Member postings for Nigel McBurney 1

I hit 80 earlier this year,and still aquiring tools a new logsplitter is on order,though i am in that situation where the question is " do I really need anything as a present ? my wife have agreed that it can be a waste of money just buying a present as a surprise and it turns out that ,well I got it but I not really want it . Well my wife ,a couple of weeks ago said that Karcher were advertising a wet and dry cleaner on the TV and would I like one for xmas, and to her surprise I said yes that would be useful ,I already had a cleaner but a second one could be left in the garage to gather up sawdust from my sawbench ,and the other could remain in my worshop,at 80 it gets harder to carry things about from one area to another too often.

All use while driving of any types of phone/communication should be banned,and placed out of reach of the driver, if caught the phone should be confiscated and destroyed, I suspect that any type of touch screen can lead to accidents, there are too many distractions in the modern car, and with the increase in so called smart motorways with no hard shoulder any distraction could all so easily be fatal.

I would prefer a dividing head any day,with its positive indexing,

difficult to find really good paint nowadays,too many of the chemicals have been removed by lobbying environmentalists, I restore stationary engines ,many have been really rusty,now for rusty metpostwhich were possibly orinally given a light galvanised plating,electrolytic rather than hot dip, the rusty areas would need to be thorougly cleaned,and the primer may not adhere for long to the plating. red oxide to my knowledge has never been suitable for painting on top of rust,its is used as a primer. now on steel which has shot blasted or thorourly cleaned with a wire brush two coats of red oxide is best,be aware that red oxide is usually matt finish,it is also supplied as gloss and I have when painting over the gloss finish with coloured gloss painted it is not very succeful. last year I bought two IDENTICALtins of red oxide from Brewers,one was matt one was gloss,just cnnot trust anything nowadays. On cast iron I clean off rust with a powerful rotary wire brush,then go over larger surfaces with an angle grinder,then paint with a well thinned red oxide so that it penetrates porosity and small crevices and then apply a thick coat to seal the surface, There used to be product called rustbeater a brown paint which could be applied over rusty surfaces afterloose rust was removed and worked quite well,the original manufacturer was taken over a couple of times and the later product was not very good.

my colchester 2500 is drivem by a 5 hp motor and the 3 phase supply comes from a 6 hpTranswave converter,occasionaly,it hesitates to start so it a case of switching off quickly and restarting,so far never failed on restart ,this does not cause me a real problem as the lathe has foward/reverse clutch so once started its ok.check your converter has a larger rated output ,in hp than your lathe. I always feel that my motor does not give its rated max power,though I cannot complain my converter was rescued just before it went into a skip,so cost nothing,As i do not want to blow the converter i only use speeds up to 700 which covers most of my work ,for a lot higher speeds on very small work I use the S7. If the converter fails i would go for a vfd and use a 3 hp motor to keep cost down,The colchester only has such a large motor due to the high top speed, a good 3 hp motor should drive the lathe up too 1500 rpm which would suit my needs. I have bought a vfd motor package for my 00 mill and it very good though expensive and quiet, the other route of rotary converter does have a problem,I have a 4 hp rotary and is noisy ,the motor continually running has an irritating noise and is now in an adjoining shed.

Most of my cutting is done with a Manchester Rapidor, fitted with 1/2 hp single phase motor,and integral coolant pump, the 6 inch saw will just take 61/2 ins diameter. blades are quite expensive,and the supply of blades at autojumbles has all but disapeared,I used to buy 17 inch blades which were cheap as no one wanted them and cut them down to 14 inches and drill a new hole . I have bench shear which gets only occasional use,my industrial bansaw will cut through anything,eg mild steel up to six inches.though do not cut steel plate off cuts which have been,initially cut with plasma or flame any hard particles ruin the blade in seconds, start a cut with an angle grinder.I now use An angle grinder with a 1 mm cutting disc more often nowadays, though do it out in the open,I do not do any grinding in my workshop,grit will destroy any tools. the thin disc can also be used to cut HSS tool bits too length ,and then again used to rough out the cutting rake and clearance angles of lathe tools.The cordless angle grinder is very useful,I have a de Walt which takes a 5 inch 1mm disc,that extra 1/2 inch can be very useful at times plus no cable to get in the way ,and useful around my out buildings where getting a very long extension cable out for a few second job can be annoying,A good jig saw with metal cutting blades is useful. Now getting to Andrews Adcock and shipley mill,I had one of these and they are very good,whenwas training in ancient times one job was cutting up brass bar about 21/2 by 3/8 into four inch lengths in batches of 200 on a victoria horizontal the cut finish was good enough not to require further finishing so there was little waste of expensive brass, the only issue with cutting up long lengths is that the bar has to clear the arbour support bearing ,so a large saw is required. Small plain horizontal mills come a lot cheaper than the vertical ones,though the lowest speed must be considered,is it slow enough to drive the largest slitting saws,remember a 4 inch saw on mild steel should run at 100 rpm ,on stainless a lot slower. My 00 elliot omnimill suffers from this problem lowest speed is 100 rpm so it would ruin a 6 inch saw on steel,as slitting saw must not be run too fast or it will soon wear out. I got over this problem by driving the horizontal spindle via a couple of long v belts from the vertical spindle motor which has electron ic speed control, it takes a bit of swinging the head around ,it works and candrive the horizontal spindle down to 10 rpm. As others have said ,if a horizontal mill is purchased make sure it has an arbour that fits , a set of collars, and the bearing sleeve that fits the overarm support, most arbours are one inch dia.all mill with an30 or 40 int tapper is best,3 mt arbours can be difficult to find,theres lot of 40 int tooling around. so thats it get cutting.

