Member postings for Robin Graham

I had a very similar problem with an Axminster saw, supplied with one of their supposedly 'top notch' blades. After tearing my hair out trying to fix it I eventually bought a bimetal blade from Tuffsaws. The problem just disappeared. Still a faint click when the weld goes past, but no kick - which in my case was sometimes severe enough to unseat the blade.

Robin.

+1 for that. A while back I posted about difficulties making a coarse thread with carbide inserts I'd bought off the internet - I thought my technique was at fault. Someone (JasonB I think) suggested JB and it was night and day - good inserts and not Sandvik prices. I was skeptical but they really did make a difference. I did have to nudge about tardy delivery, but that was compensated for by the inclusion of a free left-hand threading insert, which will no doubt come in handy one day. Perhaps. But it's the thought that counts!

Robin.

Edited By Robin Graham on 27/02/2021 02:43:42

Edited By Robin Graham on 27/02/2021 02:44:54

is sadly lacking in these times I fear. The latest with me was a text message from 'Royal Mail' telling me that I had to pay £2.99 in excess postage charges. Well that could be possible - like many people in these times I get much more stuff delivered than I used to. Hmm. Full marks so far.

What blew it was the sinister warning that if I didn't click on the link and cough up 'further action would be taken'. What 'further action'? That sounds like a threat. From Royal Mail? My interface with them is Jez the postie who would knock on the door and explain.

I'm making a joke of the artlessness of these con-tricks, but presumably people fall for them, and that's not funny.

Robin.

Edited By Robin Graham on 26/02/2021 01:08:18

Some (but not all) of the blades I've have from Tuffsaws are actually marked Starrett - so Ian (the guy who owns the firm) must use Starrett stock to make up (at least) some of the blades he sells. I'm pretty confident that if he uses other stock it won't be inferior - the guy is extraordinarily well informed about bandsaw blades!

His prices seem reasonable to me given the quality of the blades, which can be made to custom length.

No connection, satisfied customer etc.

Robin.

Edited By Robin Graham on 21/02/2021 23:04:25

Tuffsaws - transformed my Record wood and Axminster metal saws.

Robin

Thanks for replies, and apologies for not being clear about the 'plug'. Jason's suspicion about the shellac was spot on - I glued the plug in so I could mount the work in a tailstock collet, offer it up to the 4-jaw to get somewhere near, take away the tailstock to index off the plug, then remove the plug and bore. As I am perhaps going to do now.

I'm slightly pleased with myself because I had considered almost all the solutions proffered - usually when I post my problems I get replies which make me think doh, I'd be better off taking up knitting as a hobby. Maybe I'm slowly getting better at this game!

What I didn't think of until too late was that I could have asked the chap to give me the chuck as well as the insert, then I could have bunged his chuck in the 4-jaw, indexed off the chuck body, screwed in the insert and bored - that would guarantee concentricity - essentially the same as Paul's method.

A difficulty for me was that I wasn't sure where to take a reference from. I had thought about Hopper's approach but I've not had much luck in the past using screw threads as a reference for this sort of work, so (perhaps wrongly) rejected the idea. I ended up thinking that if I made the new bore parallel and concentric with with the old I could hardly be criticised. Hence my method.

Ian - you are quite right. The insert is a Nova IQNS or Sorby equivalent, M30 internal thread - I mistyped. The difficulty was that it had to fit to the the nose of an Arundel J4 Senior lathe which has a 32mm register. I think that's unusual.

I bored out to to 32.02 - fitted like a glove, client satisfied. I think I got away with it!!

Robin.

Edited By Robin Graham on 19/02/2021 01:09:45

I had a request to perform minor surgery on this piece:

It's an insert for woodworking lathe chuck which adapts the M38 internal thread of the chuck to the M33 external thread of the spindle. The problem was that the 30mm diameter parallel part at the top of the pic needed to be bored out to 32mm to fit the register on the spindle nose. Simple enough eh?

