Member postings for Nigel Bennett

I heard they were changing the bogies... so the jacks they used to swap them must have been pretty hefty things to lift up all the armour plating.

There used to be a change of gauge in the tram lines between Leeds and Bradford. They used some adaptable bogies so that trams could run on both systems without the passengers having to change. It wasn't a huge success.

+1 for that, Jason. I have a CAD system, which I use to generate drawings for subsequent manufacture in the workshop which contains no CNC but the odd DRO. I like to check that the work I'm about to do in the shed is going to fit together without having to hack lumps off it or add bits on to make it work.

The skills involved in transferring a 3D solid model or 2D DXF into actual hardware is not insignificant. Complex 3D shapes need a lot of careful planning work beforehand to establish the method of manufacture, whether any fixtures are needed and how second- and subsequent operations on the job are going to be carried out. This requires a lot of acquired knowledge.

Because something has been manufactured using CAD/CAM, folk seem to think that somebody has simply typed "Widget" into a computer, waited a few moments for the whirring and flashing lights to finish, extracted a memory stick from the computer, opened the workshop door and chucked the memory stick in, slammed the door and waited for a little while before the door opens and the beautifully-finished, accurate-to-a-thou Widget emerges into the daylight...

But yes, Tony's original comment that a commercially-available artefact has won a handicraft competition is hardly in the spirit of such contests.

It also happens with brass.

Fortunately I was able to batter it straight again and use it, but it does illustrate the locked-in stresses at the surface of drawn material.

It can be silver-soldered, but it does usually need some specific flux for the job. I recall mixing some aluminium flux with silver solder flux for a job at work a long time ago and it worked well. Luker in his current Fire Queen series in ME shows what looks like an excellent join in aluminium bronze.

Adverts.... I have a 1994 copy of ME to hand, and there are 23 pages of adverts, 4 of which are small ads and only a couple of the pages were to do with the then Argus publishers. Lots of long-forgotten ME suppliers...

Compare with the 11 pages of advertising in the Pestoff Special, of which 3.1/2 pages are to do with Mortons.

I know diddley-squat about the advertising industry, but it seems that paper magazines are simply not attracting the advertising that they used to; it seems that in today's FaceAche world that AI-directed advertising specific to the reader of the Interweb stuff is more cost-effective to them.

On the red kite topic, I had an amazing incident a while ago when I was out cycling. I had just moved out slightly to avoid some road kill in front of me, when a Red Kite swooped low over me from behind, almost hitting my helmet as it passed. In an incredible aerobatic manoeuvre, it dived on to the road kill a couple of feet in front of me and scooped it up; I actually heard its talons scraping on the tarmac before it exited, stage left. It almost became roadkill itself... Beautiful birds, it's wonderful to see them.

Well done for answering your own question with some actual experimentation and for sharing the results!

I recall some while ago that a chap from British Rail Research came to our place to fit an accelerometer on a carriage door lock handle fitted to a test rig we'd made. These handles were made from a turbine blade grade of stainless steel and heat-treated. He got out a battery drill and tried to drill a hole in the handle. No chance. He reached into his bag and brought out a bottle of Rocol RTD cutting compound and put a few drops on the slight dimple he'd managed to drill. Using the same drill bit, and occasionally applying more RTD, he was able to drill through the handle no problem.

As a result of that, I always use RTD in the workshop when tapping ferrous materials or phosphor bronze; I'd certainly use it when drilling "difficult" materials.

Usual disclaimer.

That's an excellent piece of work, Celso Ari; well done. It is always interesting to see how other people make things!

Is there another video of it actually working on your lathe?

A few firms such as PNP Railways produce track items, and they do 3½"G track. I presume you are intending to have it as a ride-on-yourself arrangement rather than a "huge OO" arrangement.

There have been several articles in ME over the years about building ground-level tracks; Dennis Monk did a series that you could look out; enter his name in this index and you'll find a stack of information. Doug Hewson is another name worthy of attention.

https://www.itech.net.au/modelengineer/

You need a large garden to accommodate the necessary curves for a circular layout, or a long garden to make it worthwhile having an end-to-end.

More than once when faced with a radged-up hexagon socket in a cap head screw, I've been able to hammer in a next-size-up Torx bit and unscrew the offending item. The battering-in of the socket seems to help the offending screw release. I hope it doesn't come to that for you!

Not so, Peter. Many manufacturers, particularly Continental ones, supply solid dies for creating threads. Guhring is one such; all the ones I can see in their catalogue are solid. Die nuts in my experience are generally made from hexagon material.

I have a number of solid BA round dies, about 5/8"OD which are excellent for creating threads.

I appreciate Jason's point that you may need a tighter thread fit sometimes, however you can often achieve that by using the undersize tap that you get in the modern tap sets, or using a second tap but leaving a bit of tight thread.

I cannot understand the need to split dies. It should be just like a tap - you get it out of its box and use it to cut a correctly-sized thread without having to adjust it before it does so. You don't adjust taps - so why dies? When it stops cutting the correctly-sized thread due to wear, throw it away and get another one. You might get away with re-sharpening it if you have the kit, but life's too short.

