Member postings for Samsaranda

PGK

Thanks for your posting , your explanation was more or less the same as our Vets, the aluminium swarf that our cat decided to eat was in small spirals about an inch long, I showed a sample to our vet hence his explanation. Dave W

Vic

The Vets take on the aluminium swarf was that it was relatively soft and generally without sharp edges, once inside the gut apparently the gut lining would distend and allow the passage of the swarf, I bow to his superior knowledge he is very experienced and frequently travels overseas to teach other vets so I presume he knows what he is talking about. In respect of our four cats we have two White Turkish Angoras, (Brother and Sister rescue cats) The Abyssinian and a Siamese. Many years ago I used to work as a Judges Steward at Championship Cat Shows so got to handle all sorts of different breeds of cats, suffice to say that I prefer cats to people. Our house is never without resident cats. Dave W

Chris

Had a similar problem when the local Honda garage serviced my Jazz, checked under the bonnet when I got it home, the air cleaner top had not been secured and was floating free, standards today are so slack, it’s all about rushing as many services through to get the money in. Dave W

Vic

You are right our cat is pretty unusual, he is as thick as two short planks but a beautiful loving cat and at 6 kilos is no small size, he has always eaten any plant life he comes across but this is not unique behaviour for cats, there are some breeds that will sample any plants they come across, hence my warning, there are lists of plants that it is advisable to keep away from cats, lilies come near the top of the list. Anyway to digress we have another cat who delights in eating swarf that he finds in my workshop, so far as we know he has only sampled aluminium swarf which he subsequently regurgitates, he is now only allowed in my workshop when I am present, he is deaf and follows me everywhere and is content when in the workshop with me to sit on the workbench next to me or he will curl up and sleep there. Checked with our Vet and his opinion was that aluminium swarf is relatively soft and would transit through the gut with no problems so not to panic. Dave W

Further to my posting on this thread the day before yesterday concerning the time taken for postal deliveries, I ordered some items from Arceurotrade early yesterday afternoon and they arrived through my door by 1330 today. I am amazed at how quickly the package arrived, firstly congratulations to Ketan and his staff in turning round the order so quickly and secondly full marks to Royal Mail for an exceptional service. In respect of the main thread of this posting and the removal of free postage from Arc when over a set spend I have no problems with that , businesses are under a lot of pressure nowadays, costs seem to be for ever increasing. Dave W

Word of warning, beautiful as they are and some of the plants shown can be stunning, if you have cats then please be aware that all lilies and the exotics featured are highly poisonous to cats and can cause death. I have four cats, one an Abyssinian will eat any plant so we are very careful what plants we have around, he even goes into the garden and eats daffodils when they are in season, needless to say they are on the list of poisonous garden plants, he usually proceeds to vomit the consumed plants which I suppose is his body’s way of countering the poisons he has ingested. So far his diet has not proved terminal. Dave W

In respect of RM deliveries I live in East Sussex and we are served by the Regional Royal Mail depot at Gatwick/Crawley and historically any postcodes served by this establishment have had a very poor service, I can remember that regularly a first class letter to my daughter in Wigan took 5 days; recently things have improved, a couple of weeks ago I had to request a new bank card, this was Thursday afternoon and it arrived Saturday morning, a much improved service. Could the improvements to service be linked to the fact that costs for posting have dramatically increased ! Dave W

I feed and watch hedgehogs in our front garden, we get about six visiting each night thro the summer and foxes plus the odd rat, I bought a wildlife camera to be able to see our visitors. Maybe a wildlife camera would be of use to record what wildlife you have thro the night, being motion triggered it records everything within range and it’s infra red facility means that good pictures are stored to view later. My advice when selecting a wildlife camera, and there is a multitude on the market, is go for a mid price item which should give reasonable quality. Dave W

In respect of tool branding this is vaguely connected with the theme of this posting, my electric drill, a Bosch corded hammer drill has finely been rendered u/s. Problem is with the keyless chuck, it continually comes undo whilst using the percussion facility, this chuck is the second one on this drill, it replaced the first because of the same problem. I decided to look for a corded drill that comes supplied with a keyed chuck, not much choice available as the fashion is for keyless chucks nowadays. Found a suitable replacement, Amazon had a DeWalt with keyed chuck reduced from £130 to £87 so I purchased it and received it today, most impressed with its looks, hope it performs as expected, anyway the purpose of my posting is that when you look at the country of manufacture both the Bosch and the DeWalt are made in the People’s Republic of China, so much for perceived origin of both brands being in Germany. Dave W

Have used UK Drills on a number of occasions and the drills that they supplied were always sharp and cut true so no complaints. In my days when I worked on aircraft we used to have to have to frequently sharpen drills by hand, took a while to become proficient but there is no way I could manage to hand sharpen an eighth drill nowadays, hands not steady enough and eyes becoming a problem so with small drills tend to buy new rather than attempt to sharpen nowadays. Dave W

