Member postings for Mike

Came across this when helping my wife sort out some old knitting patterns and needles given to her by a friend. There's a really useful website at

https://www.convert-me.com/en/convert/wire_gauge/needleUK.html?u=needleUK&v=18 Just type in the SWG, and you get mm to three places of decimals.

That seems complicated - can someone teach me how to get these web addresses to appear as "Link"?

Edited By Mike on 02/09/2017 10:59:04

That's sound advice, David- particularly if you hold a shotgun or firearms certificate or, presumably, a disclosure certificate allowing you to work with vulnerable people. I'm told that accepting a caution is an admittance of guilt. I wouldn't accept a caution, with or without legal representation.

Don't know about that, JimmieS, but when I took my GCEs you either passed or you failed - none of this grades rubbish!

Agreed, KWIL. when I picked up my step-daughter from uni in Edinburgh at the end of her course the car was so crammed with stuff you couldn't have squeezed in a cigarette paper. When we stopped for a coffee at services near Newcastle there was a sort of avalanche of stuff all over the car park when we got out. Took nearly half an hour to re-pack.

Before I moved to Scotland my bench top was covered by 0.7mm galvanised sheet, stuck down with impact adhesive if memory is correct. In the era a local metal supplier had an enormous guillotine, and could supply sheets cut exactly to size, so I didn't have any snipping to do. I don't think the steel has to be very thick, providing the underlying boards are really rigid.

Surely the five litres of vinegar proposed by Chris is going to be so diluted by rain so quickly that the danger of seriously altering the ph of the soil is unlikely to be a long-term problem. Ditto the salt, which local councils spread on the roads in such huge volumes. I often wonder what this does to the ground water. The amount proposed by Chris pales into insignificance when compared..............

The Edwardian sewerage here in North-Eastern Scotland is grossly overloaded, so blockages are frequent. Me and my neighbours all seem to have our own preventative medicine. One neighbour flushes the system out with a bath-full of near boiling water every week. Mine is a little less wasteful of water and energy - a sink-full of boiling water and a dishwasher tablet.

I imagine it would be safe with pets and wild creatures, too. Definitely a formula to remember!

I am sure contributors who know much more about plastics than me will advise, but some plastics are acidic enough to cause rust over a long period. For instance, the plastic used for shotgun cartridge cases can cause the chambers of guns which don't have chromed bores to go rusty unless they are regularly cleaned.

Wow, I'm flattered, ega. Nice to know that someone remembers the book, after it has been out of print fr around 30 years!

I found the yellow on my Fobco Star such a yucky shade I painted it as near as I could get to LNER apple green. Does that make me a vandal? Maybe............

When lead shot weights used by coarse fishermen were made illegal, I was invited totour a factory researching a material using tungsten powder embedded in plastic. I think it was one of the companies which were previously part of the Royal Ordnance group. They were also involved in making the bodies for tungsten darts, and tungsten penetrators for armour-piercing artillery shells. I saw tungsten items being turned and tapped with conventional machine tools, and when I enquired about the machinability of the metal I seem to remember being told that they never used pure tungsten, but a tungsten-nickel-iron alloy with a density of around 17. They gave me a set of tungsten darts with bodies slim enough to get three in the treble 20, but not being a player I gave them to a pal who was. The tungsten matrix material wasnt a success, and neither has it been a success as a substitute for lead shotgun shot.

I agree with DMR and Robbo. I've never used the Blackgates product, but I have used most of the brands sold by gun shops. The surface must be as shiny as possible, and absolutely clean - even a small fingerprint can ruin the result. And, as DMR says, give the item a really long soak in oil - if you don't, rust will start very quickly.

I think it was in the late 60s or early 70s that I saw and heard a very large meteor. It was like a flaming football crossing the sky roughly from south to north. Apparently it crashed into the sea somewhere north-west of the Hebrides. I made the observation from the wheelhouse of an angling charter boat moored in the estuary at Rhyl, and when Patrick Moore asked for news of sightings on his Sky at Night programme I was able to give him a reasonably accurate report thanks to the boat's compass. Could this be the same meteor as observed by Andrew?

Just out of curiosity, where does polycarbonate come into all this, or is it just another name for Perspex? Years ago I tested polycarbonate shooting glasses after a claim that they would deflect a .22 rifle bullet at 25 yards. In fact they just appeared to be "bulletproof" - the impact generated heat which caused the hole to close up after the bullet had passed through. Sorry to wander off the subject...

I did just what Neil did when I wanted an electric motor. Cheaper by some considerable margin than buying just the motor, and I got a no-volt switch and a cheap but surprisingly accurate chuck into the bargain. I'm still trying to work out what to make out of the left-over bits.

I've always understood that perspex can be solvent welded with chloroform, but I've never tried it. I suggest it is done in a VERY well ventilated workplace! I have bent perspex by heating small pieces in a domestic grill on a low setting, and would warn that it retains heat for a long time after it has apparently set solid.

Thanks, Larry - I'll follow that up.

Regards, Mike

Hi Larry,

I've never heard of that postal system before. Regarding Hadrian's Wall, it was not so much to keep the Scots out of England as to give the Romans trying to colonise parts of Scotland something to retreat behind if the locals turned really nasty. There are some claims that there were hundreds of miles of Roman roads north of the Border.

I apologise, Jason, if I offended - but the points I made were meant to be a reflection on the problems of rural life, and were not meant to be "political." Personally, I wouldn't live in a city, or even a large town, if you paid me.