Member postings for Mike

You don't have to be on Facebook to attract "Fat, bald and impotent" advertising. I'm not on Facebook, yet I get those, plus advertising for high-interest loans, ambulance-chasing lawyers, dodgy-sounding insurance schemes and on-line gambling. Perhaps the only answer is to do what I had to do in the late 1960s, and mark a deluge of mail from Time-Life magazines with "return to sender - deceased." Or do the spam merchants follow you beyond the grave?

All this reminds me of the almost certainly apocryphal tale concerning the old chap who phoned the police because two men were breaking into his garage. The police advised him to lock himself into the house for his own safety because they were sorry, but they didn't have anyone they could send at the moment.. The old boy put the phone down, waited for five minutes, then phoned the police and said: "No rush now - take your time- I've just shot them." In what seemed only a few minutes a helicopter hovered overhead, five police cars and a personnel carrier arrived, the house was surrounded by an armed response squad in full body armour, and the two burglars, totally unharmed, were in handcuffs. The householder was being interviewed by a senior officer. "Why did you lie to us - you don't even have a gun?", he was asked. He replied: "Because you lied to me, and told me you had nobody to send."

Edited By Mike on 18/03/2018 18:32:18

When I first started reading ME, I think some time back in the 1960s, there was a letter from a chap who got totally fed up with break-ins at his workshop, which was in a rural location. His answer was to buy a redundant electric factory hooter, and wire it to an alarm system so that most of the sound was directed inside the building. I seem to remember that the first low-life to break in ran straight through a glass window in his hurry to get out, and the second was led out, a gibbering wreck. After that, word got around and the break-ins ceased. Pity you couldn't get away with such a trick these days!

Edited By Mike on 16/03/2018 17:54:43

It's a sad day for science, and the human race. And it is remarkable that most people commenting today say that the man had a wonderful sense of humour.

I don't care whether people go into parking slots backwards or forwards, but I wish someone would explain to me why, whenever people in a supermarket car park see a car's reversing lights come on, they go into automatic suicide mode and stand either directly behind it or, worse, in the blind spot all modern cars seem to have.

Robin, I don't like automatic gearboxes either. In fact, one of my early cars required double-declutching, and I can still do it. As for electric cars, there isn't an affordable one which has enough range to be of any practical use here in the far north of Scotland. However, there are some things in modern life I would not wish to be without - my computer, for instance. And rather than grizzle about the state of the NHS, in my current state of health I marvel at the complexity and huge cost of some of the machinery and techniques used to treat me. In some ways I might be a grumpy old git, but not all the time!

And to go further off topic than that, when I did some engineering training in the early 1970s, the instructor insisted on using stiff hacksaw blades. He said flexible blades were only for amateurs. The thing was, if you started the cut correctly, they just sailed through the work and cut absolutely straight, but even a tiny attempt to steer them and the blade shattered. Anybody remember them?

Edited By Mike on 11/03/2018 17:28:04

Mick: .......and maybe David Attenborough is immortal!

Nothing wrong with the youngsters I meet around here (N.E. Scotland), and nothing wrong with the teachers, either. But the teachers have to operate under such hideous restrictions set by the idiotic paper-shufflers in the council education departments that holding class discipline and imparting knowledge are all but impossible.

You guys have made me check my condensate drain, and thank goodness it's not iced up because the boiler is upstairs and the drain is around 10 feet off the ground. Regarding the appalling driving we have all seen in recent days, I wonder how many drivers these days have the faintest clue as to how their cars handle in slippery conditions.

I have an Amolco milling attachment, and when I had a Super 7B the Amolco, in conjunction with a long cross slide and power cross feed the combination looked after all of my relatively light milling requirements. I still have the Amolco which, attached to a big chunk of steel plate and with an X-Y table, also serves for light milling. Problem is that the X-Y table is metric, while the vertical movement of the milling head is imperial. Keep meaning to get some DRO kit, but never seem to get around to it, so the calculator is always handy on the bench!

I'd go for Emgee's answer. Faced with cutting a short length of 6in aluminium bar into 1in slices, I took it to a small engineering shop on the local industrial estate. They let the apprentice do the job on a big power hacksaw, at 50p a cut. That cost me £3, which they let the apprentice keep as it wasn't worth raising a bill for such a small amount.

Thanks, Michael. Should we ever meet, I owe you a pint!

I had a 3kw generator, and it was all but stalled by the starting current of a 1/3hp capacitor start motor. I am a bit dim as far as electricity is concerned, but would suggest you need a 5 or 6kw generator as a minimum.

Hi John, The Modern Gunsmith sounds like a most useful pair of books, and thank you for letting me know about them. Unfortunately, the only second-hand volumes I can find cost £125, which is a bit too much for me at the moment. I shall keep looking.....

Regards,

Mike

I've seen adjustable reamers reduced to just one cutting edge in gunsmith's workshops, use for either taking a very thin skim out of shotgun barrels or opening tight chokes. I've always been told the objective is to prevent chatter. The traditional lubricant for these jobs is lard.

Same trick with brass screws in wood - cut the thread with a steel screw first.

Neil, I recall, from the same era, that you had to have a separate licence for a car radio. I refused to buy one, because we had a licence to cover radios at home, but my mum was horrified that I was breaking the law, and she bought one for me. Until the need for a licence was removed, I got a renewal reminder every year, so had to keep buying them. My late grandfather had the first radio in my home town of Spalding, Lincs, and my mum could remember listening to the BBC's predecessor, Station 2LO. Listeners had to wear earphones, but several people could listen together if the earphones were put in the bottom of a large pudding basin to reflect the sound.

I'm not surprised that pre-ground HSS gets such a low score. Maybe I have been unlucky, but all of those I have bought have at least needed sharpening before use, and some have had to be completely re-ground. The penalty for buying cheap items, I guess.

Shows you what can be achieved if you genuinely want to please your customers. The courier, I note, was one of international good reputation, unlike some of the clowns we get making deliveries in this part of North-east Scotland.