I've seen too many cheap split dies that have ended up a helical shape after splitting so that they can never be made to cut a correctly-sized thread.

I would always choose a solid die if I had the choice. If you buy one that doesn't cut to size, clearly it's a manufacturing fault and you can return it, and not, "Well obviously you haven't adjusted it correctly sir - tough."

Up until the mid 2010s we were still having to dig out an occasional linen drawing from the 1950s and print it. It just went into the large copier and the original was hung back up in the cabinet again. Beautiful prints with very little distortion. The linen drawings even had those curious inch things on them!

Provided the linen original isn't really delicate it should copy in a large photocopier at pretty well spot on 1:1 or whatever size you want it; scanning at 1:1 should give good results but probably a huge file size.

As others have said, using photography (and therefore huge reduction in scale) introduces other problems, but it does mean that storage of the image is simplified. Provided you don't really need to use it, but just look at it and start wishing you still had the original, because that dimension in the corner is now illegible...

Martin

Is it Christopher Armstead's Phoeboscope you mean?

If so, ME 3860 p558, 3862 p728, (1989)

ME 3864 p20, 3885 p622 (1990) may be the ones.

It's likely you'll need to bop them out from the front of the chuck - first remove the jaws. You'll need to take care not to damage the screws, so perhaps use a brass punch shaped to fit over the screw and just hit the screw retaining pegs, which I expect are a firm push fit and should drop out on the backplate side. May be a good idea to mark them with felt tip to get them back in the same holes.

It might be easier just to swill the whole thing in paraffin or something and attack it with an old toothbrush rather than removing the pegs unless you really need to.

A small dab of grease before refitting the jaws would be an idea.

I was there from the Thursday morning, setting up the Leeds SMEE stand. And boy, was it cold in that hall with the roller-shutter door wide open as the snow was falling outside! Fortunately on Thursday it was melting as soon as it hit the ground.

I had heard some bad press about Simon Boak, the organiser, but I had no personal experience of that and I was quite prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt. I think he managed to arrange the whole thing in an incredibly short time, and although perhaps some aspects of it could be improved, I take may hat off to the guy for putting his money up and giving us what turned out to be an excellent show.

The weather clearly paid a part in it; it must have given him a lot of worry that the punters would stay away in droves. I was pleasantly surprised how many actually turned up on the Friday, but the local roads weren't too bad. The Showground people had managed to clear the snow from the approach road and car park, too, so my fears that everyone would get stuck on the hill trying to get in were unfounded.

I agree with Chris that combining the model railways with model engineering was a good idea - it would attract more visitors for sure.

With it being very much of an unknown, I imagine some traders might have stayed away due to uncertainties about the success of the event. RDG, for example, were there, but it was noticeable that they only had about half of their "normal" stand - and I can quite understand why they did that. I sincerely hope that all the traders there thought it worth-while attending.

I can't say how the model railway guys got on, but I always find it amazing how rapidly a show like that simply disappears at closing time. It all seemed to be conducted with good humour and with amazing efficiency as folk scurried off with items of varying hugeness and bulkiness. An hour after it closed, there was very little left in Hall 2.

We got a form to fill in for our details for next year - so it looks as if it'll be repeated. I hope to be there if so.

I'm not talking those multi-tool cutting discs but the 4" diameter ones. Here you go:

As far as I recall it was doing about 1000rpm. You can just see a spark above the LH end of the job. The material is steel strapping, incidentally.

I used a metal-cutting disc from the angle grinder, mounted in a suitable arbor on the milling machine and I machined some material to he thickness I wanted very easily. You can get the discs 1mm thick (thin?) so they'd cut the necessary sliver off.

Yes, Hopper; that's a fairly substantial safety valve to the right of the water gauge. The website I referred to said it was run at 60psi, so it would make quite a bang if the aluminium gave way. Funny stuff, when it gets old...

Back in WW2, Stuart Turner produced a device, using a Sirius steam engine and an attached boiler - the Firefly. I recall it was described in ME years ago. It was used by partisans (Listen carefully; I shall say zis only wince) in France to recharge the batteries in their radio sets so they could communicate with London; fuel was just bits of wood and suchlike.

Stuart Turner then redesigned it, using a single-cylinder piston valve engine and a finned cast-aluminium boiler. There's an article here about this later type:

https://www.royalsignals.org.uk/photos/steam.htm

Anyway - I am now in possession of one of the latter variants. It's been used quite a lot judging by the soot on the boiler, but I am intrigued by the fact that it's aluminium - and it's been full of water for the last thirty years at least!

Here it is in its box with all the connecting pipes clipped into the lid:

Intriguing-looking piece of kit; I haven't connected up any of the pipes.

The engine has a variable-stroke feed pump and an integral lubricator pump also. Exhaust is directed up the chimney to draw the fire.

It even comes with a spare gauge glass in the box.

Has anybody ever steamed one of these with its original cast aluminium boiler? Those pressure cookers we cheerfully use in the kitchen (only at 15psi) aren't a lot different; you don't hear of many of those exploding.

I would imagine anybody wanting to run this device in public would have to make a new copper or steel boiler to get insurance for it.

..and don't talk to me about "Workshops" unless they've got lathes and things in them.