Member postings for Henry Brown

I've recently finished reading this book, it charts the journey of precision, or lack of it in the early days, to the amazing achievements up to 2019 when my edition was published. A bit long winded in places, I enjoyed the read and it reminded me of lots of things I knew but had put into storage!

I've never felt the need to make or acquire a set yet, nice to have but a good selection of accurate parallels are far more useful to me...

Not usual in UK homes but I have a friend, ex software tech and loves gadgets, who has it in a couple of rooms in his house and now uses it for heating and cooling. He is very impressed and reckons it is cheaper than his central heating in the winter.

I believe most offices now have it, we didn't when I retired but most working folks I know seem to have it. Part of our factory was temperature controlled, the gear shop and standards room, but the rest of us just had to grin and bear it...

On a lightweight machine I'd be inclined to turn the top slide around to the required angle to cut a deeper csk rather use a cutter, I use 3 flute cutters from RGD but mainly on the mill, they are fine if the speed is kept down. I use plenty of lubricant/coolant, CT90.

Selecting "Default to last" button takes you to the top of the last page Bob. This is as close as you are going to get as far as I know...

Bit of a long shot, does anyone have the above mentioned article please? My old nu-Tool has done me well and deserves a bit of TLC!

I'm afraid most of the fete's and classic car shows that I take my car to have started charging a fiver to display the car. Sadly that isn't going to happen, I was chatting with a friend yesterday (at a free to attend car meet) who went to one of the paid for fete car shows at the week end and he'd noticed a drop in entries since they introduced the charge this year, he said that would be the last one.

One of the bigger local shows at Tewkesbury were going to charge £15 to take the car and driver and passenger but it was cancelled!

With petrol at £9 a gallon I will be very selective what we go to this year. We still intend to try and make most of the car runs planned as they are so much more enjoyable than sitting in a field fending kids and their careless parents off for the afternoon

I use Halfords car paint rattle cans with the appropriate primer and primer filler. Make sure they are well shaken, and spray lots of light coats and the finish can be really good.
For holding when painting I pretty much do what Jason suggests and occasionally use a wire hook where applicable.

Just to add to my previous comment - I've clocked stuff up to 10' diameter and only used scriber to get it roughly correct and then used a dti for final settings. Mainly on horizontal borers but very occasionally with the work piece in the vertical plain on a conventional lathe.

I'm wondering if its for checking large gear pitches or something similar in the field? One would select the relevant rollers, they sit in between the teeth and the dial then reads variations as its moved around the gear, it would need a stop to make sure the reading was always in the same place. If not that some other similar application.

I tend to keep a drill witch suits the taps I have with them. I 3D printed a stand for the standard 1 to 10mm in 0.5mm increments that I mounted on a solid lump of wood, other small odd balls are in a tin, the sizes above 10mm have to live in a plastic tote tin.

I use Sharpie Ultra Fine in red and green for the odd occasion I need to mark out, they work ok but don't like oiled surfaces so bear that in mind. They are cheap enough to give one a try, often red and green are cheaper than the black or blue due to supply and demand I guess.

I use a 250mm ( 9.75" ) on 3 x D1-4 pegs on my Warco GH 1332 without issue so you should be fine.

Edited By Henry Brown on 28/04/2022 17:49:46

I've been looking for a 10" x 7" adjustable angle plate, something cheap and cheerful as it's not something I'll use every day. but I do have a job for it coming up. Various searches didn't bring anything sensible and I just missed one on ebay for £70 that was collection only from the Doncaster area - a bit of a jaunt from Worcester, especially with the cost of diesel.

I was about to order one when one of those annoying pop-ups appeared advising me the "same" thing was available for £39.99 cheaper! Clearly it was going to be from the Far East but at £75 delivered I thought it worth a punt. I'm quite happy reworking this type of thing if it appears to be good value for money so I pressed the Buy button, that was Wednesday pm.

