Member postings for Robin Graham

I am now the proud owner of a depth stop in Ferrari? red:

I'm impressed by the accuracy of the part - I didn't realise that 3-D printing could do that.

Thanks Martin, I've emailed you.

Robin.

Thanks for the alert Rob, but I already have the fence complete with rod and screw. If I had needed the rod I would have made it - it's a fairly simple piece, just a 3" length of 9/32" with a 1/4" x 28 (presumably UNF) thread on one end and a cross drilled hole near the other. It's interesting though - at first I thought £10 for such a simple piece was a bit steep, but I suppose it would take me 20 mins per piece on a manual lathe even if I had everything set up. So not such a crazy price.

Martin has very kindly offered me a sample of his 3-D printed stop for evaluation. In the meantime I single-pointed a #10 x 28 brass screw:

It fits perfectly.

Thanks to all for your help with this.

Robin

Edited By Robin Graham on 06/12/2021 00:13:02

Apologies for the duplicated thread.

Thanks for replies - JasonB is right, as Martin confirms. I had measured 4.74 mm and assumed that was 3/16" - I was unaware of the existence of the UNS standard so was looking at UNC/UNF/Whit possibilities.

Although Tracy list 3/16" x 28 dies they are out of stock, and anyway £24 is a bit steep for a die which I will probably never use again. Other offerings for dies are the same sort of price. The plane cost me £15. I'll single point it.

Keith - nice idea, but the spare screw on the front of mine (Stanley, made in England) is 3/16 x 24tpi.

Martin - I'm very much a 'user' rather than a collector - it's a bit depressing to hear that you have suffered abuse just for restoring a function of an old tool. Nowt rummer than folk I suppose. If you have any printed stops not spoken for I might be interested. Machining the body of the stop is straightforward, but getting the V which holds the face of the stop parallel to the sole of the plane right might be more challenging.

Robin

Edited By Robin Graham on 02/12/2021 00:48:51

I have bought an old Stanley 78 rebate plane. These tools pretty much always lack either the rebate width or depth stop when sold on the second-hand market - in my case it's the depth stop.

I can machine a new stop OK but I'm foxed by the thread on the screw which attaches it to the body of the plane. The screw from the width fence fits, and measuring from that it seems to be 3/16" x 28 TPI - which doesn't seem to conform to any standard. Tracy Tools list dies for this size (no stock, and anyway I'm not going to pay £24 for a one-off) so it must be a 'thing'.

Push comes to shove I could machine the thread, but would prefer to buy something ready made if possible.

Any advice?

Robin.

Edited By Robin Graham on 01/12/2021 01:06:04

I have bought an old Stanley No 78 rebate plane. These were originally supplied with fences, which screw into the plane body, to set the width and depth of the rebate. Almost invariably one or the other is missing when they're sold on. In my case it's the depth stop.

I can machine a new stop. but I'm a bit foxed by the thread in the plane body where the stop screws on. Measuring the thread on the screw which fixes the width stop, which also fits the depth stop hole, it seems to be 3/16" x 28. But I can't find any standard thread with those dimensions. I could cut that on the lathe but it would be easier to buy a screw, or even a die if such things exist.

Any advice?

Robin,

Interesting to me at least - thanks for the link Michael. Coincidentally I've been trying to find out more about Faraday recently - like many others  I associate the name primarily with the development of electromagnetic theory and was unaware of his contributions in other scientific fields.

It would be interesting to see his accounts of Davy's lectures - from  Hadfield's book:

Effect of Davy's Lectures.— This was the turning point in Faraday’s career. His enthusiasm fired by the interest and charm of Davy’s lectures, the young man wrote out a very full account of four of these lectures, dealing respectively with Radient (sic) Matter, Chlorine, Simple Inflammables, and Metals. His manuscript, consisting of 386 semi-quarto pages, written in his clear strong script, is still in existence at the Royal Institution...