But you've got b****er all to hold onto - just the parallel part on the right which mates with the chuck:

The best I could think of was to make a 30mm 'plug' to fit into the existing bore and index off the stub:

I glued that in place with shellac, then mounted in the 4-jaw on the parallel bit on the left, and after much rubber-malleting, key twisting and cursing got the thing aligned radially and axially to something better than a thou.

It seems to have worked, but I have have a nagging feeling that I might have made heavy weather of the job.

I'd be interested to hear how others would have approached it.

Robin

Edited By Robin Graham on 18/02/2021 00:00:56

Edited By Robin Graham on 18/02/2021 00:15:47

Back in the days of usenet, there was a tacit agreement that a discussion had run its course at the first mention of Facism, or the accusation 'Nazi'. Sometimes it was bit like 'Mornington Crescent'! Further comments migrated to alt.flame where the game was to be as impolite as possible. It worked quite well - alt.flame was a sort of sandbox in which people could vent their spleen (relatively) harmlessly. Of course in this forum there would have to be Flame (reducing), Flame (oxidising) and all the subtle things between...

Just a 'plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose' moment prompted by Neil's post.

Robin.

PS - I'm not suggesting that this is a hostile forum - quite the reverse in my experience.

Thanks for replies,which reinforce my gut feeling that the benefit of these super-expensive bearings is largely, or perhaps wholly, psychological.

As far as I can gather the ABEC specs relate to the tolerances on the inner and outer diameters of the bearings. My daughter pressed her bearings into the plastic wheels by hand then mounted them on to the nominally 8mm axles. She is a slightly built woman, so I doubt that she would have been able to achieve the force necessary to get a tight interference fit to the axle - which is essential to prevent 'creep', when there is movement between the inner race and the axle which can lead to abrasion. And what is the tolerance on the axle diameter I wonder!

MichaelG thought the claim on the Slick Willies website:

[quote]

When you get dirt into your Ceramic Reds, the ceramic balls will help to re-polish the steel races flat again, providing a self-healing benefit because ceramic balls are so much harder than steel.

[/quote]

was 'questionable'. I think that is a characteristically polite way of saying 'wrong' whilst admitting the possibility of error.

I had a look at the SKF website and they go into all this in mind boggling detail - it's pretty complicated. More than I can cope with at the moment, but enough to convince me that the claims made by the skate people are - well - questionable.

It's just marketing nonsense isn't it?

Robin.

Edited By Robin Graham on 14/02/2021 02:35:26

Edited By Robin Graham on 14/02/2021 02:36:17

Double Doh! I got too focused on dimensions. Eventually I realised I could just screw in the screw then run a reamer down the bore to chop off the excess. That's worked fine. Screws are now probably about 1.5 mm long, which is OK for purpose, but I wouldn't want to try to find them again if I took them out!

Many thanks for suggestions though - all filed away in the 'maybe useful' drawer.

Robin

Edited By Robin Graham on 13/02/2021 00:19:00

My daughter, locked down and bored in her flat, has bought herself some eye-wateringly expensive roller skates. For permitted exercise.

You don't just buy skates these days - you specify the boot, the sole-plate, the wheels, and - most importantly - the wheel bearings. We got talking about this and she said she'd gone for ABEC 7 with the idea of upgrading to ABEC 9 or 11 as her skills developed.

I think it's ridiculous to pay the price (apparently £200+ for a set of 16) for 'special skate bearings'. Can they really be that much better than industry standard bearings? I'm skeptical - I smell marketing- but maybe I'm wrong.

Something to amuse:

Bicycle Skates

I may have to make a pair.

Robin.

Edited By Robin Graham on 12/02/2021 23:37:40

Thanks for further suggestions.

DC31k - I had thought about making the balance weight fatter - but my pesky aesthetic sensibilities! It wouldn't look right. I've got a bit of a 'thing' about old brass / hardwood instruments. Back in the day they made things that worked and looked good - I'll never achieve that level of craft, but plan to die trying.

John. Doh! I've got 2mm gauge plate. Thanks.

Robin.

