Member postings for Nigel McBurney 1

Universal mills had a swivelling table primarily to produce spiral gears and other work which had helix form,the general practice with these machines which had 3 tee slot tables was for the centre slot to be central to the table pivot and the dividing heads had tenons which aligned the axis of the head/tailstock to the centre of the central tee slot,so anyone contemplating the restoration of a universal mill do not attempt to clean up the central tee slot,leave it alone and if making new dividing head keys make sure edges of the keys are equispaced to the keyway in the base of the head. When finishing work with a cutter which is larger in diameter than than the width of the workpiece place the cutter central to the work, Unless the vertical mill spindle is truly vertical, any cutter be it single tooth or multi tooth will produce a surface which is hollow towards the centre of the cut so it is better to get the any slight hollow in the centre of the workpiece. if any is not convinced by this try setting a cutter with the vertical spindle set over a few degrees the result would be a elliptical groove if the head was set over at 90 degrees it would of course produce a half round slot.

in these eastern area videos,every handle or wrench has a longer handle welded on,and every thing hammered true with a hard hammer,no one has told the operator that he should lubricate the tap,perhaps the big lathe is being reversed by clutches rather than electrics, Its a long time ago but I think that the smaller Ward capstans were quick reversed by clutches.

I just looked at the Aminster drill on their website,the drill price quoted there is £499 there is vat to be added so it comes out at near £600 ,The Meddings being ex university is there vat to be added to the £700 ? Apart from the price I would go for the Meddings of course we do not know if Meddings still make drills or just design them and source them from other countries .Industrially Meddings had a good reputation, regarding the specifications the Meddings spec is very close to the spec of the popular Fobco drill and both of these drills are very good for a drill with 1/2 inch capacity max in steel and would be reliable, The axminster drill has a higher capacity spec ie 5/8 in drilling in steel with appropriate reduction in speed which is more useful to the model engineer,vehicle restorer etc particularly when it comes to reaming. Now I have owned from new (1967) a Fobco which is very close to the Meddings spec and just over £52 at that date 2.5 times my monthly salary at that time,so relatively expensive,though it has done a lot of work without any problems which was expected with UK built machine tools, though there was the 500 rpm low speed problem which was too fast for reaming,I later cured this by buying a used though in very good condition 1 inch capacity Meddings pillar drill ,back in 1994 which again is very well made. Now from reading comments on this site and others the problem with far eastern machines is issues with motors and switchgear and crap bearings, plus table deflection when puling hard on the downfeed handle but on the other hand these drills are a lot cheaper and for the light work that it is to be used for a cheap drill would be adequate, some owners have found that despite a few rattls they keep on drilling others with more serious problem have been thrown in the bin. I do think the Meddings is expensive but will do a good job, The axminster at £600 does offer a lot more spindle capacity,which can be essential at times, I would advise look around for a Fobco ,a good product though older ones may have some wear though as you admit your experience is limited the guarantee with the Axminster drill may be more attractive.

I live out in the sticks,ans get the occasional rat,a few more lately as the neighbours have poultry,they have poisoned 8 this winter,until recently i used rat traps which work quite well,though they have two problems ,mice can steal the bait and this winter a stoat makes regular visits to out garden and I do not want to trap it accidentally,I have managed to shoot two rats,a cage trap is not effective as again mice thieve the bait.This winter the problem is mice,lots of them i trapped at least 15,got two yesterday. Robins problem with the water pipe in the cellar, I would suggest wrap the pipe with plastic tape or rubber sleeving then fill the gaps in the brick work with mortar, sleeving the pipe is essential as cement mortar will corrode the copper pipe, I built my property 40 years ago and over the last 5 years two pipes passing through internal walls had pinholes in them where they came in contact with mortar joints in the Celcon block walls. I had mice in the loft ,they got in via a gap where the electric supply entered the house then went up into the loft via the cavity,easier to poison them as pets etc cannot access the loft. Another rural pest is moles,one single mole pushed up 23 molehills and tunnelled all over the lawn that took a proffessional to catch it and it was only one mole. Some years ago when cleaning out the stable my wife would find rats in the straw where the horse had rolled on them ,they were referred to as "flat pack rats" although one day she put her hand in a feed bag and put her touched something warm and furry,a rat, quick thinking she tie some binder twine around the top of the bag and put the bag on the garden,and surprisingly the rat just remained in the sack,a while later I came home and the rat had not chewed the bag ,so I got a length of 2x2 and care fully opened the sack,the shot out like a rocked but made the mistake of running into some chicken wire surrounding the garden,he was jammed in the wire and that was his lot.What would rural people do without binder twine.

