Member postings for Chris Crew

About 40 years ago I made a few 'Myford' collets because at the time I couldn't afford or justify the real thing. They were only of mild steel but they actually worked remarkably well and I still have them even though over the years I have mostly acquired the real thing. From memory I turned two 2MT tapers back to back between centres on a piece of BMS leaving parallel portions at the the rear of each taper, as per the real Myford collet which I was copying, and sufficient in the centre to accommodate the groove for the closing/removal nut and to part the two tapers. I then placed each taper in turn in the head-stock taper and bored out the rear parallel section, again as per the Myford item, before parting the two tapers. I then drilled and reamed the blanks in the lathe head-stock before removing them to make four slits with a slitting saw. To prevent the fingers being distorted whilst the slitting was being done I inserted a piece of material of the collet's size into the bore.

I recall having a conversation with the late Malcolm Townend in the Myford shop at Beeston and he told me then that Crawford were refusing to produce anymore collets for Myford for an economical price and that Myford had had some samples made in India that were undergoing quality checks. Whether these later Indian-made collets actually made it on to the British market I have no idea. Sadly, Mr. Townend died and Myford at Beeston ceased to exist. Perhaps someone knows more about these later collets.

"How much might one be charged for a pint these days?"

I am paying £3.50 for a pint of 'bottom of the range' hand-pulled real ale at the moment in two nearby village hostelries. I have no idea how much the 'fizzy-pop' costs that comes from the T-Bar, but I suspect it is a lot more expensive. I think the nearest 'Spoon's' were selling an acceptable beer for £1.71 but unless I have a 'chauffeuse' when she goes into town shopping, I obviously can't get there.

I used to think the model engineering was a rich man's hobby but now I am not so sure!

I have no idea how far you may be from any reasonably sized conurbation in West Wales but there should be a lubricants dealer somewhere in the wider area, I would think. I live in a very rural area 25 miles from Lincoln where there is such a dealer, the Witham Oil and Grease Company which supplied a 20L container several years ago that will probably see me out given that I dilute it approx. 20:1 with a dash of Rocol disinfectant to kill the bacteria. I must admit that these days the machines are a little under-used to say the least but there is always a flow of coolant in reasonable condition when I do actually get round to doing something but this wasn't always the case before I discovered the Rocol additive.

I suppose the point I am trying to make is that a one-off 50 mile round trip to collect the oil, probably at the same time SWMBO wanted to go shopping, was no great hardship but we visit the city occasionally anyway for various reasons. Of course, I am assuming that you have some form of transport.

Edited By Chris Crew on 30/04/2023 22:16:38

As far as I can see in the photograph the Allen screw looks to be more like a Torx head to me.

If the chuck was made by San Ou you will be quids in! I bought an 8" 4-jaw self-centring chuck for £108, including VAT & shipping, and the quality and accuracy for the price is excellent. So cheap I thought it may be a scam. It cost me another fifty-quid for a well used L0 back-plate. It needed an interstitial plate making and I took a lot of trouble over this when machining the register, but when fitted a 0.625" ground test bar showed a run out of less than 0.0015" when measured six inches from the chuck jaws. I don't even bother with the Burnerd 3-jaw now except when the need arises to grip a hexagon.

Edited By Chris Crew on 28/04/2023 20:58:13

What does 'a while ago' mean, can you state a timescale?

Larry, I know exactly what you mean. In 1983 I bought a used Nu-Tool bench pillar drill from the then local Myford dealer for £150 (you can get the same thing for half the price forty years later) because I couldn't afford a Fobco/Meddings/Start-Rite etc. at the time. Obviously Chinese, I was told it had been returned from a school because it was 'noisey', yes it was because the pulley was loose on the motor spindle making the belt vibrate which took me about two minutes to detect and fix.

