Member postings for Steve Withnell

Why do you assume lots of people have paid £50? why not work directly from the magazine articles as a lot of people do, personally I can't see the need to buy the plans. You might the only bloke that shelled out the £50!

To Norman's point, to overlay the cost of reviewing, updating and maintaining errata against designs which are produced from an Amateur base I think would kill off many interesting & useful designs from seeing the light of day.

What about drawings that are techincal perfect, but the subject has certain features for which the design is poor, but only becomes apparent during build? Does the author get his homework back with a instruction to re-work?

It is after all meant to be model engineering we are about, not hobby kit building.

Steve

I understand that the "T" means treated. Does that mean fully annealed ready to machine or fully hardened or somewhere in between?

The piece I have is flippin' hard stuff.

Steve

@Scott - powered saw? Just part it off!

Can't remember what for, but I did grind a piece of 1/8 HSS for use as a tiny boring bar. Obviously, you can't one a foot long at that cross section

The parting-off problem is quite often in the set up and actually difficult to resolve without using a rear toolpost. I think the geometry of a rear toolpost is more important than it being at the rear, but that's an opinion.

If you take a standard parting off tool and holder in the toolpost, the cutting forces can have two quite big levers to play with. One is the distance between the centre of the tool post to the tip of the tool (across the bed) and the distance from the centre of the tool post to the axis of the tool measuring up the bed.

A rear tool post eliminates the latter of these levers, and can minimise the former. I haven't tried a rear tool post at the front! Anyone done that comparison?

Steve

I notice that the advance ricket sales closed on the 30 April, yet their online ticket agent has eTicket capability -

Using an HSS knife tool very sharp at low rpm about a 100, and a decent cut (1mm) solved the problem. Taking light cuts works but not well. Anyway job done, thanks all.

Steve

Drove to Macclesfield to watch Fylde get beat by 1 point

I've been using a classic knife tool ground for steel, which works but leaves significant, partially melted burrs, so not sure if there is a better shape of tool or if Nylon just does that.

I'm using a highish spindle speed c2500rpm taking a 1.5mm cut to take me straight to size and being gentle with the feed.

Steve

PS: Yes I have returned to the workshop...

@Loft76 - I've had on of these for a while and I've not been able to get comfortable using it for anything other than aligning edges, a milling vice for example, for which it is really good. For finding a centre (ie a 2D x,y position) I can never work out the tolerance the thing works to.

I certainly hadn't thought about how safe the laser might be, but as you say with the collimator fitted, I do switch off the machine lights to see the spot. Without the collimator, "splashes" of laser light are noticeable as you move the workpiece around, but how dangerous these are, haven't a clue.

Steve

I think if you thread as specified on the Stuart drawing, I think you are then committed to the Stuart fittings, be worth double checking, measure twice, cut once...

This is how I wound the valve springs for the Nemett 15S -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQaSDqEABTs

If you run out of wire, the escaping wire tail whacks you hard on the back of the hand. Even rigger gloves don't provide pain avoidance...

Sorry, I can only love one engine at a time...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-SNDErd1IM

Steve

Finally, I won the auction. In the interin I did swap notes with the seller. He told me he was sick and tired of complaints about how he had described the item...GIven I won the re-listed item at almost £10 less than my previous top bid, the seller at least was genuine.

My first steam cylinder assembly was made with a £50 lathe, worn out chuck with huge runout. No calibrated dials. The tooling was made (came with the lathe) from a set of 1/4 square letter stamps.

The nice thing about worn out lathes is that they still turn "round", turning oval would be real neat trick!

So I reckon you can get started for £100.

The first shock was as posted above, the cost of materials. I think the Nemett cost me £100 in materials, ball races, cam belt etc. And that's a scratch build. I dread tp think of the materials cost in even a modest loco.

Now the seller has withdrawn the item !

Steve

Guess what - got an eMail this morning "bid retracted". Which leaves me as the highest bidder at my first bid (not auto-incremented to my limit), so that's OK. It's a good one to flag to eBay though.

What I don't understand is how the retracting bidder (?!) was able to bid 1p more than my hghest auto bid, when the bid increments are £2 on this one.

Steve

Does this look like a shill bidder?

23% of 1395 bids on one seller

65 bid retractions in 6 months

Steve

Excellent!

Steve

Thanks for the useful responses, the guy that got fined for shill bidding on a pasty warmer made me grin.

I must admit I hadn't realised it was an illegal practice, as opposed to a dodgy one.

Steve