Member postings for Samsaranda

When you buy from sites like Banggood, you deal with basically an agency that co-ordinates sales from thousands of small suppliers, just like Amazon does, therefore the quality of products will vary on a scale from crap to brilliant. I have had inserts from Banggood, they came from Thailand and were equally as good as on sale locally here in UK, the price was about £6.00 including postage for ten carbide inserts, l had no complaints but you have to expect that the quality may vary considerably depending on which supplier you get, it is a lottery but at a cost of only £6.00 I thought it worth a go.

Dave W

Is this a new system for posting questions? We put the answers first then get round to posting the question. 🤪. Dave W

Andrew, we as a household are big energy users, previously our combined electricity and gas was costing us a direct debit of £135 a month. Need to explain that I have two large ponds in our garden, both using power for circulating pumps, air pumps, and UV sterilisers, these are working 24 hours a day so approx 8kw per day, a lot of energy. The install of solar PV has meant a big reduction in energy usage from the grid, we also now observe the rules of using the washer, dryer and dishwasher whenever the sun is shining, that means free electric, I am sure my wife will also cotton on to restricting use of lathe and mills to only when the sun is shining. The install of solar PV has certainly made us very aware of our energy usage.

Dave W

Needing to keep my welding rods in a dry environment they are kept in the bottom of a built in cupboard in the corner of our bedroom, the cupboard has a small tubular heater to keep the environment stable, wife was not too pleased but accepts it now. I despair when I see photos of immaculate workshops, there’s no chance mine will ever look like that.

Dave W

NDIY, the improvements that you list having carried out to your house almost mirror the improvements to mine, cavity insulation, loft insulation, replacement doors and windows, we haven’t sealed our flue in the living room but have installed an inset wood burner which generates a large amount of heat that circulates throughout the house meaning the condensing gas boiler only needs to provide some background heating, meaning low gas bills. Recently had solar PV panels fitted on the roof, so far this last winter we reduced our electricity bills by £50 a month and we also get a payment for all solar electricity that is generated so a win win situation. Next project will be a battery to store solar generated electricity but not till the prices come down to a sensible level. I keep threatening the wife I would like to erect a wind turbine in the side garden to make use of the wind, we live in a coastal area so no shortage of wind, she is not keen on the turbine idea. In respect of modern houses I personally wouldn’t touch them with a barge pole, there are currently 5 estates of new houses being built in or around our village, watching them go up I shudder at how tacky they are, even down to a fake fibreglass chimney perched on the roofs. They may be a more thermally efficient building than mine was when built but will they last, I think the jury is still out on that.

Dave W

NDIY, you say houses are poorly insulated and better building techniques will be needed, there are currently a series of quality problems with houses that are being built by some of this countries major house builders, they need to seriously up their game to build houses that are compliant to current standards, are we going to have to rely on market forces to ensure future houses meet improved standards. I fear that the profit greed will mean we will always get houses basically not fit for purpose, I am glad my house is now nearly 60 years old and wearing well for its age and thankfully I have gas heating which works for me.

Dave W

The picture in the link given by Michael above shows a car being driven towards the monitoring equipment, that configuration wouldn’t work with motorcycles as the camera will not record the registration number as this is mounted only on the rear of motorcycles, is this another well thought and researched government initiative?

Dave W

After much deliberation about what varnish to use on a brass cased barometer that I recently refurbished I chose to use the aerosol lacquer that you get in the paint section of Halfords, it is meant to be used to seal the aerosol metallic paints once applied. I gave the brasswork two coats and it looks great, time will tell how it fares long term.

Dave W

Bazyle, I shall go and sit on the naughty step, I have three daughters.

Dave W

The quest to maximise profit is insatiable.

Dave W

Throwing away items of value reminded me of an engineering company that I worked at and the power of accountants. The company was established in about 1910 and produced many variants of its main product through the years but because of upgrades and redesigns there were requirements to supply customers with a multitude of different spare parts. The product was rotary lobe pumps and when a customer had a breakdown he needed his spares pdq. To cater for this service to the customer we made and held a number of spares for each variant of the product, the lead time for some items to be manufactured could be six to eight weeks so keeping finished items ready for dispatch was how we serviced the customer. We were taken over by a large engineering group and their accounting policy could not get its head round how we serviced the customers requirements for spares, their directive was that we had to move to just in time supply and that we had to drastically reduce the value of materials and components held on our balance sheet. The end result was that racks full of completed spares in our stock area were transferred to skips and dumped and the service we gave our customers who required spares for obsolete products went through the floor. The company was then taken over again a few years later and very quickly ceased to exist. I am afraid that I regard accountants as the enemy of engineers.

Dave W

It seems the consensus is that electric cars will replace ice vehicles eventually but will take some time to complete, I believe that the total number of vehicles will end up being considerably smaller for reasons already argued, this will impact on a sector of the population who will by circumstance and finance be excluded from EV ownership, this will accentuate social division and we just need to look at our society to see that real poverty is increasing and importantly not being tackled. I think our future society will not be as harmonious as we would wish it to be.

Dave W

Another issue that will be significant if and when the transport system goes all electric will be how will these vehicles be taxed, currently a colleague of mine who has just bought a new Range Rover, pays £1200 a year road tax whereas a significant number of similarly ice powered vehicles pay £140 per year. One would expect the taxation levels to be equalised which means that we should expect to pay similar amounts, the current system charges the owner according to how polluting their vehicle is, all electric will have to have a differently based taxation scheme. I think we can expect the levels of taxation to go only one way, that is up. Taxation could therefore be used as means of regulating who has access to transport, that would be a form of social regulation because those at the lower end of the social scale would struggle to afford access to vehicles. It will be interesting to see how those in charge “sell” their ideas to us the consumers.

