Member postings for Nigel Bennett

There's one on eBay at the mo - but it's a bit pricey!

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/284901951789?hash=item42557ac92d:g:3eEAAOSwwcliHOH4&amdata=enc%3AAQAHAAAAoEbt7oxuCRH9lwNgCutP4P8tJ3E4zNEYh5v93eaKEnj9NmYi6I9bKyWTo5KxeQQ3ps7hwQMRsmy3BmcTQ6LOaiENP1W0pOjxFrrcv8vJHMkpcFNJxirmltXhMGK6ljmDnQ8Z0HwltjK8BSPiSKlCQMYsKNeh4XaMy9P2Tk6gkfewtRnfCpM%2B7I%2BZaKFESxuHxSBctu3zcul6uAwzHO9O99U%3D%7Ctkp%3ABk9SR6bxwZa0YQ

I would never dream of silver-soldering ferrous alloys with anything other than HT5 or JM Tenacity No.5 as a flux. Ordinary Easy-Flo flux just doesn't cut it with steel. I just use water to wet the flux. Cleanliness of the steel is obligatory if you want a good joint.

Pressure gauges don't like freezing weather very much... it's not difficult to remove it and store it somewhere warm.

5BA spanners are readily available and will probably do the job at a nominal 5.58mm AF.

I've just received an email from the organiser, Simon Boak, They have finalised the exhibition details with the Yorkshire Event Centre at Harrogate.

So yes, it seems to be going ahead on Friday March 10 and Saturday March 11 2023.

Hope to see some of you there!

The 2" Clayton undertype is 80psi but has absolutely nothing to do with the traction engine you have other than the word "Clayton" and that it's steam-powered!

Stair rods... that reminds me; we had those funny little clip things, one each side on each stair tread to keep the carpet in place; of course there was a strip of painted treads all the way up the stairs each side of the narrow carpet. Not that long ago I'm sure I recall somebody showing a picture of one in a magazine, wondering what it was for.

Wall-to-wall carpeting... you were posh if you had that.

"Threppeny" bit.. and why "Tuppence"?

Excellent! Are you much bothered by "leaves on the line" at that time of year?

I was intrigued by the track itself - is it just steel bar on edge let into a concrete base?

I rescued a chuck from stiffness by just lightly stoning/scraping the slots in the body. it had become distorted as a result of having to unscrew it from a Myford Super 7. Sufficient force had been applied to shear the key in the headstock spindle. (In the end I had to reduce the backplate to swarf to get it off!)

So you should be able to locate and tease away the offending distortion and end up with a smoothly-operating chuck. Good luck with it!

I'm back on my 5"G Invicta now, and the tender axle is next. It's going to be as near as I can make it to the current exhibit in Whitstable Museum but with the hope that it might just pull me. It owes nothing whatsoever to LBSC's Canterbury Lamb. My small version will have a multi-tubular marine boiler instead of the single flue big brother has now.

Here's how I hope it will look in due course (if my CAD system is to be believed):

There is still a lot of tweaking to do to the valve gear and pipework on the CAD yet.

The two-wheeled tender (!!!) is based on the contemporary illustration of the opening of the line in 1830. Despite four-wheeler pontifications by authoritative historians, I have taken the naïve view that despite certain other inaccuracies in the old picture, the artist could count... besides, it's quicker to make as it has fewer parts!

Progress to date, with Ed Parrott providing the laser-cut sloping cylinder frames:

The wheels were an interesting exercise, being fabricated. Here the tender wheels have been brazed up; the loco wheels are yet to be done.

It's amazing how spindly it is. The loco main frames are lengths of 3/8" x 1/8" mild steel. They should by rights be only 2mm thick...

What you want is this stuff; Proops were selling it a few years ago but I'm not sure if it's still available.

I know nothing about motor bikes, but I'm sure I read somewhere about one maker using daft threads like 17/64"BSW so that you had to get the spare parts from them. So check very carefully!

Sometimes you can use the tailstock chuck to hold the part on a suitable spigot to bring it up to the 4-jaw and carefully tighten the jaws. That way you'll get near very quickly.

If it's an odd-shaped or large part you're stuffed with that idea! A clock gauge is good to get the thing sorted as you want it. As Brian says, use one position for the clock gauge and adjust things at that position. Measure how much eccentricity you've got at each jaw position and take out half of it as measured on the clock gauge. Obviously you have to work out which way the jaw needs to move...