Thanks Clive. I eventually found some M2 x 3 brass screws on eBay, but they're still going to need shortening:

It's going to be a challenge - the screws are so tiny! Unsurprisingly one has already been sucked into the vortex of the workshop floor.

The part is a balance weight. In principle, when it's in the right place on the beam it should just stay there, so I could use shaft retainer. But that would be too easy - and I like to make things adjustable when possible.

Robin.

Edited By Robin Graham on 03/02/2021 23:18:22

Thanks chaps - ingenious- problem solved I hope!

Robin

Thanks.

Old mart - I had thought about that, but I cutting a 2mm bit off the end of 6mm would be difficult with the kit I have!

I did wonder if I could tap an M2 hole in the end of a bit of bar, screw the grub in 'backwards' then grind off the excess, but then I'd be faced with the problem of getting it out again...

Clive - sounds like an idea. I have some short M3 stainless grub screws, and shall subject them to a blowtorch and my aesthetic sensibilities tomorrow. If I can get the workshop above 15C that is - a finger numbing 8C at the mo.

Robin.

I've been looking in vain for the above - the shortest I've found in brass are 6mm. Accu do them in stainless, but ideally (for aesthetic reasons) I'd like brass. Maybe such short screws in brass would be so feeble (only 5 threads long) as to be useless for most applications and nobody makes them. I don't know!

If anyone can point me to a source, or even tell me that that such things are so unlikely to exist that I shouldn't waste more time searching, I'd be grateful.

Robin

That's interesting Ramon. Can you be more explicit about 'within the remit of a telescopic gauge'?

When my interest in the things began I was hoping to get better accuracy than I could achieve with internal calipers, which being 'springy' rely on feel to transfer the measurement from the comparatively rough surface of an internal bore to the polished faces of a micrometer. I can get to perhaps a thou with the calipers, and it's pretty much the same with telescopic gauges - just a bit quicker. It still needs 'feel' though.

If I need to do better than that I turn go/no go plugs, or just fit the parts by turning the male half a a thou over and swiping down with with wet'n'dry.

Apologies to the OP if I've diverted the thread - I'm interested in how people achieve fits from running to push to press.

Robin

Edited By Robin Graham on 18/01/2021 23:08:56

Edited By Robin Graham on 18/01/2021 23:11:39

I recall asking about the cheap (~£20) sets a while back - I don't think I got any definitive answer, and reluctant to take the risk bought a single Mitutoyo to meet my immediate need. I have since bought a couple of Kennedys and the difference in quality between those and the Mitutoyo is, at most, marginal - I doubt that I could distinguish them from 'feel' alone.

Robin

Hi Calum. As you are interested in wood , metal, reeds and leather as well I wonder if you are after making bagpipes? If so, I'd say not to worry too much about the leatherwork at first - assuming you have a workable bag, concentrate on getting the pipes/reeds right.

The guy I bought my first set of Uilleann pipes from (Brian Howard of Sheffield) did almost all of his turning on a metalworking lathe - he reckoned that that woodworking lathes weren't accurate enough. It was at least as big as a GH1230 - you need the space to get the reamer in.

Reedmaking is a bit of a black art - weirdly, I seem to be able to make (dry) chanter reeds OK, but struggle with the drones which are supposed to be easier.

Good luck!

Robin.

I've been doing a lot of brass polishing lately. If ever you've tried to get a really shiny scratch-free surface on brass you'll know that it's necessary to be almost obsessively hygienic, even to the point of washing hands between grits. Otherwise you get up to 1200 say, then a speck of 240 which has been lurking beneath a fingernail drops down and makes a scratch which looks like a canyon. It's dispiriting when that happens. So I bought some cotton gloves. Worked well for hand polishing and I still had one on my hand when went to the lathe to polish some 3/16" rod,. I know that you're not meant to wear gloves when machining, but what could go wrong, hand well away from the chuck and I know what I'm doing - not.

Luckily the glove pulled off my hand. It all happened so quickly! Put the wind up me proper. That could have been my hand with stouter stock.

Don't wear gloves when machining folks!

Robin