Dave W

The preceding discussions illustrate some impracticalities with total electric, would not the way forward be hybrid vehicles using hydrogen and electric, arguably as pollution free as all electric. Problem is our political leaders have put their money on all electric, probably not a well informed decision.

Dave W

Colin, I understand where you are coming from, I think it is going to cause huge social upheaval, our politicians seem to be oblivious to the situation I suppose because when it all begins to bite then they will have passed from office and it will be someone else’s problems. I think there are turbulent times ahead.

Dave W

Colin, I think the social implications will become apparent as we roll towards all electric vehicles that households will not be able to have multiple vehicles as we do now, there will not be the power available at domestic properties for multiple charging, unless all domestic properties are supplied with 3 phase instead of single phase as now, can’t really see that is practical.

Another point that needs to be noted, despite the protestations of those against nuclear, it will always be a part of our generating mix because our nuclear submarines that carry our nuclear missiles rely on fuel that is produced as a by product from nuclear generation. We will always have nuclear reactors to provide the fuel as long as we have the subs, they are still currently building subs so needed for quite some time yet. I acknowledge that nuclear is by no means a large contributor to power generation, gridwatch illustrates that, but it won’t be allowed to disappear.

Dave W

Bill, later in my career in the Air Force I was working as an NDT technician at Brize Norton and a VC 10 arrived back from a casualty evacuation and it transpired that one of the nursing staff on board had dropped and smashed a mercury thermometer. As the easiest way to detect mercury was by x-ray, the mercury being rather dense shows up brilliantly against light alloy structures; the duty engineering officer called us down to the aircraft and decided that we were going to x-ray the floor area where the thermometer had been broken. We asked if any of the mercury had been retrieved and it was pointed out that approx half of the contents had been retrieved using a mercury retrieval kit which meant that there was an amount the size of a 2 - 3 mm size ball still missing. The engineering officer was insistent that we had to x-ray to account for the missing amount, he had mapped out an area of about 5 square metres of floor space as the area of interest. The first task was to check for access under the floor to place our x-ray films, we went into the underfloor space, it was the electronics and navigation equipment bay and was crammed to the ceiling with equipment, we made our way back up to the main cabin and explained the situation to the duty engineer, he insisted that it had to be done so we said we’ll give us a call when you have removed all the equipment under the floor so that we can place film, we then left the aircraft and heard no more from him so I can only assume that the aircraft was deemed fit to fly with the tiny amount of mercury still rolling around, to my knowledge the aircraft continued to fly like this until it was phased out of service with all the other VC 10’s some 30 years later.

Dave W

Mercury is pretty aggressive when in the company of aluminium, back in the 60’s when I was carrying out major servicing of Brittania aircraft in the Air Force we received an aircraft in for a major service and when we were working on it we noticed that the lower pressure skin of the fuselage was dotted with numerous small holes, it was in effect porous. It transpired that the aircraft had recently been used to carry the tools and equipment of a squadron on detachment to Canada. Packed in amongst the test equipment that they carried was a stone jar full of mercury, due to rough handling this had been smashed liberating a large amount of mercury, this being a fairly heavy element worked is way downwards through the aircraft and ended up on the outer pressure skin. It promptly eat its way through the skin, this incident went unreported until we discovered the damage on the major service, it required a large repair to re skin the underside of the fuselage in the affected area, good job we found it when we did, an explosive decompression could have resulted if the damaged area had grown in size. As an aside I remember in my teens I used to buy mercury at the local chemist and we used it for experiments, we did dabble in making and detonating explosive mixtures perhaps that enough said on that.

Dave W

Recently had a bout of Prostatitis which took 8 weeks of antibiotics to clear, have been prone to bladder and prostate issues ever since service doctors messed up my urinary tract when I was in an RAF Hospital back in the 80’s. After the recent problem cleared had a PSA blood test and it was ok, I can’t stress how important it is to check out any prostate problems, my brother in law had to have his prostate removed because of advanced cancer, not an experience I would wish on anyone.

To digress, this morning I decided to put up the shade sail that I have been nagged about now that summer appears to be hear, well at least it is here in the South East. Part of the installation required drilling the side wall of the house to fix a bracket to take one end of the sail, easy I thought get the step stool and stand on that be able to reach no problem, should have moved a large planted container immediately below but I can reach over that, wrong I was leaning in to the wall and the inevitable happened the step stool decided to migrate from under me and I realised that this is not looking good. Gravity took over and I fell onto the patio, on landing I thought well I am still conscious so I haven’t knocked myself out but I had taken a chunk out of one elbow and landed on my back. I suffer from problems with my spine and when I got up this morning I put on my back support because I knew I would be working in the garden, don’t always put it on just when I know that I am going to need support. Having the support on seams to have given a degree of protection to my back, although it is now beginning to get very sore and my shoulders and hips are becoming painful, didn’t let on to the wife how much it hurts, she was busy baking in the kitchen so didn’t see the full extent of the incident. She is threatening that if I am sore in the morning then she will veto my Sunday morning shooting, have to make sure that she doesn’t realise how sore I really am. Moral of the story don’t cut corners it can end up with unwanted consequences.

Dave W

Eric your lathe looks just like mine, used and not polished to oblivion like some that are featured. Keep up the good work.

Dave W