Member postings for Andy Stopford

Comparison of now with 1976:

https://twitter.com/bbcweather/status/1549005328112619520?s=20&t=AEbx-o5jSoFiMlFMY4PSIQ

Its not just Britain, its the world.

And if everyone says "its someone-else's fault , so why should we do anything", then nothing will get done.

Its not too difficult to see an explanation for the Fermi Paradox:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox#It_is_the_nature_of_intelligent_life_to_destroy_itself

The question may be which method gets us there first.

I think issue 13's cover is far superior to the latest effort - simple, uncluttered, and giving a clear suggestion of what is likely to be inside.

Looking through the archive (good work getting that working again by the way), I'd also pick out the covers from 1997 to about 2008 as being pretty good, despite some rather lurid colour combinations for the text; subsequently there seems to have been an increase in labels (I don't know the technical term for these angled sticker-effect items) which give a messy effect.

And yes, lose the photos of old gits on the cover. If I want to know what they look like, I have only to look in the mirror...

Well, having recently mislaid my compasses (used for the sort of site work that I believe Jason uses such things for), I decided to give it a whirl - the deep hole pencils are useful, and quite expensive in their own right, so at least it won't be a total loss if the gadget as a whole doesn't live up to the claims.

When it turns up I'll let you know what I think.

I welded a piece of 3/16 steel plate to an Evolution mitre saw stand to make a portable bench with vice for off-site work, and Painting the Forth Bridge (otherwise known as repairing rust holes in my car).

There's a fellow who advertises manufacture of new feed screws and nuts on Lathes.co.uk:

http://www.lathes.co.uk/page3.html/

just after the row of asterisks.

I have yet to find one of these gadgets that works reliably.

I presume the very expensive (£300+) ones work - these all seem to use a separate transmitter and receiver, and some work by injecting a signal into the cable so that it functions as an antenna (the ones you see being used to find buried cables in roads work this way).

Here's an example of a posh one - I have no idea whether it's actually any good:

https://www.gnwshop.co.uk/collections/cable-detectors/products/ca6681-cable-detector

The space programme thing is a myth - PTFE was discovered (more or less by accident) in the thirties. Its first notable use was in the Manhattan Project to protect the plumbing of the Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant from the corrosive effects of Uranium Hexafluoride.

Interesting about the poorer performance for oscillating systems. I wonder if its the same for other slippery plastics like nylon and acetal.

100 megatonnes? Standard Russian TV propaganda bombast.

The most powerful nuclear weapon ever tested was the Tsar Bomba with a design yield of 100 MT, but reduced to 50 MT to reduce fallout or, some say, because the design team (led by Andrei Sakharov) feared the fireball would extrude out of the earth's atmosphere, and they didn't know what the consequences of this would be.

The Tsar Bomba was a completely impractical willy-waving exercise and modern nuclear weapons have far smaller yields, which isn't to say they're inconsequential - see this link (which has been receiving a lot of visits lately):

https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/

I have a WM180 and an ER32 backplate-mounted collet holder. I have no problems with lack of registration, you can take the assembly off, turn it around, put it back on, and the work remains true. The mating spigot seems very accurately made with absolutely minimal clearance (I recently read that this mounting method is an ISO specification).

The chuck/backplate came from ARC, so no connection between the manufacturers of lathe and chuck, except that they both apparently took note of that ISO spec.

I use it a lot, and I think a MT variety without a through hole would not be nearly as useful.

re. collet chuck accuracy - I do have an ER20 2MT holder (for the mill) which displays considerable run-out - it was a very cheap ebay purchase. I replaced it with one from ARC which is far better (I can't remember the figures off hand, but I think the cheapo one was at least 10x worse).

There was a chap from National Grid on the radio a few months ago. He said that they weren't worried about increased demands from charging electric vehicles - much of the load (managed by smart chargers/meters) would be in the small hours when other demand was low, and existing infrastructure could easily handle this.

He did say that a widespread switch from gas to electric heating would be more of a problem, and National Grid are working to increase capacity to cope with this when it comes. Improving insulation in domestic properties would presumably help to mitigate this.

I think you're very likely right about the float bowl. I would guess that the aluminium corrodes to form aluminium hydroxide gel which is what you found lurking in the carburettor.

re. using octane booster, unless this does something else apart from increasing the octane number, I'm not sure it would help, since the only significance of octane is its anti-knock properties (probably not important with the compression ratio you are using).

The simplest course of action is probably to drain the fuel from tank and carb if laying up the tractor for any period of time, e.g. over winter - I'm sure it wouldn't do any harm leaving it fueled for a few weeks.

Lovely model by the way - it sounds great!

Ethanol absorbs water which can cause corrosion of aluminium float chambers, etc., so definitely worth draining for storage.

Mind you, old school petrol deteriorated over time too, with the lighter fractions evaporating off (and possibly other chemical changes taking place) leaving an oily, stinky, not very inflammable goo.

Avgas (aeroplane petrol) is reputed not to suffer from this problem, perhaps because its all all 'good stuff' rather than mostly cheap stuff, blended with a small quantity of good stuff. It smells nicer too.

I don't know the thickest stock an Evolution saw will cut, but they work amazingly well with very thin sections. I once had to adapt a curtain pole to fit a bay window. It was made of very thin-walled steel tube. I didn't fancy trying to cut the mitres on-site with a hacksaw so I decided to give my then new Evolution saw a try, despite the coarse tooth pitch. There was a fair bit of surplus length in the tube so I was able to do a couple of test cuts first.

I gingerly lowered the blade and it made a perfect burr-free cut - the only thing to watch for was lifting the blade back up while it was still turning - this would result in it catching and putting a little dent in the cut edge.

I should emphasise that the blade was pretty much brand new at the time.

Donald, those are Rabone Chesterman No 47 R rules Rotagrip are selling the 600 mm version on ebay:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/363120350632

I might look into doing that - though I bet they are crimped!

Ordinate dimensions can help with 'de-cluttering', and work well with a DRO-equipped mill.

Take care though, that you don't do what I did last weekend and read the last hole position as the length dimension of your workpiece. Its exceedingly annoying to find that the last of the numerous holes that you've so carefully, so precisely, drilled lies on that misplaced edge...

I have this problem - on my mill the only way to mount the X axis DRO is with the scale moving and the pick-up fixed. Vice versa for Y. I can make the display increment or decrement in the correct sense using the setup page, but the displays for ARC and ARRAY are then reversed - it doesn't really matter, you can ignore the pictorial representation and just step through as normal, but it is slightly annoying if you get distracted and forget which step number you did last.

And just to make life complicated... climb cutting can sometimes be better, with less vibration and a better surface finish.

This is true even for small mills. I have a Sieg SX1L, which is about as lightweight as you can get, and often climb cut with it. Be cautious at first if you try this, and make sure your gibs are adjusted properly, but not too tight or you won't be able to feel what's going on.

edit: NDIY beat me to it

Edited By Andy Stopford on 16/03/2022 21:19:53

I've got one of the ones in the second link - the minimum hold down spacing is about 100 mm, maximum about 115. You have to be careful with the length of the studs and nuts, otherwise they foul the table adjusting nuts. Some time I might make a couple of dedicated toe clamps which would put the hold down nuts outside the base of the table.

It is good and rigid.

I did quite like the cable crimper - it looks like it works better than some of the (not cheap) ones I've bought.

Think I'll pass on the power hammer though.