Friday lunch time a white van arrives and a very heavy box was handed over and taken into the workshop for further investigation later in the day when I had time to look at it. The unit was double boxed and in a plastic bag, at first glance it looked ok, as expected it felt gritty so the expected strip down was in order. There was quite a lot of casting sand revealed when I split the two main parts, rather than a light clean I decided to do a thorough clean and then do some checks.

My first check was the flatness of the base which was a little disappointing so a couple of hours with a hand scraper, it wasn't bad enough to need a skim, had that better than .0015" feeler proof and a good deburr had that part sorted. I then turned my attention to the top half which is the more robust part and found that it only needed a quick deburr. The minor parts, adjusting screw bearing blocks and the screw and its handle were also deburred and the whole thing put back together after a second clean down.

I then checked the top surface for parallel bearing in mind I'd tickled the base face up for flatness, and was surprised to find the it was better than .002" when set at 0 degrees, I couldn't really check what it was like when set at an angle so I'll have to see how I get on when I've made some T nuts for it and I can get the job I bought it for set up. My guess is that when the base was machined it was over clamped which introduced the distortion.

All things considered I'm pleased with my purchase, I found the castings to be to a high standard and the machining, other than the base was fine.

Welcome Tris, I'm not far from you (near Pershore) enjoy the forum, there is always lots of help to be had...

Regards, Henry.

Not sure what has happened above as some of my post is hidden by the adverts on the RH side. Perhaps a Mod could delete the post please. Here it is again:

For what its worth I contacted the company (Roxon in Gloucester) that installed our solar panels about a battery system, I had asked about batteries when they did the original fitting maybe six years ago [edit to add installed in 2013!] and they said it wasn't worth it for my usage. I asked again recently and this was their response:

"It’s an interesting question and one Roxon is being asked more and more.

The following is a reply that was sent this morning to another customer and the same principles will apply to you, namely that the electricity you get from your battery will probably cost more than buying from the grid, even though it was yours to begin with. At best it might save you a few pence per unit but you’ll have spent £3-4,000 for the privilege.

"The software predicts that adding a battery would increase your rate of self consumption from the PV from about 55% to 75%.

About 7.5% of the DC output is lost in the battery charge / discharge process so your additional energy would be equivalent to an extra 1,250kWh per year, worth about £395 at the typical present tariff of 30p/kwh plus VAT.

There are other ways of adding value to a battery of course, like off peak charging but I can’t calculate the benefit. Also, potentially, protection from power cuts, so I’d be happy to quote for a battery solution if of interest."

I have had discussions with Dave (Samsaranda) about his set up and it seems that you need to be on one of the economy tariffs and have a high electricity usage to really make it work.

Edited By Henry Brown on 10/04/2022 10:36:51

So, we have over 200 years worth of coal under us, I can't understand why some serious effort isn't put into making it a cleaner fuel. I worked in the coal mining machinery industry (Dowty) back before Mrs T decided she didn't like the miners, so switched us to the then more expensive foreign gas.

The hazards and costs from nuclear are well known, I'm guessing they will be French or Chinese installations and we'll be paying over the odds per kw/h and there won't be many of the new stations located in the South East or where most of the demand will come from.

I have a similar vice and I did exactly what Paul suggested above.to get its thickness parallel. My table slots aren't particularly good so I took a little of the locator blocks to allow me to set the vice square to the table by using a parallel to clock onto nipped into the vice, its no problem for me as the vice stay put for 90% of the time.

One thing worth noting is that an unknown grade aluminium may not give a particularly good finish whatever the cutter.

My mill only runs to 1600 rpm, I find I get very acceptable finishes using any reasonable quality cutters, I do tend to look for industrial types on clearance - metric or imperial, I'm not fussy!

I've found that climb milling is the best way to get a good finish when using the side of the cutter. As I don't use flood cooling I don't always lubricate the cutter for aluminium, if I do I use WD40 because that is handy, I don't have any other use for paraffin.