No clock gauge? You'll have to rely on some kind of not-quite-sharp pointer held in the toolpost plus some feeler gauges to get it accurate. Again, try it at one position, trap a feeler in place between the job and pointer, and then use a half-thickness feeler and without toving the pointer, move the job until it's trapped between pointer and job.

You mention two chuck keys. Excellent method; I made a very small one (about the size of those tiny Jacobs chuck ones) that can fit behind or underneath the chuck so I can turn two jaws at once. You have to be careful that the job doesn't fall out whilst you're doing this, he said, having been there and done that. (Bring up the tailstock to keep it in place.)

Many years ago... I pushed a drawing pin into my skool desk lid and another one into the desk body. A cap was trapped in between the two pin heads. With both elbows on the desk, cupping the chin as if paying great attention, I would give a surreptitious thump with one elbow to make a nice bang. Accompanied by an innocent expression, and looking around to see who had done it generally made it a mysterious event...

Appending "bare" or "full" to a dimension on the drawing merely pointed out that that particular dimension on that particular component needed to be a bit larger/smaller in order for the parts to function when assembled; it was just up to the maker how much to increase/decrease the nominal dimension to suit the parts' working.

Even today ME drawings are full of 1/4" shafts supposedly fitting in 1/4" holes - or if you're really up to date, 6mm shafts fitting 6mm holes... at least the bare/full dimension pointed you in the right direction as to which part to make larger/smaller. We all make our bits to suit our own bits - occasionally having to take extra care when making our bits fit somebody else's commercial fitting.

If you were to dismantle (say) half a dozen Simplexes built by different people, would you be able to reassemble six functional Simplexes by taking parts at random from the pile of components? Of course not.

People often moan in the Letters columns about ME drawings being rubbish - "They don't conform to National Drawing Standards and they're full of mistakes", they whine. But how many of the moaners have submitted a full set of drawings of (say) a traction engine for publication in the magazines, whereby all the dimensions are fully toleranced (using geometric tolerancing as well) so that the finished product is guaranteed to go together if made to drawing? And there are no omissions or errors with the dimensions? And a system is in place to update and correct all the errors/improvements/etc etc? No, I thought not.

I would use the Paint facility. Do an ALT-Printscreen of the Word document and paste that into Paint. Crop it as required and save as jpg.

SW can't open future version files - eg if you have SW 2015 you couldn't open anything saved in SW 2017 and above. You may just be able to open a SW 2016 file if it was saved under service pack 5 but it would only be a dumb uneditable solid.

I did try the Onshape software but as I had a copy of SW I keep on using that.

Lapping tapered bores is fraught with difficulties and it's far too easy to end up with a load of concentric grooves rather than a nice smooth bore. With a parallel bore you can move the lap axially to distribute the medium; with a taper you're scuppered.

Hopper's suggestion of boring it is one I would go for if I was in the same position as Mick Bailey. Good luck with it, Mick, whatever course you end up taking.

Paul, I am not for one moment suggesting that you send your 3/4" diameter Tich pressure gauge to the National Physical Laboratory for testing. What you do need is that your Club's test equipment is calibrated every two years by somebody who has had their test equipment verified to National Standards. Then you use the Club's gauge to test your boilers and check your own pressure gauge.

If there is a Boiler Incident, there should be no doubt about the testing of the boiler in question. If you haven't complied with the regulations, you can get taken to the cleaners by the injured or bereaved. If you've not complied, then the Insurance Company will happily walk away and leave you to pick up the pieces.

Do you AND the club's Officers & Committee want to be bankrupted and lose your homes (and workshops!) because you've taken a silly short-cut? I don't!

Be aware that the boiler testing regulations require calibrated test equipment. Yes, you can calculate the dimensions you need for a dead weight tester, but you then need to get that calibrated when you've made it. If a boiler goes bang, how are you going to persuade an investigator from HSE or wherever that your testing regime is correct? Have you calibrated your test weights? Have you calibrated the measuring equipment that you used to check the dimensions of your tester?

Your Testing Equipment ought to be traceable to National Standards. Far simpler to get an accredited body to test and calibrate your pressure gauge every couple of years; and it's often as cheap to buy a calibrated gauge new.