Does the RI have a digital archive accessible to the public I wonder?

Robin.

Edited By Robin Graham on 26/11/2021 00:37:34

Edited By Robin Graham on 26/11/2021 00:37:58

Edited By Robin Graham on 26/11/2021 00:38:37

Late to this, but for a glossy-ish laquered finish on brass I haven't found anything better than Rylards. I made a brass memorial plaque for a public picnic table some time ago and it's still looking good after four summers and three winters of weather. It's good stuff.

Robin

Orbital do them, but delivery is a bit steep for small orders (£7.95 under £60 outside London).

Robin

Thanks. The idea of getting internet connectivity in the cellars by powerline is attractive - but would it work given that the cellar electrics are on different circuits from the rest of the house? I suppose they must meet at some point as all the juice comes in from a single cable to the consumer unit.

At the moment Wi-Fi from the router in the house is too patchy to be usable in the cellars. A wired connection would be great and is something I shall bear in mind for the future, but it's not something I want to take on at the moment because it would involve drilling through 3-4 feet of of stone/brickwork. Probably trivial if you know what you're doing, but I don't.

Old Mart - I use Tribit headphones with a BT transmitter which plugs into the 3.5mm headphone socket on my TV (which doesn't have built-in BT) so the speaker blanking works in the same way as wired 'phones. I don't know how it works with built-in TV BT though. A downside of this arrangement is that there a very noticeable latency between the image and the sound, despite both devices being BT 5 and advertised as low latency. It bugs me because I am partially dependent on lip reading, but YMMV.

Peter - thanks for the nudge towards more focused searching. Sony do indeed still make 'conventional' wireless 'phones - I'd been searching on 'wireless headphones' and everything seemed to be BT. The Sony MDR-RF895RK Home Wireless Headphones, 100 m Range seem to tick all the boxes, so I'll probably go that way for now.

Robin.

Edited By Robin Graham on 06/11/2021 00:16:34

Edited By Robin Graham on 06/11/2021 00:24:30

Edited By Robin Graham on 06/11/2021 00:27:09

I am quite deaf and need hearing aids to help with day-to-day verbal communication, but on my own I like to listen to to stuff through wireless headphones. I have a Sony (analogue/FM I assume) set which has served me well, but the inbuilt Li-ion batteries are approaching the end of their life and can't be replaced, so I need to buy a new set.

I have Bluetooth 'phones (Tribit) which are great in the same room as the transmitter, but the feeble and inflexible 2.4Ghz photons can't make the journey from the house to my subterranean workshop unscathed. Almost all of the results of searches for wireless 'phones direct me to Bluetooth devices though.

I'm wondering if anyone else has had this problem and found a solution.

Robin

Edited By Robin Graham on 05/11/2021 00:56:17

Thanks! I assumed that 'traction' was to do with the grip of the wheel on the rail, and would therefore be proportional, all other things being equal, to the area of contact between the wheel rim and rail. So I was trying to think about how elastic deformation would work out with different wheel diameters. Duncan and Andrew's explanations make sense though - not to do with friction, just 'gearing'.

It was an interesting article though, written by someone who is (was?) obviously knowledgeable about steam engines, and perhaps he used the term as a sort of shorthand, assuming that the cognoscenti (not me) would know what he meant.

Robin.

Thanks for further replies. I made a test with some scrap (actually the piece pictured, as that's what it is now is) with the intention of trying (a) a through bolt fixing with full width cutter, followed by (b) through bolt with a smaller cutter if that still moved, then (c) dowelling the work to the mandrel. (a) seems to work, so I'm happy for now, but shall keep (b) and (c) in mind.

Chris Gunn - that would have been the way to do it I now realise, but I've lumbered myself with a pile of brass discs and don't want to start again. I'm self-taught and most of my effort has been directed towards (ahem) 'mastering' basic techniques . I'm pretty bad at planning machining sequences. Maybe that's the next thing.

