Member postings for Samsaranda

Reason quoted insurance premiums are always cheaper, with your present insurer, than your renewal when you trawl the websites is because they give a new policy discount for new business, when you come to renew and after they have hooked you in then they ramp up the premiums which would recoup the new policy discount they gave you in the first year. Currently arguing against a refused claim on a pet policy, it seems to be a game with them to see if they can refuse any payouts. They picked the wrong one to argue with this time, I have solid grounds for appeal and if necessary I will take it to the Insurance Ombudsman, I have nothing to lose but it will cost them time and money to continue. Years ago I had an issue over my service pension relating to my time in the Air Force, it dragged on for four years but as soon as I referred it to the Pensions Ombudsman the MOD gave in and paid up, would have looked bad if the MOD had a judgement against them by an Ombudsman. Cheekily I asked for full bankrate interest on the sum that they agreed to pay that had been delayed and I got it , result!,

Dave W

Duncan, I bought the tangential tool featured in your link and found it brilliant.

Bob, toolbit creep doesn’t appear to be a problem, have taken some hefty cuts with mine and the toolbit has been rock steady with no movement.

Dave W.

Recently purchased an LED security light for the outside of my workshop, fitted it and it works a treat, however at night I noticed that the leds were glowing faintly when the light wasn’t activated. One of my shooting buddies manages a specialist lighting company so I asked him why the light was glowing when off and his explanation was that it would be down to the fact that the components used in its makeup were probably out of spec which leads to minute current leakage allowing the leds to glow dimly. His comment was that expensive units were constructed from components that were certified within spec and these consequently lasted much longer before failing. It seems that in the price paid for led units you get what you pay for, cheap price usually equates to short life.

Dave W

If I remember rightly there is legislation in Germany that prevents the use of expanded polystyrene as packaging material and also its importation as packaging on products, my grey cells may be playing tricks on me but I remember it being an issue when a company I worked for exported to Germany.

Dave W

Re: Water Injection, the water, steam or water methanol cools the charge of fuel entering the combustion chamber which means that it becomes denser and therefore more fuel available to burn = more power or smoother running. When I was in the Air Force I spent 8 years working on Brittania aircraft, the Whispering Giant, these aircraft had a large tank of water methanol mixture which was used when extra boost from the turboprops was required ie when taking off from hot and high airfields where the air was less dense.

Dave W

A way forward is obviously to drastically reduce the amount of plastic wrapping that supermarkets use, cheese doesn’t have to pre wrapped in plastic nor does bacon. I remember as a youngster cheese was cut from the whole cheese in the grocers on the counter using a cheese wire, bacon was cut from pieces of the side loaded on the bacon slicer and cold meat cut from the whole gammon, then your purchases were wrapped in grease proof paper and placed in a paper bag. Whilst still at school during the summer holidays I worked in a local grocers and my job was to bone out the sides of bacon when they were delivered to the shop, can’t see that being allowed nowadays, youngsters using incredibly sharp knives. I know that concern has been raised about food hygiene and possible food contamination and poisoning but I wasn’t aware that it was an issue in those days. The downside of changing back to how things were is that it would be labour intensive and this goes against commmercial principles which aim to use as few personnel as possible as they are the most expensive part of any process. So as far as the bean counters are concerned plastic pre packaging with its attendant pollution will always win as its cheaper than employing trained assistants to serve the customer.

Dave W

The oil companies will devise some other process that will enable them to charge us for the disposal of their waste, it will still exist but in another processed form. It exists and cannot be magicked away!

Dave W

When my grandfather retired from a high pressure job in London during the 50’s he decided to move back to my grandmothers roots in North Wales where he bought a small holding and raised turkeys. It was an idyllic place on the side of a mountain complete with woods and a stream, an ideal playground for a young boy, however I digress, when one day my mother and I went to the local village and went into the village shop, as we entered the atmosphere changed and the conversation that had previously been in English suddenly changed to Welsh. Eventually it was established that we were relatives of my Welsh grandmother and the conversation returned to English and the atmosphere became more relaxed. I remember struggling to understand what was being said because the Welsh accents were so strong, strange how communities were so insular and excluded “foreigners” if they could.

Dave W

Neil we receive similar calls for appointments for my wife’s ongoing medical problems. Yes you need to listen carefully because they usually require a response if you intend to keep the appointment, ours in East Sussex don’t use varying accents just a form of Queens English so able to understand.

Dave W

Peter please keep posting, don’t be disheartened by lack of responses, probably find that many of us are in awe of what you are achieving, I am and have really enjoyed your project taking shape, it’s not the modelling that I undertake, I make or attempt to, scale internal combustion engines, in fact I was in Oz ten years ago and I brought home a set of castings for a Rosebery stationary engine, much to my wife’s dismay as it took up a fair bit of suitcase space on the flight back; it still needs a fair bit of work to finish it. Wife keeps enquiring when will it be finished and I say nearly there but she doesn’t believe me, I wonder why. Anyway Peter keep up the good work and keep posting we are all interested in your project.