I think it is utter stupidity destroying the coal burning power stations,we need working alternatives, relying on solar and windpower sources is silly for the UK ,we have lots of coal why not carry on burning it the best clean way available,at least retain it just in case.our coal burning is so small compared to the three worst countries,why get so bothered about our emission.the middle ages showed up that the uks natural resources could not feed the population as there were not enough windmills and water mills which rely on wind and rain to provide our basic food and the coming of steam power saved us, and towards the end of windmills many of them had big diesel engines to provide power when the wind stopped. And what about burning oil,oil will still be required there will still be a need for lubrication products,plastics, and loads of other products made from oil. The "greens" will be the first to wail and moan when they switch a light on and it does not work or their mobile cannot be charged and their is no electric todrive their heat pump. Boris and his mates were bonkers to ban the sale of i/c engined cars only 8 years into the future, only today plans are announced to stop further building of HS2,its no good having wild dreams it was obvious at the start of HS2 that costs would spiral,nearly al civil engineering is wildly underestimated so that a start is made then it is too late to stop it when true costs are published,I cannot see the uk having a reliable electricity supply in ten to fifteen years time,we model engineers will be fack to treadle lathes and candles to see by and use files to shape our metal. Though all this fuss about climate change is really a pain in the backside, I think the real future problem is too many mouths to feed and plastic in the food chain wwhich will get really serious.

I could never see the the stupidity of the BA thread,the peculiar choice of thread angle,the odd pitches starting from 0 BA at 6mm dia at 1mm pitch.and the smaller dias and pitches not based on logic or basic engineering , why not when at the time our empire used whit form stick to a small thread system ,based on whit and using round number imperial pitches,with imperial eqipment screwcutting and making taps and dies would have been easier,Then our electrical industry used odd number BA which was possibly chosen as odd numbered screws/nut were not readily available,then at one time Imperial Typewriters mainly used odd no BA with regular fractional hex sizes.I remember from my apprenticeship days being told to avoid the use of 1/4 whit as it was the weakest known common thread size. But I cannot really understand how the use of number and letter drills carried on so long where there is no logic to progression of sizes,where as the metric system has a regular progression, even way back in the good old days when imperial dims were used ,a set of metric drills would have been easier to use with the 0.1 steps ,roughly 4 thousandths of an inch,

If you buy a guiolltine dont leave a good steel rule on the work tabe there are a lot of short rules in toolboxes,

I bought a s/hand good bench shear with a long handle, its useful but it will curl up the sheet,I only use it a couple of times a year,I went to a sale with a friend who owned an engineering business ,I was looking at a 4ft treadle guiolltine when my friend commented that it would only cut sheet metal,then he pointed to a large industrial Do All bandsaw ,American design built under licence by GH Alexander, and commented that saws like that are far more useful and can do a lot more varied work, really good advice,it turned out to be essentially a toolmakers bandsaw,table tilts in both directions max capacity in steel 6 inches thick, I have cut 4 inch bar ,thin work stays flat and it has a reasonble throat size plus all the attachments,Blade welder incorporated in the machine.and it gets a lot of use.One of those good buys.

