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Member postings for Nigel Bennett

Here is a list of all the postings Nigel Bennett has made in our forums. Click on a thread name to jump to the thread.

Thread: Anybody else remember Chuck the Muddle engineer?
21/02/2022 12:13:21

I too really enjoyed Chuck's antics. Not only humorous, but very well drawn indeed. One that springs to mind was when he had a rear wheel come off his car. He stopped, tied a bit of rope to the axle and threw the loose end over the car roof. He walked round the car, pulled on the rope to level up the car, tied the loose end firmly to the door handle and drove off...

On a similar theme, who else enjoyed Michael Oxley's Christmas articles in ME back in the 1950s? They were very funny indeed and I think he pretty well sewed up all the humour to be written about our hobby. If you have the slightest sense of humour, they're well worth while digging out and reading. Somebody even plagiarised some of his stuff much later, which I thought was a disgrace. Michael Oxley also made a boiler from solid, but his was a pot boiler; on one attempt he bored out the 3" diameter copper bar to 3,001"...

Thread: HOW FAST - ANEMOMETER CALIBRATION ?
19/02/2022 16:59:51

I calibrated mine by holding it out of the car window - making sure Karen drove it in both directions along a quiet road. That way it was she who got done when we got caught doing 130mph...cheeky

Thread: Lubricator
14/02/2022 08:58:36

Arc Euro sell non-return clutches; a type of needle-roller bearing.

Thread: Zyto Lathe
01/02/2022 20:09:55

The thing that nattered me was the lack of calibrated dials on the cross slide and top slide. I had the brilliant idea of making some temporary ones in cardboard. I never actually got round to making more permanent ones before I got rid of the lathe and moved up to an ML7.

I well remember going to see my bank manager and asking to borrow the £45 to buy that Zyto... I learned a lot on that lathe and I hope you will too, Steve!

Thread: Can't disassemble drill chuck
26/01/2022 11:46:23

I wonder if that black ring at the rear end of the chuck is swaged over; that would mean that you couldn't dismantle it without destroying it. A simple means of saying, "Buy a New One" by the manufacturer.

Thread: New highway code rule.
23/01/2022 14:52:09
Posted by Mike Poole on 23/01/2022 11:09:02:

If a cyclist gets hit by a car door they must be natural born stupid, if they cycle close enough for a door to to hit them then it should not be a surprise when it eventually happens.

Mike

I was cycling past a car on the cycle path on the inside of a stationary line of cars waiting for the traffic lights. Without warning, the rear door of a car was flung open and the pointy bit of the door corner hit my thigh. It caused a massive haematoma in time and they had to slice it open and give it a good rogering with a vacuum cleaner or something in hospital to clear it out.

Stupid? I hardly think it was I who was stupid.

Thread: The Curious Case of the Cracked Injector
22/01/2022 14:13:29

Ha! The mystery is solved! I've just picked up a "good" injector body and done a careful length check on it to be sure of its actual dimension before I started on the cones. It was miles out! Whaaat??? Check the others... They had all shrunk in length by about 0,2mm - and I'd made them all to within 0,01mm. What must have happened is that the body had expanded during heating, but my brazing fixture is made from a big block of hollow square cast iron. The body had nowhere to go and so it got squashed as it expanded and softened.

Thinking about it I've often seen dents in brass parts of a fabrication when I've tightened up a G clamp or a fixture screw a bit too tightly.

I've just taken a length of nickel brass bar now, turned it accurately to length and heated it up to dull red just by itself. No change in length once it had cooled down, and no cracking.

Then I put it in the fixture, heated it up to dull red again, and surprise, surprise, it's 0,2mm down on length and has cracked.

My scrap bin now has five too-short nickel brass injector bodies and I'm changing the way that the bodies are held to ensure they can expand unrestrained when heated. Back to the lathe now to make some more - and in nickel brass because I still have a fair length of the stuff.

22/01/2022 12:36:12

Try and enlarge them a bit...

inj1.jpg

inj2.jpg

inj3.jpg

inj5.jpg

Seems a bit clearer!

22/01/2022 12:29:06

Here was a curious (not to say irritating) thing; I made a batch of five injector bodies. I happened to have some nickel brass in stock, so I used that. Some folk call it nickel silver, others German silver, but the "official" term seems to be nickel brass. Anyway, I used it because it's a very similar colour to silver solder, so it might not look so very obvious a fabrication.

All went well; I made them all with the same bar, used the same brazing fixture and the same stick of solder for all five. Four were absolutely fine, but one has cracked to a quite amazing degree:

dscn9375.jpg

dscn9376.jpg

dscn9377.jpg

dscn9378.jpg

What on earth could have happened? I can only imagine it's a material fault in the bar; but I hope it's not something that will suddenly appear in the others. I have heard about brass self-destructing due to high inbuilt stresses (stress-corrosion cracking) after extruding - particularly with thin sections, but not 3/8" round bar, surely?

Next batch will probably be in brass...

Thread: steam fittings
18/01/2022 10:56:45

Loctite 542.

Occasionally I have had to have a fitting tighten fully into its correct orientation and it has been a case either making the fitting so it does just that (by skimming the joining face on the fitting), or else turning up a washer of the correct thickness. You have to work the thickness out (or how much to skim off) by using the thread pitch and "angle the fitting needs to turn" formula.

Say you have a 32TPI fitting; if you tighten it fully and it ends up 230 degrees beyond where you want;

You would need a thickness of 1/32" * 230/360 = 0.020" near enough.