The practice of thin nut on top goes back many years,and was used on many of the engines we model or restore,in many designs the top cap just held the bearing halves in place and there was a gap between the bed plate and the bearing cap so the thick nut was NOT fully tightened,if tightened too much the iron casting snapped,and I have seen many of these welded or brazed,the thin nut was then tightened against the thick nut. The question is then why not just use two thick nuts, I can think of one example, the popular Amanco o/c farm engine did have two thick nuts on the main bearing cap studs ,though in this instance the cap nuts could be done up tighter as the bearing caps had shims under the cap ,Amanco were very good,production engineers so the reason for their bearing cap design was possibly ,two full size nuts meant only one part number,no assembly problems as it did not matter which nut went on first and ham fisted owners could pull the nuts up tight, and if pulled down tight why two nuts well it may be that customers expected to see two nuts. On the other hand Blackstone continuous lamp and hot bulb engines built up to the early 1920s only had one nut on each main bearing cap and its not that the lock nut got lost ,the studs were not long enough to take a lock nut. On big ends , again some caps pulled up tight others just pulled the bearing shells together though the pulled up tight caps were more popular,here again it was full nut and half nut plus a split pin,though by the 1920s threads changed from coarse to fine, and single castellated nuts with split pins came into common use,and as Ramon mentions bolts holding engines down just had single nuts,I once owned a 21/2 ton hot bulb portable and the bolts holding the engine bed to the girder chassis were whit and only single nuts despite the rough ride portable engines got when being pulled along rough roads, the only fastener that I found loose on that massive chassis was an iron rivet.I have read lots of discussions over the years on the lock nut position, i have never seen a lock nut under a full nut though I put this down to to never having been involved in industries requiring such fittings, I gather that the applications are highly stressed,and use very high tensile materials, which are far different to a century earlier where the small nut on top was adquate for the application,and materials of the time.so if you are modelling or restoring old machinery engines etc put the thin nut on top.

This size 17/32 may be an old American size, 60 years ago I bought a set of Gordon ring spanners and one spanner was 25/32 never used it for years until I got interested in old stationary engines,i made some new nuts for the 7/16 dia studs on an USA made 1912 Amanco stationary engine and found that some American coarse nuts had some odd sizes across flats,I found in some old info that the USA had a large hex system similar to our large nut Whitworth system ,they seem to have abandoned their system some time before we made the changes during the early part of WW2.

in my rural area,i have been without BT emails since last friday,got something back this morning,my broadband never reaches more than 1 usually its about zero to .7 OpenReach have just put in some new poles down our rd as there are some new hoses being built,mainly farmers converting any old tin shed and the rules now state that new residentual development has to have fibre line broadband installed,then a cable was fitted but the linesmen said that it could be many months before its up and working,

Back gear was initially not a cheap compromise geared head system,back gears were in use many many years before geared heads. Engineering lathes and other machine tools were driven by flat belts,which cannot drive a machine tool spindle at low speeds and transmit sufficient power , so some means of positive drive was required,in early victorian machines sometimes worm drive was used and later on ,large lathes had the rear of faceplate fitted with an internal gear ring driven by a pinion,then the back gear came into use in later Victorian times,simple to make and maintain ,easy to lubricate due to the low speeds in use at the time with plain carbon steel tools,early milling machines also used back geared spindles. One problem was that lathe opearators tended to loose their fingers in the gears,one of the earliest factories acts was that back gearing had to be fitted with guards. Aso around this time the very early automtive transmissions went through the same development process of open belts,open gears,open chains . When higher speeds were required for HSS tooling,better lubricationwas also required so gear boxes were developed though the changes took a very long time no doubt due to cost, both the manufacturers factories tooling and what the customer would pay.

straight 30 oil from a lawn mower dealer, do not use any EP oils on bronze .

In my early days at work,the process of "backing off "as we called it,was exactly as Jason shows in his dwg and used on brass and bronze,including gunmetal , and also cast iron where there job involved several hundred holes. Backing off was always carried out on a grindstone,smaller drills by hand using the thin wheel on a cutter grinder, never saw anyone using a stone,unless one is very skilled it is all too easy to round off the edge and produce a blunt drill. When drilling brass and bronze fittings which have stepped holes,eg pipe nipples,dont use a pilot drill ,start by centre drilling a slight impression the get the centre then drill the largest part of the hole first and then drill the smaller hole.When drilling phosphor bronze ,there is the tendency for the drill to jam in the hole,this can be cured by grinding the drill point slightly off centre to increase clearance for the drill.

