Member postings for Bill Pudney

When I was doing my apprenticeship in the mid 60s, we had to do lots of training courses to attempt to get a bit better. Obviously these are all outdated by now but they can be some relevance.

After some training we had to get a decent wood back pencil (Faber Castell, or Staedler (??) or similar) and then sharpen it with a chisel point, and then draw a series of that point and see how measurement you could measure. Obviously all rules were steel rules and some had the big advantage with metric. Anyway has far as I can remember we were fairly good and drawing over 0.1 mm (ish) were not to difficult. Then there was the test at drawing parallel lines, at 1/64" apart. Then we had to write the alphabet between the letters. That was a challenge, but it was achievable.

The best pencil was a 6h which was pretty hard. When I moved into the DO, my trainer insisted on using 8h pencils, and part of the checking process was to ensure that the line could be felt on the reverse of the tracing paper.

Obviously this would now be a bit difficult these days...........

cheers

Bill

I started to use a email, but this super page disappeared. So this will be a shorter.

As Jason used ...get a CAD

As I used, use mylar, tracing paper is fine with pencils, mylar is much better for drafting

Treat yourself to a Rotring 0.10mm, and a decent quality of ink to use on mylar film.

If you are seriously hoping to use some sort of felt pin, look for Unicorns

cheers

Bill

I suppose it's the matter of applying the the regime in the blobs/oblique dash/arrows. Obviously the end of terminal lines is some indication of the importance of the dimension.

Or maybe I'm just confused!!

cheers

Bill

MEW 313 arrived today. I was somewhat startled to find that on one article the drawings use blobs rather than an arrow.

Maybe its a new idea, maybe its an old idea, I really don't know. As far as I can see they simply confuse the issue.

cheers

Bill

Sorry, I seemed to have lost the chart.

Somewhere.

I will try and find it.

cheers

Bill

The chart had a fairly common types of Al Alloy, with the types of material for small conrod. ..........

If the OP is planning to tap threads in al. alloy, I would suggest that he examine a typical carbon steel tap under a loupe. The problem with a cut/gashed thread can then be seen, huge (relatively) burrs, which will cut a most peculiar thread, especially in the smaller sizes. No doubt cutting a thread in some of the harder materials would probably deburr the tap or die.

I ALWAYS tap by hand power, preferably in the mill or lathe to maintain alignment. As others have said, taps going in on the skew WILL BREAK. Over the years I have tapped certainly hundreds, possibly thousands of holes, always under M6, usually under M3. I cannot remember the last time I broke a tap, which obviously means that I should tap my next thread in a piece of scrap!!

Personally I never buy sets, only ever the taps/dies needed and I try and buy HSS, with a ground thread, and with a quality name on the thing.

best of luck

cheers

Bill

Other than my own political opinions of course, I'm against opening up this forum to political discussion.

However in this instance I'm completely with you Steve. This is REALLY important.

cheers

Bill

p.s. Love (most of) your videos......

Just to confirm the existence of a bottle neck at Australia Post...today MEW numbers 308, 310 and 311 all arrived. MEW 309 arrived some weeks ago!!

cheers

Bill

My (sadly late) elder brother was in the RN for 22 years. Although he was an ERA, he always had a love of sailing and the techniques required. I once watched him splice a couple of bits of rope together, with the comment "...hardly ever get to do this, so I'm a bit rusty.", bish, bash, bosh as if by magic a beautiful splice!! He finished off with the comment, "...(Training Ship) Mercury was good for something after all".

cheers

Bill

With apologies to Honda.

I've never had a Cowells lathe but have always admired them. As a result I generally read posts relating to them.

