Member postings for Philip Rowe

Well this thread has proved to be quite enlightening to me, every time I am doing frequent changes of tooling in the tailstock for example when making fittings, I curse the fact that I have never made the tailstock turret kit that is sitting under the bench. Reading this thread makes me feel much better now knowing other people's experiences.

Another thing that I have always hankered after is one of the 3 in 1 sheet metal machines, I now know that I don't need one of those either! In fact the longer this thread continues may mean that I never have to buy anything for the workshop ever again.

Phil

When my late father entered his Minnie in the ME exhibition in I think 1980 he was a bit miffed that he lost points for doing this. His reasoning was rust prevention but the judges deemed it unprototypical. You decide.

He did use a gloss paint from Precision Paints, sorry can't remember the shade.

Phil

I've always known this feature to be a 'washer face. Is this a term that is common/uncommon as I have used it on occasions and other people have looked at me as if I'm from another planet?

Phil

Wow, that is quite a project. He certainly has a lot more patience including dexterous fingers than I've got. One thing does puzzle me, anybody got an idea what the loose rings running on the line shifting are for? These appear at about 1min 10secs on the video, I can remember putting old bits of pyjama cord around the hubs of bicycles when I was a kid to try and keep the hub clean and oil free but would anyone bother on line shifting?

Phil

Sadly my experience of Upol does not match with others. I used it on an aluminium bridge for my garden railway as recommended by the supplier of the bridge. Within 4 days it was flaking off in quite large chunks. Now I will admit that my preparation was not as good as it could have been, you can imagine all the little nooks and crannies on a fairly accurate to scale girder bridge, so my preparation consisted of a rub with plastic wire wool (sorry I can't remember the proper name for it) followed by careful wiping with alcohol wipes with the acid etch applied soon after. You can imagine my dismay when it lifted so soon after, of course there were areas where the paint had stuck like the proverbial.

My solution was to get the entire bridge 1.4mtrs long bead blasted by a local firm which removed all traces of the paint and left a superb dull grey finish. I had originally intended to paint it but in fact I never have as I do like the finish left by the bead blasting and this has been outside in all weathers for 4 years and still looks good.

As far as I am aware the media that the blasters used was in fact walnut shells, whether this has any effect on the durability of the finish I don't know but at least it's better than the painted finish.

Phil

Madhatter,

I just tried to view your galleries and I get a "Gallery does not exist" error message. Have you taken the pics down or have I got some other kind of problem?

As I have a Star that I bought new around 1976 I am particularly interested in how the paint on mine has faired compared to your before and after shots.

Phil

If it's any help 24hr Araldite is shown on the Halfords website at £5.50 and my local branch still has it in stock. Well it did no more than 2 weeks ago when I last bought some.

Phil

Slightly O/T, does anyone else here remember valve radios being supplied with mains dropper cables? Where the mains cable was of a specified length and of high resistance that dropped the mains voltage down to about 80 volts and I think they were insulated with an asbestos covering of some sort. I recall that it did get quite warm but not hot although there must have been instances of unwary owners letting the cable become coiled and covered with a copy of the Radio Times! I suppose there must have been some instances of a fire developing as a result of careless use.

Not quite sure what H&S would make of that.

Phil

I remember as an apprentice in the early sixties, the large shaper in the toolroom used to creep on the concrete floor during heavy cuts. Not a huge amount but enough to cause the machine to have to be jacked back into it's original position every few weeks, indicated when the electrical conduit feed from the ceiling had reached an alarming angle.

One day the vibrations and creep became so bad that all the staff in the accounts department on the floor below walked out in protest, as can be imagined no accounts department = no wages at the end of the week for the rest of us so something had to be done. If I remember correctly all that was done was to rawlbolt it to the floor, I don't recall any cushioning.

Looking back now I find it strange that someone had had the intelligence (?) to locate offices on the ground floor of the factory and heavy machinery on the floors above!

Phil

I've been following this post with interest, as I have always lubricated my chucks with a smear of oil. Never considered grease as I have always thought it would attract small swarf particles and make cleaning an even greater requirement.

