Member postings for DMB

I don't keep a password book as such, but if I change them just a bit more frequently, they will compete with my socks!! Seriously, I do change so frequently that a book wouldn't be much good, so I use a 'loose leaf' system by recycling old envelopes. When the back of one is full, it's sufficiently destroyed as to be useless in the wrong hands. It overcomes the many organisations that lose our data frequently and only reveal the fact many months later.In my opinion that gives the crooks time to buy and sell this info which when linked to what they already have, completes the jigsaw for them. My system has worked successfully for me for years. I generate all my passwords and dont opt for websites to remember me. They are often made up of ever longer random strings of characters. A record is kept of only 'live' ones as redundant ones never reused anywhere and no 2 sites share the same PW. My envelopes are like a card index, each one having a title, e.g., ME O/L FORUMS, ME SUPPLIERS, ME CLUBS, INTERNET TRADERS, this last being a miscellaneous group of businesses unconnected with model engineering. Includes supermarkets, Halfords, Premier inns, Bluebell rly., RHDR, organisers of traction engine rallies,etc. Classifying helps me to find what I want a bit faster.

Does anyone know what the purpose is of the large round spigot on the front of the head casting, please. Perhaps other owners may have an idea as to what it is for?

John

Jon,

I think no question is daft as such. It might seem so to those who already have the knowledge but we all have to learn to start with, whatever it is.

To all the helpful replyers on this thread - I acquired a Reliance jig many years ago but put it on one side thinking I'll look at that sometime- another roundtoit. With the replies above, now may be a good time to take another look.

John

I used to work for an oil distribution company, delivering the small orders that their big supplier didn't want, their minimum load being 6000 gals. So my employer sold paraffin burning stoves 'alongside' the fuel. They did an awful lot of home heat oil, doled out from a small metering tanker of about 600gals., meter producing an Invoice for the customer to pay. Think price all those decades ago was 1s and1 1/4d a gallon! Company purchased stoves from manufacturer who packaged them in cardboard boxes. They were stored in a locked brick store on top of a canal embankment very close to the sea. It turned out that cardboard had been made from acidic Thames water and in that damp old store, all the chromed parts went rusty.

John

The following is how I overcome the belt changing annoyance. I think the vfd route is a rather expensive luxury and it would be more cost effective to fit on my Dore Westbury, as it has much more 'daylight' under the chuck than the 'Sharp' mill.

I have a Fobco Star bench drill with several drive pulleys on which they are easy to change the belt. I normally leave the belt on a pulley which gives a low speed for the job in hand. If I need to drill a small hole, I up the speed to max and a very large hole, it's reduced to the lowest. So by my method, 'average' size holes are likely to be drilled at somewhere near optimum, but exceptionally small or large holes are made with a belt change, thus limiting belt changes. Seems to work satisfactorily. Having described that, I don't use the drill so much these days, because I prefer to use a drill chuck on my 'Sharp' mill with the added benefit of X and Y precise positioning. Lack of 'daylight' space on the mill forces me to start a large finish hole with smaller starting series of drills then transfer the job to the Fobco which accommodates the larger diameter drills with their corresponding increase in length. Realignment of the hole under the Fobco's chuck being achieved by a temporary use of the last drill as a guide pin. This method works well for me. I hope to have a DRO system permanently fixed to the DW and do all my drilling on it. Would still be reluctant to sell my very beefy Fobco.

John

Edited By DMB on 05/04/2023 08:48:21

I have a bench made with unequal angle Dexion with thick planks for a surface that supports a Fobco Star bench drill near one end and a Dore-Westbury mill on the other end. Seems OK. The Sharp mill and MLS-7 and Warco bandsaw all on their makers stands. Bench 2 is also Dexion unequal angle, but no great weight upon it, just a hand-working bench with a hefty swivelling vice and a hand powered shaper. Both benches rammed hard against the corners of the shed on 3 fixed legs and fourth one is adjustable for rigid setting down on slightly uneven concrete floor. Hopefully, above will give a few ideas.