It occurred to me this morning that all the posts I have read concerning Cowells, have had a pleasant tone, with none of the sharpness or rancour which sometimes invades this Forum. Now don't get me wrong, I enjoy a bit of verbal argy-bargy as much as the next bloke....but it is rather nice to read pleasant, helpful contributions. I wonder what it is about Cowells gear which encourages such friendliness??

cheers

Bill

I used laminations of, from the top going down, 1 x 12mm construction grade ply, 2 x laminations of 18mm chipboard, 1 x lamination of 12mm construction grade ply, making a total of approx 60mm, all glued and screwed together. There are three benchtops like this, one with my "big" lathe a Sieg C3 (so not really big!!), one with a Sieg X2 mill, and one with a small lathe, a Schaublin T70. All the benchtops are approx 1,200mm x 600mm and are painted with two or three coats of exterior grade, full gloss enamel paint. I used white for several reasons, the first I had it, secondly most of my work is Al. Alloy which is inherently clean, thirdly for the lighting properties. If I was using a lot of cast iron for instance I don't think the white paint would have been such a good idea! The actual benches are those knock together steel benches available at most big hardware shops. I knocked them together and drilled lots of holes which were used to bolt everything together. That has been fine so far. The actual benchtops are clamped with long pieces of angle clamping the tops to the frame, from under the benchtop. Sounds a bit Harry Tate, but it's lasted six or seven years with no problems so far.

If I had access to a welder I would have used 50 x 50 x 3 RHS and welded up a substantial frame, then used a steel benchtop. This would all be painted white.

best of luck!!

cheers

Bill

Sadly the skills required to produce castings are going the way of many other skills...shipwrights, coopers, fitters, draftsmen etc etc. In the cruel hard world of business, what manager is going to pay to train somebody in a skill which can be easily replaced by a cheaper machine, or by a cheaper item ...for instance coopers, with the predominant use of metal (or, shiver, plastic) a true cooper is a disappearingly small niche trade.

SOD suggested that a Production Engineer would be able to determine a break even point. Well I used to be a Production Engineer, so I started to prepare something that would point towards a break even point. It rapidly became obvious that with a hypothetical problem like this there are so many assumptions that have to be made (what is being made, what material, what machinery is available, what machinery is required, what quantity, what delivery rate, what testing, if any, what heat treatment if any and so on) that it rapidly becomes useless. Maybe it's because I'm a bloke, not a lady.............

cheers

Bill

Edited By Bill Pudney on 24/01/2022 05:45:56

Whatever it is, or isn't, it's what used to be described by "One Track", in Motorcycle Sport as "....grey porridge...."

cheers

Bill

Following on from what David George 1 said, HARD anodising is a whole different ball game compared to cosmetic or ordinary "anodising". Hard anodising would be perfect for your application, but you may have to save up all your pocket money!!

Personally I would further investigate the use of cast iron..............

By the way, if you get the parts hard anodised be prepared for some dimensional change.  The people doing the process should be able to advise on this.

cheers

Best of luck!!

Bill

Edited By Bill Pudney on 22/01/2022 00:00:18

When cast iron was a new material, casting it into new and previously unachievable shapes was one of the major benefits. Another was of course cost. It's really interesting (to me at least), that now the reducing cost of CNC enables the economic manufacture of previously unachievable shapes!! There's also the increased accuracy that machining a "casting" from solid brings, with none of the side issues of shrinkage, draft angles, inclusions, chill spots etc etc

cheers

Bill

PatJ you missed out on one of lifes gems!! I had to use a slide rule in two or three jobs, and became fairly proficient in it's use. To this day it remains entertaining and rapid, yes I still have it and yes it gets used every now and then, although the calculator is used more!

cheers

Bill

aaahhhh, spring bow pens!! I still use mine!! I've got a copy of BS308 tucked away somewhere, along with DefAus5085 which is an "Australated" version of BS308.........happy(ish) days!!

cheers

Bill

I used to have trouble with triangles until a mate said...Some Officers Have Curly Auburn Hair That Others Admire. I wonder how many others there are!!

cheers

Bill

p.s. I have two Zeus books, one old one, which doesn't get a lot of use and one "new" one which dates back to the early 70s which is used almost every day.

Recent posts about the start of CAD are interesting, especially from the perspective of an old fashioned drafter!! One of the reasons that I was happy to move away from drafting, in the late 80s was exactly as PatJ described, lots of individuals doing their own thing. When I think about it I seem to have spent key periods in my working life walking away from computers!!

cheers

Bill