Member postings for Alan Jackson

What about the advice about running a cable underground. "I have not run a cable underground so do take professional advice on this. Perhaps an internet search will reveal what precautions to take?" Surely it it would be quicker to consult all these questions to the internet if there is no advice from the article concerning supply in power etc to a workshop. Why buy the magazine.

Alan

Commiserations KWIL horrible wind blew nobody any good, hope you manage to fix up your roof without too much hardship.

Best Regards

Alan

I have just added some photos of a Lever Locking Top slide conversion for a Myford ML7. I made this a few years ago. I know as John S. has just referred to that Myford owners do not like to modify their machines but in my opinion it is well worth doing. I have a Colchester Chipmaster lathe with a similar conversion and would not like to go back to the original arrangement trying to access nuts in slots filled with swarf etc.

Alan

Here is what I made, the base has a slight taper to set the centre height. The photos are in my album

Alan

Edited By Alan Jackson on 30/11/2013 11:43:05

I made a hacksaw sharpening jig by clamping the hacksaw blade in a slit cut in a piece of gas pipe which had a lathe centre support on one end. This assembly was mounted in the lathe with the screw pitch set to the teeth pitch. A dremel was mounted on the topslide with a thin grinding disc and the teeth were sharpened by powering the dremel while the sawblade was rotated at the screw pitch. It worked really well, the saw blades were nice and sharp , really good for brass.

Alan

Thank you all, it was as you say over exuberance with Adblock. It now works as you say. Now I can view all you brilliant work.

Regards

Alan

Thank you John and Alan for your replies, but I do not have those arrows on the bottom left and right. I am using windows XP and Mozilla Firefox which seem to work quite well in other aspects. The only thing is, maybe I have used Ablock on this site and that could be the problem. I am glad that it does work for everybody else. It just seemed that the system could be better but now I realise it is me, again who else?

Thanks

Alan

Is it possible for this web page to be made so that members photos can be viewed progressively, i.e. one after the other rather than having to close the photo and go back to the small viewed album selection to open another photo. (That is how I seem to have to do it) It is a rather laborious method of enabling viewing. After all photobucket an Flickr can do it.

Regards

Alan

Thank you for your post Shaun, I read all through your Barbarian build and you have my greatest admiration, more power to you

Alan

Just tried to look at Yahoo groups and when I went to log in they told me my account has been deactivated. Went to open a new account which required too much personal info, so choose not to go there any more and deleted my references to Yahoo, Yahoo! I'm Yahoo free.

Alan

What an exiting run, well done

Alan

Now that is as fine an example of alliteration as you will ever get in the model world. Surely superflous to suggest otherwise,Top marks Stub

Hi Terry, Ronan,

Not wishing to contradict but my Tom Senior M1 has a 1" horizontal arbour without a keyway and I have no trouble clamping horizontal milling cutters sufficiently just using the nut, which, does not have to be more than just nipped up to drive the cutter. Admittedly I mostly use fairly thin section cutters i.e. slitting saws etc and this has the advantage of letting the slitting saw slip (tongue twister) rather than breaking the saw blade.

Alan

Thank you all for your kind comments. Ian I have search out the list to date of the MEW magazine numbers that the Stepperhead construction article is in. They are188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 201, 203, & 207 to date.

Regards

Alan

As the creator of a long article it is difficult to know what is required. Short to the point one page articles will generally become repetetive. How many bed stops etc can there be? and still be absorbing enough to interest a reader who already has one? In the earlier days articles spanned many issues ie. building a particular steam engine in the ME. Today attention spans are much lower due to the media etc. Imagine Top Gear geezers getting exited at whats below the bonnet I mean, they think - boring. How would say an older article about building a clock be received in todays envioronment? Thats the problem the devil is in the detail.

Alan

Thank you all for your comments/feedback. I do agree that it is a long subject and maybe better as a book. I have made a book and sold a few copies. When you submit articles to the magazine you have no control on when and how it will be broken up to suit the magazine requirements and how many parts it would be put into. That is the decision of the editor. I would guess that there are about another ten parts again that is the magazines decision. I have purposely kept the text to a minimum to reduce the size of the article as well as avoiding repeating a previous description of design reasons etc in MEW 151,152 & 153, but you can more or less get this on http://www.lathes.co.uk/stepperhead/. So thats my reason for not revealing the colour of my workshop (green outside white inside) and as yet no grandkids
Alan

In the thread “ME/MEW Articles” started by Andrew Johnston, Bazyle states :-

“Intersting (sic) that you are one of the authors. I think it would be nice if there was more obvious interaction between the mags and the forum. Perhaps with authors starting a thread associated with their article and having a special symbol against their name for 3 months after publication.”

As a big ‘user-upper’ of magazine space recently with my Stepperhead construction article would also like to have feedback/interaction. Making this large article and producing drawings etc. took considerable time and the reasons for doing this can be questioned. It is nice to be paid for the article although I am sure most people can earn much more money for a lot less time than doing this, I reckon I was working for less than the minimum wage, but then I am slow! Ego is one motivator although you are putting yourself up for ridicule if you make mistakes etc. I think my main motivator was the irritation of seeing the existing equipment available being less than what could be made available for the model/homeworkshop user. I know it is arrogant to express opinions without first justifying why, so that was why I designed and built my version of what machine I thought would better fit the bill. Without going into the various details that seem to prevail in available equipment, I do not think they cater to the best of the homeshop/model engineer purposes, it does seem that manufacturers seem to delight in not listening to the user‘s requirements. It is also quite eerie when, finally, an article is published for it to be met with a wall of silence, so it would be nice to know if one was on the right track or just a crazy dreamer tangled up with his own obsessions. So Andrew’s thread questioning and asking for feedback on magazine articles would make good use of the ME/MEW forum. Perhaps a method of adding votes, thumbs up or thumbs down or my favourite from Catch 22 ‘Black Marks or ‘Feathers in ones Cap’.

Regards

Alan

Harry,

I have one of these and I think this slide was made for a Harrison lathe. It is much more rigid and substantial than a Myford one. I would keep it if I was you and arrange a central bolt that can enable it to fit your Myford.

Alan

This has nothing at all to do with this thread so it should fit in well. It's a Glaswegion joke.

Question "What's the difference between Bing Crosby and Walt Disney?

Answer "Bing sings and Walt disney!"

Alan

Paul,

I know nothing about steam train models but that is magnificent. What a shame that the builder ( what is his name?) did not see it completed. I wish you the very best with the outcome of this sad and uncompleted build.

Best Regards

Alan