When I mentioned it to some 'fellow conspirators' at the time the machine was immediately condemned out of hand as being a load of Chinese rubbish, I had wasted my money and would only regret not holding out for a British machine. Well, as it happens that machine is still in my workshop, it runs quietly, it's square and drills true. I must have drilled a 'million' holes on it and it still has the original belt which I really should have renewed by now. BTW, where are Fobco and Start-Rite these days? I believe Meddings still make a very basic and expensive pillar drill in this country but all their other machines are imported from Spain, it seems. You can still occasionally detect people talking about Chinese 'crap' in this forum but I have never had a problem with it which is probably why it is sold all over the world.

The 'real' Myford in Beeston always sold their lathes in the most basic and un-equipped format but this was the way British companies sold their products and probably one of the main reasons foreign competition wiped them out. I bought an ML7R in 1978 for £550 and when it arrived it was totally useless. They sold it to me as a screw-cutting lathe but it didn't even come with a thread dial indicator let alone a motor and switchgear. It cost me almost as much again to get the lathe operational. Warco et.al., on the other hand, began selling lathes that came with almost everything you needed to 'plug and play' so no wonder they succeeded.

I shouldn't have been so surprised because about 1971 I was going to buy the cheapest version of a new Mini which in those days was supposed to be £525 on the road. As I was discussing the specification with the BMC dealer, colour, trim etc., I can recall being absolutely astounded when he asked if I would like it to come with a heater! At extra cost, of course, and this was at a time when the Japanese were hitting the market with Datsun cars that came with heaters and radios as standard. It had never entered my head that, especially in the British climate, new cars did not come with a heater, you had to specify one. Strangely enough, there are no British mass car producers or lathe manufacturers around these days.

Edited By Chris Crew on 28/04/2023 07:08:29

If you apply common sense and logic in the workshop you will find that you know more and have skills that you never knew you had and you will find that fitting a backplate, especially one that is part finished and threaded, is a very simple task. As I have said before, if a method works for you then you must have done something right no matter what any other's opinion may be. Don't be afraid to try anything because you will not make a mistake, you will just learn a lesson and we all must have scrap-boxes full of 'lessons', I certainly have. Remember, the man who never made a mistake never made anything.

Edited By Chris Crew on 24/04/2023 09:08:36

I have both a No.1 and No.2 Reliance jig. The smaller I use on a Clarkson T&C and the larger on a Union pedestal grinder with a fixture I have made to present it to the wheel. Both these devices appear to be cheaply and roughly made (talk about the Chinese!) but they do work. The only thing I have found is that they do not grind an included angle of 118 deg's, it is somewhat more acute, and I have been meaning to modify the point angle but as the drills seem to work anyway I have never found time to do this. I envy those who can sharpen drills freehand!

Martin Cleeve describes a method of picking up a metric thread over short distances in his excellent 'Screw-cutting' book which every model engineer should possess. If I recall correctly, it requires the use of his saddle stop which, IMO, should be made and fitted to every Myford lathe. I have fitted a collar and spring on the stop rod to act as a buffer when screw-cutting or traversing up to a shoulder which is worth considering. I made a similar design of saddle stop which lives at the rear of the tailstock and uses the pre-tapped holes for the taper-turning attachment to hold it in place. With a stop available at either end of the saddle's travel it is easy to set a predetermined distance for picking up a metric thread, as per Cleeve's instructions.

Also, I have seen mentioned in this thread, reversing the lathe. Nothing wrong with that, except you must take precautions to prevent the chuck un-screwing. It will un-screw no matter how gentle the reversal is made and the chuck should be held in place with a drawbar screwed into a disk which sits behind the jaws and in front of the mandrel nose. Obviously, this only applies to lathes with screw-on chucks.

Edited By Chris Crew on 08/04/2023 15:37:00

When I had to mill in the lathe I used the three jaw chuck to hold the end mills and slot drills, to prevent them creeping out simply wrap a sliver of newspaper around them, it works a treat,

Bill, The book I have been sent is the 24th Edition which is a 128 page PDF.