One thing I have thought about but never tried, is the use of a dry lubricant e.g. ptfe spray or similar but I don't have any experiences of using such products and there may well be a very good reason for not doing so. Has anyone here tried it or has any thoughts on the idea?

Phil

I often have wondered if the age of the material has any effect on this bowing characteristic inasmuch that over time any locked in stress has been able to work itself out. The majority of my material stock steel, brass, copper etc is in the order of 50 - 60 years old, the last stock I bought was some brass angle and that was at least 10 years ago.

I'm not a massive user of milled stock but it is an issue that personally I have not encountered but do recognise that it does happen.

Phil

OK, I'll bite.

What does the acronym SCAYT stand for?

Also why does the predictive text on my tablet always insist on capitalising the last word of a sentence when I use an exclamation mark or query Mark? I've left this one deliberately rather than manually changing it just to demonstrate.

Phil

Canobi,

Just checked my DW spindle and I find that any of my morse taper tooling which all measure around 2.5" long fit my spindle without any problems. I do wonder if your spindle nose may have been modified (shortened) at some time in the past. I machined my spindle when I built the machine to the D/W drawings to suit the Myford spindle thread. Mine measures including the shoulder with the spanner flats 1.5".

Phil

I also never disengage mine, apart from the rare occasions when removing for cleaning/maintenance my thread dial has been permanantly engaged since 1973 and I can't detect any wear.

Phil

Thanks for the replies chaps, it would appear that its not totally unique but worth keeping if only to go in my personal curio museum, aka junk box.

Phil

I have found a 1/4" x 26ME die in my collection the likes of which I have never seen before. It came from my late father and could even have belonged to my grandfather, so I estimate it to be at least 60 years old. The self expanding feature is what I find unusual, the die is fitted with a tapered screw with a tapered nut, this thread being 8BA and obviously there are mating tapers in the body of the die. Tightening this screw effects the expansion of the die which has a logo for GTD and U.S.A. etched into it. Just wondering if anybody here can shed any light on this, it never ceases to amaze me the wealth of knowledge that exists on this forum.

Sorry about the quality of the photos, I'm afraid photography is not one of my strong points.

Phil

Thank you gentlemen, lots of different ideas and suppliers for me to choose from. I do like the idea of spotting drills as I have been thinking for a while about trying these as an alternative to centre drills.

Phil

When countersinking small holes around 2 - 5mm diameter I use a rose type Countersink bit only because I have been unable to source any single flute cutters that small. This normally leads to chattering and inevitably a multi facetted countersunk hole. Ok, most of the time it doesn't actually matter as the screw head covers the marks, but I would like to get it right.

More years ago than I care to recall I was taught as an apprentice to reduce the depth of cut of the Countersink bit by placing a piece of rag between the bit and the workpiece and this would stop the problem. Sometimes I find that this does work but not always and I have been unable to find a guaranteed process.

Maybe someone here might have an idea.

I forgot to mention that this is mainly in brass and aluminium but sometimes mild steel and I'm using a hand drill.

Phil

I was apprenticed in the early sixties and introduced to HSS grinding then and always found it an easy process and so simple to produce what ever tool style one needs. No concerns about whether i have got the correct insert for this or that material. However this always requires the use/access to an offhand grinder and I do get the impression from various posters on here, that maybe a lot don't have and hence a lot of favouritism directed towards inserts.

Any thoughts/comments?

Phil

My tablet computer decided to terminate it's contract with me yesterday, so a trip to the local superstore was in order this morning to find a replacement. That in itself was the easy bit - recovering various files to transfer to the new device is probably easy for the younger generation but not so simple for a person like myself.

Fortunately this was offset by the arrival of a parcel from one of our regular advertisers (thanks Ketan) so now I have no excuses for not getting on with my latest workshop project. I'm also very impressed with the delivery service. They sent me notification of the intended delivery slot at about 8:30am, saying that I was no. 99 on the round and that the package would be delivered between 2:12pm and 2:42pm and also included a photo of the van driver! Needless to say it arrived right in the middle of the quoted times. Can't fault that can we?

Phil