I make my special thickness washers out of something fairly hard (usually bronze) and shove in Loctite 542 as well.

Thread: Johnny Morris reads Thomas the Tank Engine
14/01/2022 13:55:49

Most folk under 50 simply won't know that Johnny Morris narrated the Thomas books. My sister has just posted a link to me of them all on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEj3aJAnFKwMMqXT-zBuxo4sDAGjQeRcM

I would particularly draw your attention to the one with Terence the caterpillar tractor:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gz8-bQmavTY&list=PLEj3aJAnFKwMMqXT-zBuxo4sDAGjQeRcM&index=15

We had that one on vinyl back in the day as I remember my kid sister (then aged 5 or so) almost wetting herself with laughter when we played it.

And the other one about Trevor the traction engine - surely a Garrett 4CD - which is worth listening to just for Johnny's imitation of a compound traction engine working....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tzwyfMHEQE&list=PLEj3aJAnFKwMMqXT-zBuxo4sDAGjQeRcM&index=36

Thread: An unpleasant nocturnal experience.
11/01/2022 09:20:29

Cod Spanish voice:

"Eees Hamster...."

Thread: phosphor bronze  or aluminium bronze
08/01/2022 14:43:49

On no account use aluminium bronze on a boiler. Although technically speaking it can be brazed using special fluxes, you can't guarantee perfect sealing with it.

Thread: Highway Code
07/01/2022 16:38:36

Ah, yes, the old business of making cyclists pay to use the road. Presumably that will also include horse riders and pedestrians, all of whom have a RIGHT to use the Queen's Highway, unlike all those people in motor cars, who don't; they only have permission. And permission that can be withdrawn.

Anyway, let's work out a fair system of how much cyclists should pay. I suggest some kind of weight arrangement, whereby the sum paid equates to the damage a bike does to the roads. A typical bike weighs 20lb, a motor car say 2000lb. So to be fair, tax should be in proportion. So that's one hundredth of £160, which I think is what I paid for my last car tax. £1.60 it is then. But wait a minute - bikes can't use motorways, so that should knock a bit more off. Say a quid.

How are you proposing to write to all the cyclists, and administer the tax for a quid per cycle per year?

Thread: Middle of Lidl
01/01/2022 17:16:01

I went into my local Lidl yesterday and found to my surprise that they had stacks of the boxed drill sets. But I've got enough drills and I didn't buy one. Besides, I couldn't see the actual drills without breaking the seals and opening the box.

What I did buy, however, was a little boxed set containing a miniature machine vice with some interesting plastic jaws and other attachments, which I thought would come in very handy for the occasional holding of odd-shaped delicate objects. Very happy with that; it will come in handy. One of those things you didn't know you needed.

Also in the box was a pin chuck affair with three sprung jaws. Quite nicely made and will be very useful on occasion, as it holds quite a range of diameters, much more than those split collets.

Also Also in the box was a set of miniature HSS drills from about 0,5mm upwards in a little plastic case. They are, as I suspected, Joke Drills, of the kind that have been ground by somebody with a well-fitting blindfold waving them vaguely at a grinding wheel in a forlorn hope that they end up a bit pointy. I think the equivalent Dormer set of proper drills that size will set you back about £70...

Also Also Also was another set of drills with little coloured collars on. These are in the range 2 - 3mm. A bit less rubbish than the tiny ones, but I'll put them in my woodworking drawer..

So for eight quid I've got a useful but delicate machine vice and a pin chuck. The drills and such are only packaging to stop the vice and pin chuck wobbling about in the box and I'm quite happy with that.

Thread: First Locomotive
24/12/2021 15:22:28

It depends what you want to do with it! If you want to pull passengers, or just run it in public, you'll need insurance and boiler certificates. You really ought to be a member of a recognised ME Society to do that. This will give you access to club boiler inspectors, who should be able to give their informed opinion on the loco.

Thread: Steel banding.
01/12/2021 09:41:54

I've tried hardening it - heating it to red and quenching in water. It does seem then to have better spring characteristics than the natural state. It certainly doesn't snap in half as it would for a high-carbon steel if quenched and not tempered. Both my last two locos have it for axle springs.

Thread: Boxford 280 DRO installation
29/11/2021 13:10:17

Yes, Stan, I've done it. Mine is a Newall Microsyn system. It will depend on which system you're fitting as to how you go about it. I can email you photos of my set-up if you pm me an email address. I also did a few drawings of the brackets I used if they would be of help.

Thread: Is Model Engineering "green"?
29/11/2021 13:02:12

We each of us - all 8 billion - produce 1kg of CO2 every day just by breathing. Basic needs living adds a lot more to that.

As Ady & Martin said earlier, the 8 billion is the problem. We are, as they say, doomed. All this talk of "green EVs" and the like is so much re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The "Offsetting Carbon" mantra of planting a few trees because you're burning fossil fuels is just arrant nonsense.

The problem is that very few of us 8 billion is going to step forward and volunteer to stop breathing. Stopping breeding is one solution - but then who's going to look after the aged population after a few years? Another apocalypse scenario - and where would we get the model engineers from if they shoot everybody over the age of (say) 65?

It'll be an asteroid or that caldera in Jellystone Park that will get the human race. So long as I'm not here to witness it...

Thread: Q-cut instructions
28/11/2021 15:49:34

Mine came with a little tool with two steel pegs on it. It's black with a yellow plastic handle. You put one of the pegs in the hole in the carrier and ping out the insert, and then apply the "free" peg to the new insert and force it in.

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