Member postings for Samsaranda

Items that are manufactured today are by and large an assembly of bought in components with only minimal amount of components produced in house, outsourced components are for instance switches, motors, electronic boards, bearings, plastic mouldings etc. In order to build their product they source their components from the market place, seeking and accepting the lowest price offered for the items they want. So the product we buy is made from the cheapest components that the manufacturer could source, no wonder it only lasts just beyond when the warranty has expired. In 2001 I purchased and had installed an Ideal condensing gas boiler, it lasted two weeks until the main circuit board gave up. It was of course replaced under warranty, at that time the replacement board cost about £170, the replacement lasted I think about six weeks, again replaced under warranty, we had that boiler for nine years and in that time it consumed 8 main circuit boards, I didn’t pay a penny towards the costs as I complained bitterly to the manufacturers every time and they repaired the boiler each time. It transpired that the manufacturer had selected boards to be manufactured from the cheapest suppliers that tendered for the work, so they got the quality of component that was related to the price paid. The companies engineers that came each time to fix the boiler were embarrassed with the products poor performance. Dave W

Are you sure that your lathe is pointing North/South then? Dave W

If you had chosen Apple then although an American company the product is mainly made in China, I think it is now impossible to avoid “made in China” with anything to do with electronics. Dave W

In respect of UV lamps for ponds they must be the types that generate the wavelength necessary to kill bacteria, I.e. germicidal types. As far as I am aware you can only generate those wavelengths in a traditional glass/quartz type enclosure as in traditional UV lamps, as far as I am aware leds do not have the power to generate the required wavelengths in the quantity required. I may be wrong on this and technology may have progressed in which someone will be along soon to shoot me down. Dave W

Beware if you download Adobe Acrobat Reader you will be bombarded with aggressive posts wanting you to commit to expensive options, I am seriously thinking of removing Reader from my desktop because I am fed up with being bombarded every time I open it. Dave W

John

The wife’s cousin used the Mormon Church records when tracing his family tree, they were extremely helpful and in fact because he spent so much time researching their records the local Mormon Church made him their honorary librarian, he has no connection with the Church. Dave W

Nigel Graham 2

Local archives are still there and available to use but as you say it is not easy, I think most Counties have now put all their archives under one roof, so to speak, but don’t quote me on that. Dave W

It galls me how much these companies such as Ancestry.com charge for public records which should be available to all for just a nominal charge, they are raking it in. Dave W

I have to say that Amazon are on the ball when it comes to the regulations concerning bladed items, ordered some Stanley knife blades and they arrived this morning, the delivery person wouldn’t hand them over until he had verified my age by giving him my date of birth, I must look younger than my 74 years! Dave W

Quite a few years ago was in London and on the spur of the moment decided to visit the House of Commons public gallery, there were security checks to get into the building. We had to be vetted by an ordinary policeman who asked us to turn out our pockets, embarrassingly I had in my pocket a penknife, it was an agricultural type working knife that I bought when I was thirteen years old at the Devon County Show. I was quite attached to the knife and it had been everywhere with me always in my pocket. The policeman’s eyes alighted on my trusty knife and he questioned why I was carrying it, after deliberating for a few seconds he said stick it back in your pocket, he summed up the situation and decided that an elderly gent with an ancient penknife was not an obvious terrorist threat so he had used his judgement and we proceeded to enter the House of Commons, I am not sure his superiors would have agreed with his judgement call. Dave W

Go for a sturdy bench or fabricated stand, I have a Champion V20 mill, a tad bigger than the WM14, I purchased the stand supplied by Chester for the mill, it is rubbish and wobbled like a proverbial jelly, I have temporarily fitted bracing to fasten it to a solid block wall but it still moves, nowhere near as much as it did, a more substantial stand is on my list of todo’s. Dave W

Try an Antiques shop they used to be called fruit knives and there are still many around if you don’t mind secondhand. Dave W

Mine is a recent model only a couple of years old, had problems with the fold down legs, they are so flimsy so I took them off and put them in the scrap bin. Wish I still had my old original that dated from the 60’s, used to belong to my father, it was built like the proverbial brick outhouse, the recent models aren’t a patch on the originals. Dave W

My downfall is that I see tools advertised and think that would be a good tool to have so I order one and it duly arrives and when I go to stow it away in the workshop I find one that I must have bought earlier but for the life of me I cannot remember buying it. Dave W. ❗️

The EU mandate that all electrical equipment must be assembled using lead free solder has probably done wonders for the sale of replacement electrical goods, how many circuit boards have failed because of the growth of tin whiskers causing shorts and failing joints, we are currently on our third Sky Q box due to failures. Perhaps now that the UK is separated from Europe we can see some common sense taking hold and where necessary we can use leaded solder, I acknowledge aviation equipment has always had an exception, there seems to be an obsession in the EU about lead and its dangers, shotgun use of lead ammunition is one of their pet hates. I remember as a youngster when eating rabbit we were told to spit out the black bits as they were shotgun pellets, how many of use in our seventies and eighties are afflicted with lead poisoning! Sorry to go off topic but I feel strongly that the EU regulations were excessively overprotective and detrimental to electrical product life. Dave W

Dave, I think Chester Champion refers to a mill, I have a Chester Champion V20 mill. Dave W

Wife has just had her second AZ jab, after her first she spent a week mainly in bed with flu like symptoms, after the second she was expecting similar but she had three days where she felt very tired and every time she sat down fell asleep. After the three days she felt right as rain. I had Pfizer jab and after first jab had two days of blinding headaches, now awaiting second jab anytime soon. Wife had to have the AZ jab on medical advice because she has previously suffered an anaphylaxis episode, got an adrenaline injection just in time she was nearly a goner then, fortunately it happened in hospital, consequence of an iodine dye injection. Dave W

Following on from the comments of HowardT and MichaelG reference the traceability of materials that are used in Aerospace, Nuclear and other critical engineering situations, I have worked in both Aerospace and Nuclear industries, the supplier of the materials, supplies the necessary mill certs identified to the specific materials which will bear the “cast number” on every piece of the items in the batch. If the materials are broken down into smaller units then the original cast numbers will be used to identify those units. Where I worked we used a lot of Stainless type materials in bar form and castings, all were supplied with mill certs, fairly common practice. An interesting situation came to light a few years ago, I believe it was in France, a major supplier of high grade certified material used in mainly Aerospace but also I believe in Nuclear, had been falsifying the material certification to show that materials were of the required standard when they were not. This revelation had serious implications for certain industries who were supplied by this supplier, it all went very quiet after the initial disclosure. It shows that a system is only as good as the people who are operating it, quality certifications are meaningless unless there is a will to play the game. Dave W

Nigel, I am unaware of the outcome it was an article that I read, one would hope suitable action was taken. Dave W

Rob, thanks for the info will investigate. Dave W