Robin

I was browsing though old mags today and came across an article about Russian Class 'O' locos by Harvey Smith in EiM (April 2012). He mentions that '... smaller diameter wheels give higher traction ...' . I assume that is an empirical fact, but can anyone explain why it is so? My guess is that it must be something to do with the way the way the wheels/track deform (elastically) to give grip.

This is idle curiosity - I don't build locos - hence tea room. But it's bugging me!

Robin.

Thanks for replies. This is what the slot looked like after the first pass (2mm DOC):

It seems that the work wandered clockwise:

I was cutting away 'front to back' in this view with a 2-flute slot drill - so conventional milling on the left hand side of the slot. I guess that makes sense - the bit was trying to pull into the work.

The reason that I tried this setup was that I'd used a similar arrangement for turning and facing on the lathe and that works well. Presumably that's because a it doesn't matter if the work slips a little around the rotational axis when the the cutting force is applied. A different result when milling though!

From replies it looks that I don't need to buy or make an expanding mandrel, which is good news. The 'bolt on' approach should work. I can make a through hole, as I said in my original post.

With the benefit of hindsight I should have done the milling before the turning/parting as suggested, It's not the first time I've painted myself into a corner and had to devise an escape route .

Robin.

Edited By Robin Graham on 24/10/2021 23:41:14

I think I may know the answer to this, but would like to check before trashing any more brass.

I want to make a number of hubs like this:

That's a mess I know, but it was a proof of principle exercise, not intended to look pretty!

I set up the 'proper job' to cut the 3/16" slots like this:

The brass disc is held against the steel stub in the chuck by two sided adhesive tape and tailstock pressure. The work moved with consequent knackerment.

There's no reason why I couldn't drill the disc through centrally to take an expanding mandrel, but I haven't got one and it would cost me 50 quid to buy. I think that if I just drill the disc and turn a close fitting mandrel with a shoulder and threaded end to allow me to clamp it down on the shoulder with a nut and washer, dispensing with tailstock  support. it should work. But I'd like a sanity check before trashing any more (expensive) brass!

Robin

Edited By Robin Graham on 22/10/2021 01:00:24

Edited By Robin Graham on 22/10/2021 01:03:10

Thanks for the sanity check Andrew, and also to Journeyman John earlier. I honestly thought I might have lost the plot what with those pesky decimal points and powers of ten.

Apologies if I muddied the waters by talking in MWh - that was because I was thinking ballpark figures out loud and it seemed an economical way of expressing the quantities to two significant figures.

It's tough thinking about mega and micro things from a human perspective. What is a Megawatt? My point of reference is a one bar electric fire - that's a kilowatt which I can see and feel. But multiply it by a thousand and I have to rely on arithmetic and imagination.

The last time I heard (maybe a week ago) wholesale gas for delivery in November was trading at 220p per therm. That's about 7.5p per kWh but even after the hike my supplier is asking me for only 6p /kWh. So when the price cap is adjusted next spring I'm expecting a hit.

Robin.

Edited By Robin Graham on 15/10/2021 02:10:57

Edited By Robin Graham on 15/10/2021 02:11:53

Errm ... that's projected total house / workshop consumption. Ofgem give the average electricity consumption for a 3 bedroom house as 3,000 kWh / annum - which is 3MWh / annum in my head. Have I gone wrong there? Or was that intended ironically?

The problem is my electricity supplier is projecting 7,860 kWh (or about 7.9 MWh by my reckoning) per annum based on past usage.

I think I can do better!

Robin

Edited By Robin Graham on 14/10/2021 00:33:29

Edited By Robin Graham on 14/10/2021 00:35:54

Well, it's all been a bit of an eye-opener. I've now accumulated data over 11 days during which time I've spent five or six evenings in the workshop - the pro tem adjustments I've made are hardening myself off ( I actually work faster and more efficiently with the workshop at 17 degrees than the 21-22 in which I'd been luxuriating), and directing light to where it's needed rather than flooding.

