Member postings for Dave Wootton

All these years and I never thought of using a tray either!!!

Paul Sellers on Youtube has some information on router plane use and making, he shows one where he did indeed use an allen key for the blade. Not a router cutter but I have bent and "forged" the end of some silver steel to make an internal hollowing out chisel for hardwood and despite using very unscientific methods it did cut quite well.

One warning Paul Sellers videos are addictive.........

Dave

Both would have got a sharp clip round the earhole where I was trained, I certainly got one for the chuck key and another for sharpening a pencil on a grinding wheel. But,as for the kid who laid a file down on a lathe bed......., I'm pleased to say that wasn't me! He's probably still got some residual soreness nearly fifty years on.

Dave

I've just realised it is 50 years on, feeling very old just now!

Edited By Dave Wootton on 19/08/2023 13:47:50

The Hemingway kits high capacity steady is very adaptable to a range of machine centre heights, priced at about £65 plus postage. I made one for my Myford 254+ as the originals are very expensive and have a limited range, not a difficult project and I'm sure could be constructed on the lathe and vertical slide if no mill is available. Annoyingly mine came with a horrible piece of old rusty zinc plated studding for the adjusters, but a piece of stainless studding from Ebay sorted that, the steady tips as supplied are brass so I substituted bronze, otherwise a reasonable kit. Might be worth speaking to hemingway if you are interested and they could advise on the best base to supply, the base is the part that changes to adapt to various machines.

Arc euro do a separate chuck and backplate, I used their chuck and a D1-3 adaptor from another supplier ( Arc don't supply D1-3) for my current lathe and very pleased with it. They sell a pre machined Myford backplate so an easy adaption. Previously when I had an ML7-R I bought a one piece ER32 chuck from RDG to screw straight on the spindle thread, this was so far out in terms of concentricity and alignment it had to be returned and I purchased separate chuck and backplate from Arc which after some simple machining of the backplate register was as accurate as I need to be.

Edit John is a much faster typer!

Edited By Dave Wootton on 15/08/2023 12:38:30

I've used both the Carrs and Birchwood Casey brass blacking solutions and despite every care and degreasing in a variety of ways have only ever got a dissapointing deep brown, ok from a distance but wouldn't call it a proper black. The Birchwood Casey gun blacking (or blueing I think they call it) does work very well as does a steel blacking kit I bought from Frosts, careful degreasing seems to be the key to a lasting finish. I heated and oil blacked parts of my Simplex and they are still ok 40 years on, again to get an even finish careful degreasing is key.

Update to above post. the motor is indeed 1/6 hp and is from a bacon slicer! the belts are round silicon he thinks 8mm dia and are orange. previously he used green ribbed belt that worked ok but was prone to part at the joints, possibly he admits through faulty heat jointing. The small motor is he says is probably slightly underpowered but pefectly adequate for what he does, his model of simat has back gear which he uses for cast iron wheels. He has just bought a Flexispeed Venus milling machine, which is a new one on me, after looking at the lathes website it looks ideal for the smaller gauges, crying out for a little vertical head attachment!

One of our club members a gaugeoneist as they are known there, has a Simat which i believe to be pretty much the same as the Flexispeed. he did have belt problems unti he bought some orange coloured round material from a chap on ebay who sells them for Unimat lathes. He got the seller to make up the belts and join them at the length he estimated and has been turning out (sorry) engines on it for some time with no problems. His lathe has a very small motor on it I believe only 1/6 hp. I'll see him on Sunday and will try and find out the motor size for definite. The countershaft is very rudimentary but works and I know he does not have to loosen the belt to change speeds.

Dave

Very nice job Tony, welcome to the forum. Nice to see a custom bike that is so well finished and looks like it should have come out of the factory that way. Sorry to read that you are unable to ride it, looks like you had to overcome a number of obstacles apart from the poor condition before the rebuild. Thanks for posting I'm off to see the youtube video's!

Dave

That's a lovely old lathe Vic, even sounds wonderful when running, Theraputic like my shaper. I've seen Pittler lathes advertised before without realising how versatile and clever they were. Never stop learning. Very interesting video's thanks for posting the link.

Dave

Thanks Mick, I have re-made some of it, teenage me was not quite as fussy as old man me!

I couldn't afford the castings at the time, so the hornblocks were steel and looked quite clunky, so I replaced them with castings, and bought the wheel castings from Kennions, but most of it is original. The cylinder block is cast iron made from the overarm of a Cincinnati mill that was being scrapped. At one point I may remake that in gunmetal as there is no room for cylinder drains as the bogie is really close. I may never finish it, too many projects, but it looks better on the shelf than a pile of bits, and as I look at the parts I remember the people I worked with who trained me and oversaw the work, I learned a lot. After all these years I clearly remember the conversation we had as I was putting the crank axle together, it was about the future of engineering in Britain - and they were right!

Dave

Edited By Dave Wootton on 05/08/2023 08:06:14

Hi Mick

If it's any help there should be some pics of my 3 1/2" Miss Ten to Eight chassis as it is now cleaned up ans a bit more work done on it to get it to a rolling chassis, tried to show the layout of the valve gear and the general shape of the frames. But do ignore the back of the frame from the blue line backwards, as I've grafted in an extra bit to make it more like the full size and to give room for a sight feed lubricator oil tank. As an aside the parts had been dipped and sprayed in Shell Ensis fluid when packed and it had perfectly protected it in an outside wooden potting shed for over 40 years, an absolute pig to get off solved by getting it dipped in an engine builders hot tank. Worst bit was cleaning up the brass tender parts for soldering together, they had not been protected.

