Member postings for Nicholas Farr

Hi, I agree with Tony, only the sellers can see the bidders ID during the auction. I have on more than one occasion been the only bidder in private listings and can categorically say there was no shill bidding in those ones.

JS. you were probably watching the same PP auction as I was. I got outbid, just had to put mine on last night and hope for the best. Don't get any good enough signal where I work, so couldn't use my phone either.

Regards Nick.

Edited By Nicholas Farr on 14/02/2013 19:09:09

Hi Tony, perhaps they have found that they could actually recycle all the redundant horse shoes.

Peter, your calibration thingy is called a standard, but you should avoid direct contact with them, because the heat from your figures can expand them. I found that out with my Strarrett ones when I was checking my Starrett No.224 0-4" mic.

Regards Nick.

Hi, well in all my years of being a maintenance fitter and fitting countless numbers of fans, motor pulleys, conveyor drum rollers and many other things using tapered gib head keys, I've never known them to be fitted into a boss that has not got a tapered keyway, and as far as driving them home so they distort is beyond me. They should hold in much the same manner as a Morse taper.

The two photos below show the keyway of a straight bore motor pulley, which was held on with a tapered gib head key.

The top photo is the front end where the key is fitted into and the bottom one is the back end and the photo below shows the key which held it on. While comparing the two ruler measurements showing about half a mill difference, the actual difference to the best of my measuring is 0.7493 mm over the bore length of 82.09 mm, which pretty much equates to the standard taper of 1 in 100.

The key fitted tightly at both the front and back of the keyway.

As far as I'm aware there is nothing special about the steel use for the key apart from the quality, and they will file as easy as mild steel.

When fitted, gib head keys should always be in contact with both the straight and tapered sides with the relevant keyways in the boss and shaft along the whole length of the bore of the boss.

Tapered gib head keys can be a problem to remove, depending on the conditions in the environment that the machinery is used and also how well (or badly) they are fitted. The one in the photo put up a bit of resistance but it had been outside in all weathers for well over 20 years. Soaking it with penitrating oil for a day or two and using a proper gib head key extraction wedge did the trick.

Regards Nick.

Hi Michael, you could well be correct. I've never come across these in my line of work.

Regards Nick.

Hi, maybe the shoulder screw is a grub screw.

Regards Nick.

Hi, I believe the private listing is to help buyers identity from others to protect them from making their location more difficult to be revealed, thus cutting down the likelihood of being potentially burgled or hounded to resell.

As far as "Shill bidding" is concerned, this **LINK** may ease your mind a little, if you care to trust ebay's word.

I agree with JS first post, exactly what I've always done once I got my head around losing out on bids. Not that I've bidded on much lately, usually go for BIN's more oten that not, as been said most of the bargains have gone now is such a well known site.

Regards Nick.

Hi Mike, issue no 2 Autumn 1990 is even rarer as not nearly as many were printed. About 8 years or so ago I saw two different sellers got around £50.00 each for a single copy of issue 2 on ebay.

Regards Nick.

Hi, I think Neil has summed things up faily well. If we were offered things in an afordable price range that my farther had, I would think all these things we can get now are much better quality than the good ole British stuff back then. It didn't stop my farther making things that were accurate and true.

Regards Nick.

Hi, I agree with Joe that the reference is to the the slideways and the quill dial movements. MT3 is MT3 whatever the thread in the end is, you just need a drawbar to suit which thread you have in your MT3 tooling. I have two or three different ones, but the can all be used on my Imperial mill.

Regards Nick.

Hi, well a colleague and me were working out on a couple of sites today in close proximity to each other. When we finished loading all the tools back in the van on the second site, I took this very seasonal photo which I though looked very picturesque.

Can anybody guess where we were. First clue, we were not in the workshop yard.

No prizes for a correct guess.

Regards Nick.

Hi, I kinda agree with JasonB's comments, although I got there about 1/2 hr before he says he left. I did spend most of the rest of the day there browsing and buying a few tools. I did take one photo on my phone of something that I've never noticed before, maybe it's always been covered by a stand in the past or maybe it's just been more crowded in the past to spot it.

However apart from all that, I think you have to be careful what you say on here about an event in progress by a magazine that is a direct competitor, which they may consider detrimental to them.

Anyway, a lot of kids were having loads of fun on their sledges down the snowy grass slope of Muswell Hill as I walked up to the palace from the car park at the bottom.

Regards Nick.

Hi Alan, maybe not, but I've been told by my boss not to spend too much time or get too fussy with jobs as the customers do not what to pay much, they just want it to work.

Regards Nick.

Hi Bob, if you have a copy of the March 2012 EIM, read the editorial, as I believe there is a clue under the second heading. I didn't see the postings before the moderation, but I guess they may have been in a similar vein.

I do believe that David said last year that unwelcome comments made relating to this situation would be removed.

Anyway I now off to the the Ally Pally to see an exhibition.

Regards Nick.

Hi Ketan, I agree to your response to my posting, the point I was trying to convey was that I bought what I wanted and not what someone else wanted to sell me, no disrespect to yourself or your competitors as I have purchased from the both of you and have had an honest trade. Your X1L was seriously considered, but the sort table version won. I will however be buying the M6 stud clamping set from you soon. Shopping around is not always about price, sometimes the options come first. I do understand that some people do not know what they are looking for or what they most likely need and forums like this can really help them and I for one trust your input and the guides on your web site.

Regards Nick.

Hi Ketan, I recently bought a mini-mill similar to your X1L from one of your competitors and I can assure you that there was no accuracy certificate with that. Haven't used it in anger yet, but as you would expect for the price, some adjustment and tweaking was needed.This is no problem for me as I've been a maintenance fitter for the most part of my working life and these are like child's play to me compared to much of the machinery I used to deal with. I'll just say I choose the one I bought for the prime reason that it had the sort table, the price was pretty much the same.

Regards Nick.

Hi Thomas, many grades of stainless steel will not harden by heating and quenching. Generally speaking if it is an austenitic stainless steel, that is, if it has little or no magnetic attraction then it will not harden by heat treatment.

Regards Nick.

Hi Johan, pretty neat job I reckon.

Regards Nick.

Hi Martin, I have to agree with what has been said already. Like Harold says there is no quill as the whole unit is moved to perform the drilling action, which looks very similar to some of the optional bench drill stand produce by Wolf many years ago, where you could attach your pistol drill to and use it as a bench drill.

To my mine this is aimed at the DIY woodworker with too much money in their wallet. I don't think it would stand up to much metalwork especially steel of any thickness for very long and as been said, you can get a much more suitable bench drill for metalwork for less money.

I too think that Bosch power tools are very well made and the pro ones will work all day without any trouble at all.

Regards Nick.

Hi David, just to add my thanks for all your work for us, and all the best for the future. Hope you don't become a stranger to the forum.

Hope everyone will give Diane all the support she needs following in your footsteps, while making her own roads into editing ME.

Regards Nick.

Hi John, welding freecutting steels is not recommended, because in the majority of cases failure will occur in the heat affected zone (HAZ) without suitable and controlled heat treatment after welding.

The heat treatment required is largely dependant on the thickness of section and the nature of the joint, and is normally outside the scope of the home workshop. I would certainly say not to weld anything that is life dependant using freecutting steels.

In my maintenance years, I've seen 4" (100 mm) shalfs snapped like a carrot without any warning when freecutting steel was wrongly used in conveyor belt systems when welded into the pulleys using industrial welding plants and skilled welders. The same jobs using non freecutting steels never failed.

Regards Nick.