I have actually got one of these things working in a fashion, it was bunged up with old grease and dirt, but the return spring that rotates the 'scrolls' seems very weak although it may be that a stripping down and really thorough clean and lube may improve things. One of the others seems completely 'dead' and the third is in pieces on my bench. At the moment I have no idea how to re-assemble it but someone has been kind enough to send me a PDF of the manual so I am hoping to know a bit more before I go back into the workshop tomorrow. If I can resurrect at least two of them I will make some new levers with plastic knobs to smarten up their appearance. I will also make MrCrispin's clamping sleeve to fit a device to the Myford tail-stock. All good clean fun!

Tony, unfortunately the seller stated 'no returns accepted'. I knew it was punt when I purchased the items, fortunately I elected to use PayPal's 'Pay-in-Three' facility so the financial damage has been spread. At least it has presented me with a challenge to sort out the issues, I actually enjoy repairing and refurbishing bits and pieces so I will now view my purchase as a project.

Noel, They were sold as being 1/2", not sure if this is correct as I am new to this type of device and until I acquire the book/manual I have no idea from where this dimension is taken. Many thanks to all for the responses, thus far.

After watching the MrCrispin Coventry die head video on YouTube I decided one might be a novel addition to my workshop. I found the items advertised on eBay and put several in my watch list. One was for a job-lot of three for which it stated they all appeared to work and I received an offer price. I was actually going to reject this offer and the items but, being a weak-willed and spineless character, I pressed the accept button. However, I may have to wear the donkey's ears for a couple of weeks because when the items arrived none of them appear work and all of them will need some remedial work to a lesser or greater extent, or so it appears given a cursory 'once-over'.

So, the questions are these: does anyone have an exploded diagram of one of these devices, is there any company in existence that can supply parts (apart from the chasers which appear to be easily sourced) because I assume these devices have not been manufactured since Alfred Herbert's demise and has anyone else refurbished one of these devices before and could provide some advice?

I am hoping that I can salvage at least one working die-head from the three almost identical ones that I bought and put the rest down to experience.

Unfortunately, Clive, not indexing the Personal Allowance in line with inflation is a 'stealth' rise in income tax that the government has imposed in the hope that a majority of people will not notice in the way they would see a rise in the the basic rate of tax to 24% (a figure I think I have seen quoted in the financial column of a national daily) and would find politically unacceptable. Of course, we all know that the purchasing power of our incomes has fallen due to the tax rise, which effects those still working as well as us retirees, plus the effects of inflation.

"The government's shameful decision to tax state pensions is the thing that really gets me."

I am no pensions or tax expert but I thought that the State Pension has always been taxable. If it's a persons only income in retirement then it is usually a lower amount than the Personal Allowance and hence there would be no liability to income tax. If it is supplemented by an occupational pension or other investment income then the State Pension is deducted from the personal allowance and any remaining allowance is then applied to the tax liability accrued on any other income.

For those contributing to an occupational pension, whether that be a defined contribution or defined benefit scheme, income tax is only applied to their income after the contribution has been deducted, i.e. tax relief is applied at source meaning that a £100 per month contribution actually only costs the employee £80 because they have paid £20 less tax. Which in reality means income tax has been deferred because the pension contributions are actually deferred income which produce a higher income upon the maturity of defined contribution money purchase scheme or a proportion of the final salary in the case of a defined benefit scheme. I assume that the self-employed will have made their own arrangements.

That is my understanding as to how it works, certainly in my own case when I was employed, but I am always happy to be re-educated by those who possess greater knowledge and I am sure there must be some tax and financial experts who are also model engineers.

Edited By Chris Crew on 25/03/2023 21:31:50

Edited By Chris Crew on 25/03/2023 21:47:07

"I regularly use a hacksaw on chucked-up pieces in the lathe. The cure to the problem you describe is a very simple 2-minute job to make - a piece of wood with 'feet' either side to straddle the lathe bed. I use the same board to protect the bed when changing chucks etc."

The kangaroo Courts Martial has found you guilty of conduct unbecoming, LOL.  

Despite your precautions, I think here will be quite a few volunteering for the firing squad!

And, before anyone points out the contradiction in my previous comments, if it works for you who is to criticise?

Edited By Chris Crew on 25/03/2023 17:03:09

Edited By Chris Crew on 25/03/2023 17:10:53