Kennions can supply plans off the shelf for the 3 1/2" gauge Miss ten to eight, I bought a set last year when a chassis I started when I was 16 or 17 turned up in a box ,oiled up and put there when I married and left home in 1979! Bit of a shock as I'm an OAP now! Looks like you have a good start to a nice little locomotive there, plenty of help available from the G1 association, they do some good publications that may help, you could probably adopt the " Project " type boiler quite easily for that engine.

Dave

Edited By Dave Wootton on 03/08/2023 21:56:05

Hi Vojislav

I'm pretty sure all myford ML7's were grey, in the mid 1970's the later Super 7 and ML7R were changed to green. I worked where there was a very elderly ML7 with the first type of oilers and that was in totally original ( and immaculate) condition and that was grey. I've had good results with the Paragon machine paint sold by Stationary Engine Parts and also synthetic paint mixed by a local car paint specialist with an additive to allow brush painting.

Good luck with the restoration, there was some good information on the wide guide bed conversion in MEW a couple of years ago, this works very well.

Dave

Nicholas, thank you for posting the scans, very interesting, unusual to see the valve events specified in the advertisement, most designs you have to work it all out for yourself!

Martin, I'm miles away in Folkestone right on the Kent coast, we can see France from our kitchen window! but my daughter lives near Lincoln so we do venture north. If I can help in any way please get in touch via PM not an expert on these by any means but long admired them, one of the first loco's I ever drove and always wanted to build one. I've got most of the important castings except cylinders so failing building a time machine and getting them for 7 shillings (35pence) each, it's either machine from solid or fabricate them, the castings and the drawings arrived only yesterday so not had time for a really good look at them.

As I said you are welcome to PM me if I can help in any way.

Dave

Edited By Dave Wootton on 26/07/2023 23:11:16

It's a Bonds Royal Scot designed for Bonds by Henry Greenly in the late 20's or early 30's, Drawings are available from Kennions , I know as I had a set delivered yesterday! ( I just bought a collection of 70 year old unmachined castings, the quality of which puts some of our suppliers to shame). It was designed as a 2 cylinder as opposed to the 3 of the full size, have driven an example many times and it steamed and ran well. One of the design options was greenly's double ported piston valves, these are on the drawings as well as the conventional piston valve cylinders. The design features a large roscoe displacement lubricator between the cylinders, where the third cylinder would be on full size, yours appears to have this.A dated design but there are a few finished ones I've seen running over the years. Googling Bonds Royal scot should provide some interesting answers, good luck with it. One of these has been top of my list for many years so I was delighted to chance over the castings.

A look at Station Road Steam's archive shows a couple of examples, including a part finished one

I've just noticed you have duplicates of some of the castings I don't have, if you decide to sell them in the future please let me know........

Dave

Edited By Dave Wootton on 26/07/2023 17:51:19

Edited By Dave Wootton on 26/07/2023 18:08:42

Edited By Dave Wootton on 26/07/2023 18:09:39

Not sure how thick your frets would be, but for a G1 laser / etched kit I found Xuron etch fret cutting pliers excellent, can cut right up to the part with almost no distortion. A search would tell you the maximum cutting thickness they are meant for, but I have cut 20 gauge brass with no apparent ill effect!. I bought mine from Eileens Emporium but they are on ebay for around £20, mine have lasted well. For thicker etched brass parts for 5" loco's I've used a mixture of the Xuron cutters for very narrow bits and a piercing saw for the thicker or wider.

Dave

Where I worked we had a Condor bridgeport copy, made in Taiwan,used heavily for a number of years it performed faultlessly, maybe not as nicely finished as a bridgy but did the job exceedingly well. I've also used a KRV bridgeport clone with the variable speed head and that was fine too. Both did pretty much exactly what a Bridgeport would have done. We had Bridgeports in the same shop and I always felt there wasn't much to choose between the clones and the real thing. We did have one Bridgeport with the short 36" table and no power feed that was always my choice for illicit model engineering, the table was so smooth to use and fortunately because of the lack of power feed others didn't seem to use much!

Dave

Project Machinery always seem to have a few Bridgeports and Clones from time to time, No connection other than as a very satisfied customer. Richard who owns the business is knowledgeable and very choosy about the machines he stocks. I've bought both for myself and for work from him with no nasty surprises.

Edited By Dave Wootton on 16/07/2023 13:38:47

I've got an old model of this with no vernier scale, very useful, use it all the time, shame they don't make an imperial model too. I'm sure mine cost more than fifteen quid fifteen or so years ago, a simple useful tool.

Dave

Excellent work and posts well done David and Geoff, a very worthwhile addition, nice to see these older machines in action. One of my future ambitions is to restore an M type and carry out some of the modifications I've seen over the years. I've used one and was very impressed with it, although I struggled with the reverse carriage feed, but this would be one of the modifications that I'd like to do anyway. I should stop pretending to be a model engineer and just admit I like tinkering with old machines!

Dave

Re Delrin gears I bought some for my Bantam 2000 from a chap on ebay, transformed the machine from horrible ringing steel gears to (almost) silence.

Edited By Dave Wootton on 10/07/2023 12:43:33