The results so far suggest that my house + workshop electricity needs should be satisfied by 2.7 MWh / year in contrast to the 7.86 MWh /year estimated by the electricity supplier. That translates to about £100 saving  - an eighth of a roll of gold wallpaper or 20 carbide inserts -  per month, depending on how you personally reckon it.

I can make further improvements by cladding the ceiling with something painted white as suggested - I have some hardboard as Dave Halford advises, but even cardboard (thanks to Amazon, lockdowns, and my reluctance to bin anything) would do.

I don't want sell the bandsaw and go back to hand sawing as Martin recommends because I think that might put an unnecessary burden on the Ambulance service, but it's an idea I suppose.

On Peter Greene's point about the reliability of LED's I too have found that for the most part the drivers fail before the LED's themselves. I posted a question about this some time ago and someone (MichaelG I think) suggested that poor quality light switches might be a factor. I have replaced my (old) house switches with MK versions, and it's made a real difference.

Robin

Edited By Robin Graham on 12/10/2021 01:52:00

Edited By Robin Graham on 12/10/2021 01:56:34

Edited By Robin Graham on 12/10/2021 01:59:31

Thanks for an (ahem!) illuminating discussion. Unfortunately painting the ceiling white isn't an option if I want to remain married. My wife has fantasies about turning the cellars into living space when my love affair with the lathe &c has run its course. She likes the raw brickwork.

Reading replies I think my best option is to change to LED's and make the light more focused on important areas. I've certainly found that LED bulbs seem to be subjectively 'brighter' than fluorescents with the same nominal lumen output.

Further measurements suggest that our background usage (measured overnight with everything turned off except the fridge and freezer, TV's/computers sleeping and a single light) is 225W. I guess that's mainly the fridge and freezer, which is pretty good I reckon.

SoD makes a good point about the small things adding up with the 'high ticket' / short duration appliances being less important. I'm trying to convince my wife that it's still OK to use the electric kettle and the dishwasher! And convince myself that it's still OK to use the 2Kw lathe - actual turning time is a small fraction of workshop pottering time. With those lights on.

Workshop heating is the next thing to attack. I've been using 3kW electric fan heater, blissfully ignorant that I was using in an hour what the rest of the house uses in a day until I made these measurements.

Robin..

Edited By Robin Graham on 06/10/2021 02:46:07

Edited By Robin Graham on 06/10/2021 02:48:23

Edited By Robin Graham on 06/10/2021 03:04:28

I've not worried too much about my energy costs, high as they are, until now . I live in an old and poorly insulated house and thought that's just how it goes. But I'm sure I'm not alone in having had an email advising of a substantial hike in prices - around 30% in my case. That made me think.

My energy provider estimates my annual electricity consumption at 7,857 kWh. That translates to about 900W continuously, which I thought was reasonable.

As I've been unable to get into the workshop recently for health reasons, I thought I'd make a graph of background household consumption:

The slope until the sudden upturn at the end amounts to about 325W. The upturn was coincident with me going down to the workshop and leaving the lights on.

I was really surprised by this - I'd thought that my workshop was a tick on the back of overall household electricity costs, but it seems that it is in fact dominant. It seems odd to me that a continuous 325W is enough to run a house with an electric oven, microwave oven, electric kettle, washing machine, dishwasher, two computers, two TV's and lighting. That's three and a bit of the old incandescent lightbulbs! But that's how it seems to be. I'd be interested to know how others fare.

At the moment my workshop is lit by four T8 58W fluorescent tubes:

which between them give around 20,000 lumens I think. I had a look at LED tubes, but it seems that to get the same level of illumination wouldn't actually save me much. Maybe I could do better by more strategic placement of lighting. Any advice would be welcome.

Robin

PS - please don't nag about the hanging sockets, I know and I'm working on it.

R

Edited By Robin Graham on 05/10/2021 01:47:04