I carried out the same task on a Clarkson just after I completed my apprenticeship over 55 years ago,now in those days you were expected to grind a hss tool to cut the threads,no carbide inserts in those days,and the nut was bronze.on that job the wear in the screw was done by carefully setting the screw in the Boxford lathe and just skimming the sides of both thread flanks,then screwcutting the nut to suit the modified thread. Now as it is LH the clearance on the internal screwcutting tool is opposite to a RH hand tool. This year I had the job to make some jack screws for a hundred year old showmans caravan they were 3/4 by 4 tpi square ,I advised the owner to use 3/4 by 5 tpi acme as a tap was available and to copy the original exactly would have been too expensive, steel screw (en8) threading was ok it was the nut that proved difficult,5tpi really needs some power to tap, so some brass hex was aquired for the nut bored out and screwcut with a v tool then the tap was held in a cross slide bolt on attachment with an ER collet which was really tight, the hex bar could not slip in the 3 jaw.and in very slow speed with a lot of pressure on the saddle hand wheel the tap was pushed into the brass bore,and it tapped ok,if the pressure on the handwheel is relaxed the flanks on tap will cut like a boring tool, I did not fancy using leadscrew set to 5 tpi,to control the pitch, its easier to spoil the job rather than risk the lathe on commercial work.to finish the job I turned the hex to fit its housing if I had the Clarkson job now I would buy a tap ,rough out with a v tool, shape is not critical, hold the work in a 4 jaw chuck for extra grip and hold the tap in the toolpost,I do not advise holding the tap in the tailstock, it can spoil the lathes accuracy. then make the screw to suit the nut,use free cutting mild steel as it is easy to machine with a very good finish and from personal experience mild steel with a very good finish will last a long time.I have a Clarkson,bought at a sale,its a good machine though its feed screw and nut can all too easily pick up the grinding dust as it rather exposed,though where I worked (15 employees)the Clarkson covered all the cutter grinding requirements for over 10 years before it needed attention.

Very true about the comment on the camera being pointed at the presenter rather than the craftsman doing the work,no doubi it is probably due to the producer or director who instructs the camera man,its similar to wild life programmes where the presenters always have binoculars and the camera shows the presenter and not what they are looking at,and I oftenwonder if the presenters even know what they are looking at.And in a lot of programmes particularly bbc2 the presenters always seem to wear scarves,also annoying is where presenters must have a go at whatever a craftsman is doing,who wants to watch a prat making a fool of himself or in "country file " where a presenter says they have come to help say someone planting trees,what a load of rubbish,and also who would want them helping and in a number of programmes where the garden tools are all brand new.

Where I first worked there was a nippy vise in constant use and it stood up well to such work,when I bought my Fobco I bought a nippy for home use and it is still good after 55 years use,if any one is looking for one they are sometimes for sale at auto jumbles and vintage bring and buy sales. The three way vice appears to have a very slim sliding jaw with very little sliding surface to keep it square. For heavy drilling on black iron fabrication jobs I have a Taylor rack vice which can be opened very wide and the jaws are mounted with angled mounting surfaces so that as the jaws are tightened the jaws move downwards pulling the work down thus improving the grip,the serrated jaws are ok on black iron but would mark machined work so a milling vice gets used on larger more precise work.

I agree the background music in so many tv programmes is getting really bad and so annoying that the programme gets turned off sometimes,and who works in an office with just one desk light,or a policeman goes into a strange house and knows exactly where the light switches are, or the police go into a building with tiny torches and never look for a light switch. or the accuracy of documentaries eg a film on the very early days of ww2 depictng bombing and then two mosquitoes flash across the screen. or a recent documentary on war leaders,one view depicted General DeGaul as a junior officer in WW one in a field of straw bales ,oh dear the bales were modern large round ones.Also the use of so called regional accents where us southerners cannot understand what is being said so again its a case of change channel. That said why is any back ground music necessary when an actor or presenter is speaking.Perhaps the only justification for very loud background music would be when the Aussies soaps are on.

it was just the same in the 1960s,the destruction of our railways and scrapping of of a couple thousand steam new locos,now its the power stations stupidly scrapped,and sitting on our own coalfields,all this carbon reduction crap is going to eventually cripple our economy and dramatically increase our cost of living. I read now that they are going to build floating off shore windmills ,in deeper water,how long will they last in the stormy sees we get around the uk. As for corn grinding windmills,and watermills historically they proved useless as the population grew and needed more food and flour,most of them ended their days with a great big diesel to drive the milling machinery when the winfd and water supply failed,I am fed up with all the tv news being filled with a load of idiot meeting in Scotland,Whats the point in crippling ourselves with grandiose plans when China and others churn out loads of carbon crap and do not care a damn.

I bought a tin of paragon paint for my Ruston Hornsby stationary engine a year ago,a fair bit of paint had been used before the last part to paint was the sheetmetal crank guard,the paint by this time was a thicker so I thinned it with white spirit,it seemed ok but when used it I got a lot of heavy brush marks,so rubbed down,changed brush and had another try ,same result a lot of brush marks, it took a long time to find a water cooling tank,which required painting,so I bought a new tin of paragon paint,no thinning needed and the results were far better ,my thoughts are follow the instructions and do not use white spirit,though I must admit the paragon thinners is expensive and has a short life..I also find that oil based enamel paints are difficult to find and take ages to dry hard,on black trolley iron work and cast wheels I now used aerosol blackpaint at least it drys quickly.I now tend to restore and paint an engine in the summer and autumn,of one year,let the paint harden until the following spring then start and run it.

