim Hammond on 08/06/2023 21:02:11

Just to muddy the water a little bit more, in the Black Country a burr thrown up by a machining process was always known as "fraze".

I've just measured my dead centre using a M&W micrometer and got a reading of 7.18 mm.dia. The shank on my revolving centre measured 7.19 mm. HTH.

Loved your account of your Triumph Trident travails, Hopper, as I bought a brand new one in 1976 from a London dealer at a cut price. It was difficult to return the machine to the dealer for servicing, so after the first (free ) service, I did them myself. Nothing particularly difficult and all went well until I rode the thing to Woodham's loco. scrapyard in South Wales (I was involved with the restoration of Urie S15 506 at the time, since you ask ); a few miles from my destination the engine started making horrendous clattering noises and was well down on power. Quick investigation at the yard showed that the noise was coming from the rocker cover, so I checked the rocker arm clearances and bingo! one of the gaps was way out. If you remember, there was a steel ball fitted to the tip of the rocker arm with a flat ground on it, this flat contacted the valve tip, and somehow, when I adjusted the clearance on that one valve I'd managed to rotate the ball in the socket, so that the clearance was between the spherical surface of the ball and the valve stem tip. This was OK until the ball self-rotated to its correct position after the engine had run for some time, with the resulting increase in clearance. Doh! Readjusted and all was well.

I had all sorts of problems with that bike and finished up with a holed centre piston after fitting a Lucas RITA electronic ignition system. Found out 20 years later from a Trident enthusiast that they were noted for this. The clue was in the name "Lucas" - I should have known. Gave up after that, sold the bike and bought a BMW R60/6.

Hmmmm. Going back to the OP, does he not think that the re-use of unfranked stamps is theft?

+1 for ACF50. I've used it for many years and it's excellent. The manufacturers also claim that it's benign to various rubbers and plastics - certainly I've had no problems, even when I've sprayed it on various automotive multi-pin connectors.

On 30 August last ( my 77th birthday as it happens ) I saw a urologist at the local hospital after weeks of feeling unwell and losing a lot of weight. I was told that I had developed advanced prostate cancer and that there is no cure for this; they can only slow the spread of the cancer by hormone injections. So that's that. Oh, and by the way, the urologist wished me a very happy birthday.

The point I would like to make here is that within a couple of weeks I was put on palliative care, and it's wonderful . Nothing is too much trouble for the team, every little ache, pain and problem is attended to at once, and I feel like a king!

I know that we can all point the finger at the N.H.S. for various shortcomings and seemingly strange decisions, but my treatment so far has been absolutely first class.

HTH.

Samsaranda's comments about every house in Valletta incorporating a cistern triggered a memory for me. In the house in which I was raised as a child in Smethwick, there was a large cistern built in beneath the kitchen floor, fed by rainwater from the roof guttering. Ours was filled in many years ago, but the old lady in the house next door had kept hers. The water was pumped up by a magnificent cast iron hand pump - like a scaled down version of a village pump - and was situated next to a large, earthenware sink. She used it a lot, especially for washing and personal hygiene (only one sink in each house and no bathroom). She saved a fortune in soap, as mains water there was very hard, whilst the cistern water was soft. In all, there were eight houses in the terrace, built in about 1911. I certainly think that this is an idea well worth exploring again.

I bought a Draper branded 320W 150 mm bench grinder a couple of months ago and the noise it makes when running is horrendous. It also vibrates when running, though not excessively and certainly better than the Clarke brand grinder it replaces. I was convinced that something was wrong with it, but before returning it I decided to let it run for 10 minutes or so and see what happened. Nothing happened, it continued to spin merrily and the motor casing became only slightly warm, so I've decided to live with it. Cheap motor in a cheap grinder.

If you are interested in the London Underground Rly. and associated bits and bobs, then may I recommend an extensive series of videos on YouTube made by a chap named Jago Hazzard. They are for people who want real information and are ( in my view ) not gimmicky.

Howard, this reminds me of a product called "Brock Pellets" which were popular about 25 years ago at the time when leaded petrol was being phased out and car owners were concerned that they would have to go to the trouble and expense of fitting hardened valve seats to the cylinder heads of their engines in order to run on unleaded fuel without the risk of valve seat recession. The vendors claimed that the action of these pellets was catalytic when placed in the fuel tank of the vehicle, and for proof claimed that they were first developed to enable WW II Hurricane fighter planes sent to Russia to run reliably on the abysmal fuel available at that time in that country. They were quite expensive to buy, but were very popular. Did they work? Well, proponents and enthusiastic users said certainly they did, whereas the more cynical of us in the Trade were not wholly convinced. AFAIK, the discussions are still rumbling on in obscure parts of the internet.

I've had my Clarke CL300 lathe now for over 10 years; on the odd occasion that I stall it by being a bit heavy-handed, the amber "fault" light comes on and I reset it by simply moving the forward/reverse switch to "0" and then back to "forward". It has never blown a fuse since I've owned it. HTH.

I attended the James Watt Secondary Technical school in Smethwick (West Midlands) between 1956 and 1961. It was given the name "James Watt" because it was located about a couple of miles from the old Boulton and Watt works. I received an excellent education there, biased towards science and technology, which has served me very well indeed throughout the rest of my life.

I note that the OP stated that he used thread cutting grease. Could this be the reason that swarf is being trapped in the die and not falling away? Oil might be better.

Hello Ken,

I bought a Unimat SL 50 years ago and still have it, though the motor gave up the ghost some years ago (the internal capacitors failed ). I've just had a look at the label on the motor body, it gives no speed figures, but on page 37 of the owners' manual, which came with the lathe, headed "Working Speeds" it gives the motor speed as 4 000 rev/min., with a caveat on the next page that speeds decrease in proportion to the load on the machine.

HTH.

I remember when I was a child ( 60+ years ago ) my mother would occasionally buy " Grape Nuts " breakfast cereal, and on the back of the boxes was an explanation of the headcodes of BR Southern Region locos. That region seemed to use white - painted discs rather than lamps.

"Although paint dries partly by evaporation the important change is chemical. In contact with Oxygen, the binder solidifies around the pigment and sticks the whole as a hardened layer to the prepared surface. Taking the lid off starts the hardening process which continues even if the lid is replaced. Can be slowed down as described in other posts, but not stopped. It even hardens slowly in unopened tins."

I bought a tin of red oil paint ,made by a company named "151" in September 2020 and found that the underside of the tin was printed with "Use by May 2022." This is the first time that I've come across a "use by" date on paint; never seen it before.

It's a real puzzler this one - I agree with Nigel B that the position of the carb. and the exhaust pipe seem too high for the engine to be a 2-stroke.On the other hand, on the photos of the various makes of SV motorcycles, the tappet chest covers are quite prominent, whereas there doesn't seem to be one on the original photo. Perhaps after all it is a Bitza - a B.S.A. - Bits Stuck Anywhere !

Forty years ago, before the general use of rubber bushes for road spring eyes for H,G,V,'s, replacement bushes for A.E.C,, Leyland, Ford et.al were obtained as spare parts. When I was on the shop floor, we normally removed the roadspring from the axle, pressed the old, worn bush out on a hydraulic press, used the press to install the new bushes, and always had to ream the bush to fit the shackle pin with an adjustable reamer. On some vehicles, thrust washers on each side of the eyes had to be renewed also. By coincidence, only yesterday I was boring out some washers for a little job in hand, they were originally made for Bristol bus springs, 1" bore, 1 7/8" outer dia., 5/32" thick. Both faces ground and beautifully made, as were most parts from the Bristol Motor Co. These washers are at least 40 years old.