Member postings for Mark Rand

Yes, but the steel tanks do provide nice cathodic protection to the copper piles, even if they are 'stainless'

I had to order it direct from Volk Corporation in the States. They were quite helpful with shipping to far foreign lands, even though it was unsusual for them. I couldn't find any UK or European resellers, although they could well exist.

I have water based Canode in red, blue and yellow and Stuarts oil based compound in blue and red.

I find that the Canode product is significantly more coarse than the stuarts product and does not transfer as well with a thin layer. It also needs re-wetting when left for a while or it won't transfer at all well.

Having said that, I get very good results by applying the yellow Canode as a background and thinning it using glass cleaner (detergent type, not Windolene!), then using the Stuart's blue for spotting.

Canode will give good marking if you are scraping half a thou, but not if you are scraping half a tenth.

Not quite engineering related, but almost:-

Did some weedkillering, then removed the shuttering from a recently cast retaining wall. Then spent the rest of the day glazing a greenhouse frame.

Engineering related bit:- The wheels that support the doors have axles made from turned hexagon brass shoulder bolts. For some reason the retaining nuts are M5 but the hex bar itself is 11.3mm AF, which is 3/16"W / 1/4" BSF. The correct spanners were, of course, used .

Didn't quite get finished because I ran out of daylight at 21:00.

Edited By Mark Rand on 11/05/2017 21:28:41

That bed has not been hand scraped. it's been scratched up to make the gullible buyer think that it's been scraped.

Either talk the price down severely on account of the damage and the dishonest attempts to tart it up or walk away.

I bought a shaper that had been abused like that and I've also re-scraped the shaper, two lathes and a milling machine. So I know wherof I speak.

Words may well have been by John Betjeman, it was of the right vintage (1954).

|Posted by Antony Powell on 04/05/2017 13:10:02:

|even a cheap car these days is around £20,000 and road tax £300 pa (average)

My 2015 Dacia Sandero 1.5DCI cost just over £9,000 for the top spec model with 7 year warrantee and costs nothing in road tax. Fuel consumption as noted previously. Of course, it's only Euro5, but would have been Euro6 if I'd bought it 6 months later.

Edited By Mark Rand on 04/05/2017 21:48:44

Edited By Mark Rand on 04/05/2017 21:49:14

I made an offer to the works manager for one of these when it was removed from our labs and replaced with a larger surface grinder. I thought it would be a good fit for the workshop I was planning and I'd done a fair number of 'foreigners' on it The Works manegar said that he thought £75 was about right. Three months later I got an invoice from the company for £75+VAT=£88.13 for a Jones&shipman 1400 24"x8" grinder with a failed motor on the hydraulic pump unit. We'd been talking about different grinders . I re-designed the workshop to fit.

Be that as it may, the best solution would be to check the ways with a known camel back straight edge and re-scrape them flat. after that, the chuck can be ground on the grinder itself.

Where are you located? might be able to lend you the kit.

Electric cars will make sense when we have predominantly nuclear, wind and solar power. Currently the best performance you can get from a power station is about 50% efficiency for combined cycle gas and steam turbines. Current designs are low NOx due to multi-stage combustion controlling peak temperatures, but it's still not competitive with a diesel car. Lots of nuclear power would be wonderful if we could educate Joe Public on the safety and cost benefits.

Mark (34 years years in a steam turbine company in Rugby)...

I think I must agree with Mick's comment above. There do seem to be a few predjuces being viewed on this thread. Just a few points:-

1. Many modern car diesels use urea injection (Adblue) as well as pretty much all commercial diesels. This implies that they have NOx reducing catalyists, which use the ammonia formed by the dissulution of the urea to reduce the NOx to N2 and H2O. Adding extra urea is simple, cheap and isn't needed often. It's no more a maintenance issue than keeping the tyres inflated.
2. All modern road diesel engines have particle filters, which work perfectly well when cold (it's a filter, not a valve). They do need regeneration, by burning off the captured particles. This is done aither with a separate injector into the exhaust or by modifiying the fuel injection timing to increase the exhaust temperature. This process normally takes place when the vehicle is running steadily at 50mph or more and is carried out when the filter back pressure rises beyond the desired amount. Filter and catalyst replacement on a diesel is identical to catalyst replacement on a petrol engined car.
3. Older vehicles with higher pollution get replaced with newer ones with lower pollution, whether they are petrol or diesel powered. There is an issue with freight vehicles, taxis and busses because these often have a longer working life and far higher milage within their life.
4. The current Euro 6 standards for cars are effectively identical for petrol and diesel, with 33% more NOx allowed to the diesels and twice as much CO allowed to the petrols. Euro 7 will almost certainly be identical for both.

Note:- I'm not completely unbiased, I'm very happy with my real 60mpg in mixed motoring and 80mpg in motorway cruising.

Edited By Mark Rand on 03/05/2017 19:06:13

Edited By Mark Rand on 03/05/2017 19:08:36

Tried out a new box of 2.5mm Murex Ferex 7018LT electrodes in practice for welding feet on to some 100mm square columns for a crane in the shed. They were spitting and crackling and making an attrocious bead, almost like wet 6010 rods. Dried them in the oven and tried again. Slightly better but still wrong. Used nearly 20 rods trying to work out what I was doing wrong. Then went on to the Murex web site to look at the specs for these particular rods. It actually says DC-ve preferred for these rods, which is odd. I thought I'd try that as my only other option was to chuck the lot and get some more.

Turns out that when I'd made sure to change over to reverse polarity, I was already on reverse polarity, So I'd been using the rods on DC Electrode Negative (like they allegedly prefer). Swapped to DCEP and they started to work as I expected. Slapped myself severely upside the head and gave myself a good talking to!

Then cleaned up and spent a couple of hours cutting up timber to make shuttering for a greenhouse base. That did go ok, even if I had to use the wood-spoiling bandsaw, instead of the proper bandsaw with coolant.

Edited By Mark Rand on 30/04/2017 20:49:43

The long bed ML7 always had a 3/4" dia lead screw as opposed to the 5/8" standard lenght bed.

If you're not paying for your own time, then returning a machine to original specifications is not expensive. So far I've done a 1952 Hardinge HLV and a 19?? Beaver turret mill. 1976 Surface grinder will be done after I've re-lapped the surface table...

At £30/ton, the scrap thieves are raiding stationary cupboards all over the country and the paperclips are ending up turned into container ships...

By the way, did the 'On the Editor's Bench' have anything to do with the issue-number/10? ...

The active ingredient in the VPI products may well be sodium benzoate or another benzoate. Camphor is alleged to work as well, but it's not so good if you object to your products smelling of moth-balls.

I've tried some camphor blocks in my file draw but it's inconclusive, since the workshop normally has a low humidity and a temperature that rarely changes by more than 3°C in 24 hours. Files haven't gone rusty though!

I've got a task that will need a 6" or 8" riser for the Mk1 VBRP. I've noticed a firm on EBay that will cut 'washers' from 15mm mild steel. my thought was to get a couple of plates cut to the right dimensions, approx 14" OD-10" ID, then weld 6 or 8 segments between them for the height, After that, they can be milled flat, then mounting holes drilled and tapped using a rotary table.

ISTR there was an article once in MEW about a chap that had made a riser block using a similar technique, but using rolled plate to produce the centre cection in a cylinder. I'll just use flat pieces of 10mm plate to produce a polygon by welding them together.

hey, I found a Griptru chuck tnat will go with it. Now the owner can be assured of precision results...

There's also the Birmingham Science Museum.

MSC/J&L and Cromwell both have them. Look for inserts for cast iron.