John

As JasonB says, kiln dried oak later becomes damper, the acid is reactivated. Also, comments about the sapwood making steel tools black and the youngest wood, the bark, being used for tanning. I think that if heartwood, which is many previous years growth, already drying out in the tree is rather more benign, it suggests that the acidic effect slowly degenerates with age. Only the bark and sapwood of any tree species is the living part and the heart wood is dead.

Any potential problem could be overcome by putting VPI paper in an oak box/toolmakers cabinet, to prevent rust forming.

John

Hi Fulmen, welcome to the forum.

Assuming you're still living in Norway, how about taking a holiday in Britain. Visit museums or railways of interest and personally collect all the heavy bits of metal needed. Presumably, if you use a ferry you could side step the airlines exorbitant charges for weight of baggage. View various suppliers websites and arrange for purchases to be collected. Just a thought.

Good luck with your project and please let us all know how you get on with progress reports.

Regards

John

"Dont use all holders in the set". Sounds like a rather familiar marketing ploy - "buy the set." Boxes of BA(and others) taps and dies complete with tap wrench and die stock. Half the set never get used and the wrench and stock duplicate what you already possess. That sort of caper is repeated in screwdrivers, hammers, different types of spanners, Allen keys and so on, list is endless. Now expanded to so called need for Metric versions. Goes back to the days of Robertsons jam and marmalade jars containing printed paper pix of negroes holding cricket bat, football, etc and they could be exchanged for a metal pin badge version. All sorts of pix on Kelloggs cornflakes pots, again, 'collect the set.' Puts poster power on parents to keep buying the brand. El cheapo buying, buy just what you assess a need for and invest extra dosh in better quality items. Just remember, GB is also known as "Treasure Island" for businesses.

Mike, that's going back a bit!

Martin, my Father in Law used marg to grease his hair!

John

Sounds very similar to schoolday metalwork class method. We used a commercially produced jollop, - "Kasenit" ?? Too long ago to be any more precise - we had Radio Caroline playing in workshop with The Animals singing "House of the Rising Sun".

I wouldn't pay hundreds of pounds for a grinding contraption.

I may soon make a copy of a simple flute grind jig that I saw on a club xbn stand. I think that it was a Leicester model Engineer showing his jig at one of the old Harrogate exbns. The endmill was held horizontally on its centres by a pair of round bars with points to fit the cutter centres. Round bars about 1/4" dia? shiny, so probably silver steel. They were held closely in two uprights and a steel handle fixed to the outer ends of the bars. A vertical 'tooth' guided the tool in a twisting motion as the handle moved the tool past the grinding wheel. Couldn't be any simpler but does rely upon accurate centres each end of the tool, which would be lost by rough gashing the working end. Too long ago now, unable to recall any system for advancing tool towards the wheel. Gadgets costing £600+ , that money would buy quite a few brand new sharp cutters. Or even more blunt ones and get them sharpened by a fellow club member who has made or purchased a gadget!

Hi John, here's another in name and a DW owner!

I am confused by what's so far been discussed, since the obvious part of a DW is it's spiral threaded column, allowing rise and fall. I know it's a bit slow but one gets there. Is that the reason why you want bevel gear drive like some drilling machines, thinking that it would be quicker/more convenient?

John

I recently ordered small black plastic balls for a project and upon receipt, were found to be too small, so put on one side and ordered bigger balls! Unfortunately forgot to put a note in plastic bag of the small ones, of thread size. Another small project recently, called for a small ball. Raked out the tiddlers (about 25mm dia.) and quick measure suggested 1/4" BSF or 6mm thread. Gently tried taps in the brass thread but neither seemed OK. Next, short scrap of 1/4"dia. steel was threaded differently each end and one fitted quite well but I thought not perfect. Used the best fitting thread on the project and screwed knob on tight. Success! A balls - up turned good!