the problem with the screws which when assembled go tight and slack in one revolution,is possibly due to the threads being rolled and the rolling process is not correctly set up,a nut in a free condition will spin freely down the thread as any wobble would be difficult to detect,when assembled in the lathe the nut and thread are constrained at the mounting points so the nut cannot wobble so the assembly goes slack and tight in one rev. it is probable better to use the new nut and screwcut a new spindle on your lathe.I know that I will get criticism for the following,but I have made a cross slide screw from leaded mild steel and it lasted for around 12 years so far,the advantage of free cutting steel is that a smooth polished thread can be screw cut easily , and subject to the condition of the lead screw it will be surprisingly accurate, That cross slide screw was for a Colchester , a new screw and nut was quoted at £550 plus vat 12 years ago,so that prompted me to make a new screw as the old was badly corroded due to the trough in the saddle which clears the screw was filled with some high performance cutting oil and left standing before I bought it. I cut the screw on my S7 and that screw has been used on a lot of commercialwork with power feed when required.

As stated ,using drills chuck etc which perform ok in an identical lathe then there is nothing wrong with the drills or methods, try to see your tailstock will fit your fathers lathe and se if you get good or bad results,if the results are good then your tailstock should also be good ,then try your fathers tailstock in your lathe and see what the results are,if good then its your tailstock at fault.When trying the above experiments use the same length of material on both lathes to rule a material problem. another test would be to get some steel or brass bar ,using your fathers lathe drill say a 12 mm drill hole to about 10 mm deep,then take the barand set up in your lathe and using a single point boring tool bore the hole out to be a good fit on a 13 mm drill, then using a 13 mm drill continue drilling to a reasonable depth and just see what happens, if it still makes wanders and make the 13 mm hole oversize then it must be an alignment problem or a problem with the headstock spindle. Curiously I have some cold rolled bearing bronze 7/8 dia which I bought from a respected supplier about 30 years ago,if I drill this to make a bush say a small end bush the drilled hole will be oversize and visibly off centre,same results on both my S7 and Colchester master, cannot see any faults in the material,as its good bronze and valuable I get over it by drilling well undersize and then boring to size, I put it down to an inherrent fault in the material due to rolling procees though the bronze does make good bearing bushes. I mentioned this to emphasize if you do compare the two lathes use the same piece of material.

I used .5 and .75 aluminium plate for my Allchin TE boiler and tender formers, they were also loaned out to another Allchin builder, The aluminium plate came as off cuts which were free,

I have always used a Jacobs chuck to hold taps in the myford s7 its ok with small taps but larger taps are more difficult to stop spinning in the chuck ,not having reverse I release the jacobs chuck and then reverse out the tap with a tap wrench.Er collet chucks,have a really positive grip so can cause tap breakages or worse still spin the morse taper shank in the tailstock barrel and damage the internal morse taper,after the s7 is a cente lathe and the taper in the tailstock must be kept in good condition. To get over the risk of damaging the taper or the keyway in the tailstock,it is reaonably easy to make an attachement for holding taper shanked tooling on the cross slide,any strain then goes onto the saddle,drills can also be power fed,taper sockets can be obtained which have ground parallel outside diameter,its the just acase of mounting this in a suitable block and boling ut to the cross slide. For my Colchester Master I have a cross slide mounted 4 mt sleeve so with a ER 40 collet holder I have tapped up to 1.125 whit with no tap slip in mild steel and the reversing motor clutch allows reversing the tap out easily,and no strain on the tail stock,plus I can drill under power feed up to 2inch dia. Small tap holders with a slipping friction clutch like the Archer are ok but take time to set the clutch and while setting there is the risk of tape breakage,ok if there are say 200 holes to tap. I have an Archer tap holder,brand new a gift from a friend but as soon as I had ER collets its never been used since.

ML7 and S7 Part off ok though better results are obtained with hand ground parting tools than commercial tools, hand ground tools can have side clearance so they dont jam in the slot, I was taught during my apprenticeship that a good guide for parting off was to use a spindle speed which is HALF usual turning speed for normal turning a lot of amateur users always seem to want everything done immediately and use far too high a speed, we never used power feed on for parting off on any size of lathe,even on the capstan lathes,you were expected to be able to operate the feedby hand at a steady speed, I agree that quick change tooling is not the best system for parting off ,most lathes in my early days had 4 way toolposts, a lot more rigid but requiring lots of packing to adjust tool height.Dont be cruel to a small lathe. Parting off is a skill which takes time to learn and lots off practice,when on a capstan lathe an operator might part off 400 or so parts in a day,though a centre lathe turner would not part off so much as sawn blanks were preferred. our model engineers lathes have to be multi purpose and there are problems with belt slip,tool breakage ,jamming of tool in the cut ,etc its not the lathes fault.