Taper pins are tapered and designed to stay in place,they rarely came loose in service,and when punching them out.and a short stubby punch is best,long thin parallell punches are too springy,The component with the pin in it realy needs to be placed on a heavy lump of steel to act as an anvil,so that all the energy given to the punch via a hammer is directed on to the pin,hitting the pin in the worm on a relatively small shaft in the housing will have little effect its just to springy and too much hitting will bend the shaft or damage the housing. The fit is too good for penetrating oil to have any effect. In your case I would clean out the housing check the worm for damage and if its ok leave well alone, Taper pins went out of general use due to manufacturing cost ,the roll pin has been a modern lower cost replacement though not as reliable,in cases of high torque loadings they tend to crush and come loose,

I use petrol when cleaning stationary engine (i/c) parts ,some of them had close on a 100 years of muck on them. when I was an instrument maker back in the 1960s all the instrument and measuring scales prior to laquering were cleaned with petrol,in those days we used a brush similar to a tooth brush made by the Clean ezee company ,they were good and lasted ages and not affected by petrol,ordinary toothbrushes soon go soggy if left in petrol.

The american book "Practical treatise on milling and milling machines" published by the Brown and Sharp Mfg co is an excellent book with lots of photos showing set ups and milling methods, I bought mine from a well known internet book seller, reasonable price get a copy published between 1940 and 1950. Brown and Sharp were the earliest major manufacturer of milling machines and invented the universal milling machine in the 1870s plus dividing heads and gear cutters,At one time Brown and Sharp had a manufacturing facilty in the uk ,my old foreman had worked there and the book was issued to some employees,he loaned me his copy some 60 years ago and I could never find one until the advent of online s/h book shops, I also have the book on milling by Cincinatti machine tools but I find the B & S book is far better.

The handwheel for the cross feed has a central lube nipple,it is for OIL not grease,a J & S servive engineer told me once that countless owners had feed problems all due to using grease in error.

In my area vets and private cinics/hospitals have been taken over by companies whos main purpose is to make money ,charges have increased and the service diminished. One local vet who owned his practice and sold up said that he could not work 24/7 and the latest generation of vets want the maximum amount of cash for the minimum amount of work,and no real dedication,and there is also the problem of finding vets for the larger animals.Looking at the list of dental prices my my dentist charges at the top end of that list,but he is good,

I restore old stationary engines most of them English,so they are all Whit and so are a lot of ourEnglish machine tools main exception is Colchester which are a/f ,most of the owners of old cars,motor cycles,steam engines,lorries,etc etc use them and still buy them,pre covid I found a tool stand at a steam rally selling the usual resonably priced far easten new spanners and there were the useful long deep socket sets among them were whitworth and BA sets so I bought them,they have been used a lot since,the quality is quite good compared to the Taiwan rubbish of 40 years ago. When buying used spanners from auto jumbles the good makes ie King Dick,Elora ,Britool ,Gordon are always more expensive,than other makes,though still good value.I would never dispose of good tools ,the day always comes when they may come in useful.

in the good old days commercially made Tee nuts were case hardened steel and threaded Whit right through, never saw a new machine tool supplied complete with tee nuts, and it was a pity that the machine tool industry did not standardise on tee slot sizes, I made the nuts for my S7 out of round bar,they work well though must be made from a round bar of sufficient dia to give a decent flange. I have made Tee nuts from mild and tougher key steel with no problem .

My punch was made by Eclipse and known as a spring centre punch,I inherited mine from my father ,he used it but I never found it much use ,I prefer the fine prick punch followed up by a centre punch,

I would use cast iron,I have restored engines built between 1905 and 1950 and they have all had the valves guides made from cast iron, also most of them had the bores for the valve stems direct in the head. Also on the older slow running engines the valves had steel stems with cast iron heads.Petrol engines of this period also relied on valve stem lubrication from the occsional squirt from the oil can, egines using coal gas,paraffin or heavier oils which did not totally vapourise relied on lubrication from the oily fuel entering the engine and the exhaust valves lubricated from the unburnt fuel carried over in the exhaust gas.Very often there is little wear in the valve guide, replacement or boring out the existing hole and fitting a thin sleeve is due to old engines left in the open and the stem rusts solid in the head and damage can occurr removing the old valve.

After decades of stationary engine restoration ,recently I decided to get a new set of whit taps and dies, only snag was the outside diameter of the dies,the 1/2 inch die was the similar in size to the broken one,so will only fit in a smalldieholder when a lot larger dieholder is required to as it requires a good force to thread 1/2 inch whit, so the small o/dia dies get used in tailstock die die holders, The set was not cheap and the first time I used one of the taps it shattered,this was replaced by the supplier. Stationary engines and steam work also require a good range of BSP taps and dies ,and I usually buy individually if I need a new die now I enquire first about the o/dia before purchase. I have had for a long time ,a WDept set of 1/2 to 1inch whit taps and dies English made of course,each die has its own sub holder which then fits into a very large die holder,this allows the dies to be adjusted to size and and the size is held by the sub holder.The tap wrench is a superb sliding block type in polished steel and still rust free, carbon steel which cuts as good as modern hss ,probably cost a lot of money even in 1939 .