Hi Bosun

The postcode did include the house number so it was obviously easy using their resources for the Police to get our phone number, we had recent contact with our local Bobby because a number of cats in the area had been attacked and injured, ours included, so our details were recorded. Dave W

Stamping your postcode on your items is a good way of marking your tools. When my daughter was about twelve she cycled to the local ASDA store which was only a couple of streets away and chained her bike up outside, when she came out she forgot that she had come by bike and left it chained up outside ASDA. Three days later we got a call from the local police saying did we know there was a bike with our postcode stamped on it chained up outside ASDA and had been there a while.Apparently the security guy at ASDA had noticed it and told the police who had then tracked us down from the postcode stamped on the bike. So postcode stamping does work. Dave W

It’s rapidly emerging that EV ownership will be for a certain social sector of society, many of us live in circumstances that mean owning and maintaining the batteries on said EVs is not going to be practical, a recipe for dissatisfaction amongst the peasants ! Dave W

What did I do today, well I had to take one of my cats to the vet for an emergency appointment, you may ask what has that to do with model engineering, well yesterday when he was in my workshop unsupervised it appears that he decided to eat a quantity of long stringy aluminium swarf ! Yesterday evening he vomited up a quantity of this swarf which was how I became aware of his extra rations, so I decided that he needed to visit the vet at the earliest opportunity. I took a sample of the swarf for the vet to examine, the vet saw us at 9.00 this morning as soon as they opened, thankfully his opinion was that because the swarf was soft and stringy and relatively blunt then it should pass through the cats digestive system without incident. That was a relief to hear, I think there must be a moral in this story and that is that workshops can be dangerous places for animals and the dangers are not always the most obvious. Usually the cat comes with me when I am working in the workshop, he is deaf and follows me around like a dog, when in the workshop he sits on the bench near me and usually goes to sleep, he just wants to be near me all the time. I need to be sure that I watch what he gets up to when he comes with me in future. Dave W

Take heed of the warning about Molyslip, I used Molyslip G in a car gearbox, this was in the 60’s, and it wrecked a needle roller bearing and the parts of said bearing then attempted to pass through the gears and wrecked them in the process. I subsequently found out that Molyslip is definitely not recommended for bearings with minuscule clearances as it has a plating action and fractionally increases the bearing size which can cause the bearings to overheat and fail, consequence an expensive recon gearbox. Dave W

Mine and the wife’s have yet to arrive, but our surname is nearly at the end of the alphabet so probably the reason. My twisted perception of the country’s present state says perhaps the establishment has already run out of cash ! Dave W

Arceurtrade sell swarf shields with magnetic attachment. Dave W

Many years ago, it would have been in the mid 70’s, I was working on my car, a large Cortina 2000 estate, I had it jacked up to carry out a repair on the rear near side wheel area, can’t remember what repair it was, I was in a dream not focussed on what I was doing, I undid one bolt and the consequence of which was that the rear axle was disconnected and it then swung down to the ground, unfortunately for me my hand was directly underneath it. The edge of the brake drum came down heavily across the back of my hand, after I lifted it off I could see that there was serious damage to my hand, there was a large cut right across the back of my hand in which I could see bones, non broken fortunately, and tendons and blood vessels. I got taken to hospital by a friend, nearest A&E was about 45 miles away, and x-rays showed no serious issues so it was stitched up, healed relatively quickly but I still have the scar to remind me what a lack of concentration could result in.

Another instance of lack of concentration occurred when I was in the machine shop at Tech College, we had a long row of lathes against one wall and I was doing some machining with one and had just inserted my workpiece in the chuck and tightened it up, started the lathe and simultaneously there was a loud clang from the wall at the end of the machine shop, yes I had left the chuck key in place and it had been propelled with some velocity across the machine shop. The instructor let go with some very choice language and really laid into me, so much so that even now I remember how humiliated I was every time I tighten a chuck on my lathe. It was very fortunate that my flying chuck key missed hitting anyone otherwise the consequences would have been serious, they say we learn by the mistakes we make, I certainly learned from that one. Dave W

Keyless chucks can be of such variable quality, I have a keyless chuck with my Chester V20 mill that was supplied with it when new, it appears to be of very good quality it has performed faultlessly. I also have a Bosch Hammer Drill, not cordless, and the keyless chuck as fitted to that is awful, it is impossible to use the hammer facility the chuck just comes undone, so frustrating. Dave W

Dave, when grinding cast iron the orange dust has a propensity to bond with the glass of double glazing if it’s is still hot when it hits the glass, don’t ask how I know, I am still married, only just after peppering the windows of the conservatory. Dave W