Dave W

Checked the above reference gov.uk/ Poisons and it looks like if your rhubarb has a strong enough oxalic Acid content then it may be covered by the legislation concerning poisons!

Dave W

ER 25 should be more than adequate, and the collets work out cheaper, I have a Champion 20 mill and a Warco BV20 lathe. For the lathe I have the adaptor for the ER 25 that Warco sold for that lathe size, for the mill I bought the no2 Morse adaptor, quite happy with Er 25 on both, we always desire more and bigger but we have to be mindful of our finances.

Dave W

My wooden outer walls stand on 9 inch concrete blocks, this keeps them away from ground moisture and a lot easier to construct than brick courses, and cheaper. Agree with comment you cannot over insulate, my walls are 100 mm of Celotex and same with roof, no rusting problems as temperature remains fairly constant, have also installed a dehumidifier that runs during the night, uses economy 7 electric and is permanently plumbed in. Need to check building regs re proximity to property boundary.

Dave W

Mike, if an extra sprinkling of salt is a heart attack waiting to happen then I should be very worried because when I was in the RAF and stationed in the Middle East we had to consume huge salt tablets on a daily basis, the theory was it replaced the salt lost from sweating. The practice was abandoned after an airman was hospitalised with gut trouble and eventually they removed a large mass of undisolved salt tablets from his intestines. Those in authority don’t always get it right, especially the establishment. Apologies for sidetracking the thread.

Dave W

My wife also complains on the performance of our oven on Sundays, particularly cold winter Sundays, and public holidays such as Xmas day, so I suspect that it is down to supply voltage dropping but probably still within spec. The other complaint she has with our oven is that her cakes (she is famous for the quality of her cakes in our village) sometimes fail to rise, at random times. She has decided that the blame is not with the oven or other variables but lies squarely with me, I am supposed to have opened the back door in the kitchen excessively causing a variation in temperature which causes the cake to fail. I know it is an argument that I won’t win so when cake baking is scheduled I arrange to lock myself in my workshop for the duration, no hardship there.

Dave W

I agree with the comments posted, yes it is a listening device and you will be surprised how many “random” adverts will appear on your media connection. I have an Alexa, given as a present by my daughter and yes you can be quietly watching the tv and Alexa will come out with some random utterance which means nothing, yes spooky. These days it is impossible to avoid being under “surveillance” from a number of directions, how many of us have loyalty cards, Nectar etc. these perform a similar surveillance of our lifestyle habits and all this data is collated. Impossible to avoid being spied on unless you go totally ‘off grid’ which is nigh on impossible, so if you want one then get one.

Dave W

As an ex RAF salvage person I entirely agree with the comments expressed by Cornish Jack.

Dave W

Taking long or awkward loads by road has always been fraught with problems. When in the RAF I spent 3 years on a salvage and transportation unit and we transported sometimes huge pieces of aircraft by road. Prior to larger than usual loads being despatched by road a survey was carried out to arrange for telephone and power cables to be removed on the appointed day to allow the load to pass and also to check road widths, bends and low bridges that might be a problem. One such journey we undertook was to transport a fully assembled gnat trainer aircraft by road from a flying station to a group headquarters in order that the aircraft could be the backdrop to a large cocktail party one evening. Yes these things really did happen! On the appointed day the aircraft was loaded into a cradle mounted on a large trailer which was pulled by a six wheeled scammell recovery tractor, a real beast of a machine, the cradle was then rotated so that one wingtip was nearly at ground level and the other way up off the ground, the resulting width of the load was 22 foot 6 inches wide. The surveyed route took us through country lanes and small villages in Oxfordshire and we had to travel at night in order to cause least disruption to the rural life. All went well till about half way through the journey we came up against a tree that clearly was not going to allow our load to pass, problem was it was right in the middle of this picturesque village and we were firmly wedged, as time passed with us sitting there with our scammell’s engine burbling away at 2.00 am it didn’t take long for a good proportion of the villagers to be roused to investigate what was going on. A decision was made that we would have to drastically prune the tree to allow our load to progress, so there we were sawing away large parts of this tree, which was in someone’s front garden, with a growing number of villagers, mainly dressed in pyjamas as it was a balmy summers night, watching this highly unusual night time activity. Eventually we managed to remove enough of the tree to allow us to pass and we moved off accompanied by a round of applause from the attendant villagers. I suspect that the senior person who surveyed the route received some adverse comments back at our base. This took place over 50 years ago and is just one of the memories I have from my time on the salvage unit, I went on to complete more than 22 years service.

Dave W

Cobalt 60 is a pretty powerful isotope, I know because we used them for gamma radiography, you wouldn’t want to be too near one for very long if it was out of its shielded container, can do loads of damage to human tissue. One hopes that no one was hurt by the mislaid isotope and that someone got their a—-e well and truly kicked.

Dave W

Possibly parallel earths could be the cause, not unknown for them to build quite a potential between them, on larger equipments have been known to have lethal consequences, obviously not on circuitry with 36v.

Dave W