Member postings for old mart

Welcome, Alex, as you know there's lots of steam engine expertise to draw on and no doubt you will be able to give us some tips also.

How would you check that the tailstock quill is in line with the headstock? I'm referring to the alignment of the Morse taper, not the barrel.

Edited By old mart on 10/04/2020 16:55:35

Welcome, Mark, this hobby has the downside of becoming addictive, you'll be thinking of a mill next. I have ridden a Montessa 250, but had a Beamish Suzuki 250 with the Whitehawk frame. There's no way I could manage a trials bike now due to arthritis.

A proper test bar is more useful as it not only has a MT2 to get the tailstock aligned in more than one axis, but the headstock to tailstock between centres. You would not be able to buy much beer for the price of one of these, and it will last longer.

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I have some Dormers which look like centre drills, but have 90 degree instead of 60 degree tapers. I prefer these for starting a drilled hole and save the 60 degree ones for actually using with a centre. For drilling, spotting drills are very good and even stiffer than centre drills. Be careful choosing sizes, there are centre drills out there which are too big to fit in a 13mm chuck.

I used to play my uncles old wind up Garrard when I was a kid, the needles came in three grades, loud, medium and soft. You were supposed to use a new needle every time, The needles came in tins of 500.

Mick, I have done that once or twice when producing a female thread when there was no alternative to trying for size on the mating thread. The last one was a nut of about 2 3/4" diameter to hold the head onto the gearbox shaft of a Brantley helicopter. This was to lift the aircraft. I have a picture of the hollow shaft, rotated the wrong way round taken before making the nut. I took the nut out of the chuck about three times before getting a good match.

Edited By old mart on 07/04/2020 20:36:35

I bought these recently, not that I needed them, but because they were cheap.

I was just doing the washing up at about 8pm and noticed a pretty pink vapour trail (con trail) going east towards Heathrow, probably. They would have landed about 8.20. Then I came to my senses and realised what a rare sight I had seen. When I lived in Godalming, Surrey, I could take the dog for a walk and see the lights of up to ten aircraft within my field of view simultaneously from the fields 1/4 mile from the house.

Buying some 1/4" or 6mm square hss tool steel is easy on ebay, and grinding it only needs a humble bench grinder. Then you have the means to produce lots of stuff on your lathe. Perhaps somebody can suggest a list of good books to buy.

I made a soapbox cart with 1 foot diameter pram wheels, it could carry at least 3 CWT and lasted for years. In my 20's, I was the mechanic for my friend who had a Barlotti Dino with a 9E Villiers engine. It managed about 20hp and always got into the A finals. Well mostly, the big end went bang on the Brands Hatch short circuit once, which meant only one race that day. These days, there only seems to be 125 karts racing. Go cart is a kids term for toys with motors, a world away from karts.

Edited By old mart on 06/04/2020 18:57:28

I have soft jaws for PB 5" chucks, a 125mm Chinese chuck and the 6 3/4" Pratt with the serrated jaws, which also has two sets of hard jaws. The 5" Pratt Burnerd chucks have lots of soft jaws, mostly bought cheap as job lots. They vary from 90% good to 90% used up. The worn out ones were milled to make them slot and tenon master jaws, and I have sets of aluminium top soft jaws to bolt onto them. Other worn out ones were milled to take short pieces of 1 1/2" AF hexagon brass stock which can be rotated one flat at a time using a central screw. They don't get used often, but are very useful when accuracy is needed. I used the serrated chuck to hold the X axis leadscrew of the Tom Senior mill when extending and evening out the threads, on conjunction with the tailstock, fixed and travelling steadies, all at once.

I would keep looking on ebay, just search for Clarkson autolock every time you are on the site, sooner or later you could be lucky. MT3 to er32 or 40 would be easier to find, I recon.

Mill it is then, unfortunately. To get the piece mounted dead vertical is the first hurdle to cross. I would try to get hold of a block of aluminium, or two smaller blocks which could be milled for the ends of the casting to sit on. Maybe 2 blocks with holes for it to fit in. If the holes matched, the blocks could be attached to an angle plate and adjusted until the job was vertical.

You might look at sintered bronze for the bush. Giving the axel a polish with some 1200 paper would do no harm as long as it is well cleaned before re assembly.

Mick B1 has the best method to bore it accurately. A clean up skim on each end will allow it to be accurately aligned. The fixed steady, if you have one will hold the outboard end true, and enable recentring to give a good start for the drill. Start the hole with the shortest drill, or a solid carbide one and progress to longer drills. I would still drill from either end to a size slightly bigger than the axel which is going in, and drill a counterbore at each end for the axel bushes.

You are going to have difficulty getting the alignment spot on using a mill, the lathe method makes it so much easier.

I have bought several USB sticks on ebay without any problems. The simple rules that I keep to are a UK seller with a top feedback score. I go for the lesser known makes, such as Trancend which are less likely to be worthwhile counterfeiting than Sandisk.

There is no spindle lock on the Smart & Brown model A at the museum. Also, no accessible pulley, or belt to use Clive's method. We usually have to engage the back gear without unlocking the pulley, which locks the spindle. To avoid the sudden stresses which can strip teeth, we use a strap wrench to gently increase the torque. This works pretty well, especially as the chucks may be changed several times a week.

For a safer switching system, a no volt type with the large latching emergency off button is best.

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I think you're right, any idea what tune?