John

Edited By DMB on 17/03/2023 11:29:12

Hi Brian,

I have taken pix using this tablet which I can send. Not able to scan with my printer as its recently busted and not yet decided which new model to buy. My old Pixma 5750(?) is many years old so think that I've had my moneys worth!

I'm no puter whizz but will have a go, having done similar for other purposes. Please let me know if you receive them and if pix are clear enough.

Regards

John

Down the "sunny south" in Brighton the other day, my workshop apex roof had a light sprinkling of snow like a dusting of icing sugar on a sticky cake! That was 10 2 7am and by 10AM it was gone. First snow of the winter and likely the last. Still damn cold wind. Don't envy you Northerners. Seems like a mini climate trapped between the South Downs and the sea. I remember about 7 decades ago, the sea looked soupy and each wave froze on the pebbles, giving them a varnished appearance. It did get cold some winters, white frost on the grass when new school term started first week of September. Now we dont see frosts til December. Some years no snow at all. So I wont be venturing up to "arrergate".

I am going to help make this thread go to fo. 11! Such an emotive subject just runs and runs. What I really hate about Imperial length measurement, is like an old article reproduced in the latest MEW. The offending item has 3 diff. dias., so each one has its length shown just above, 1 1/8", 7/16", 3/4". Nothing wrong in that, other than in order to ascertain how long a piece of bar to cut off, I have to add 3 dimensions to obtain the total, where each dimension has a different denominator in the fraction. Fiddling about with those could so easily cause an error. If it was in metric, 29mm, 11mm, 19mm, it would be much quicker to add up to 59mm with no risk of error, at least not due to all those different fractions. Yes I know the design was decades ago and the world has moved on as they say, but I'm only using that as a convenient example.

One very useful chart on my workshop wall, well, actually a framed cork noticeboard on the door, lists in Imperial decimal order, sizes of all the number, letter, fraction and metric drills. So useful in quickly deciding which best to use for an appropriate cutting allowance for a reamer! It's also a help in deciding what tapping size drill to use for a desired % depth of engagement. Only other items on the door are a row of screwed hooks for the exterior padlocks and an old tee shirt being recycled as a dirty hand wipe before I go indoors!

Edited By DMB on 10/03/2023 22:05:59

Just remembered a marking out/machining ballsup with a loco project. Used a second hand long rule to mark out the frames, starting with the 1" line instead of the zero end of the rule because it looked dodgy and wasn't sure about how accurate it would be, if used. All went well, checked and started drilling. However, I somehow missed the darned great big hole to be made for the exhaust steam to be piped out of the outside cylinders to the smoke box and to the blast pipe. Didn't notice until after 2 large holes had been made 1" apart! Ah well, just bolt on a patch plate to hide it. If it was good enough for the GWR to patch their old cracked frames then it's good enough for me!

Clive, agree on wretched gas meters. I'm also OK with ability to convert reading to KWH, but why should I have to? I think that all future gas meters due for renewal, should only be calibrated in KWH, to make life easier for all. I expect someone will say, ah yet but calorific value changes or some other silly excuse. Let the supply co. struggle with that one - could be averaged. Surely the variables cannot be so wildly variable? I dont actually bother with the exact conversion, I'm happy to multiply by 31 to just get a ball park estimate.

As regards M/I, it's best to only work in your chosen system and not try to convert. If you do, there is a huge risk of introducing errors. Take loco drawings from the past, all my machinery is calibrated the same - Imp. so that's what I use to say machine a wheel or cylinder casting. I only have to do a shopping list of steel sections or brass bar, e.g., still available. If I have a set of metric drawings, like say Harold Hall's, then I have obtained metric sized metals to suit, wherever feasible. As regards drills and threads, same applies - I used M drills and taps for HH's designs and I'm  using the other motley collection of frac/nos./letters drills and all the diff. threads t&d to complete my Sweet Pea loco.

John

Edited By DMB on 10/03/2023 10:32:04

Leaded?