Member postings for Speedy Builder5

Having had a mis spent youth as an aircraft apprentice at Weybridge 1963 - 1968, it was my practice to grovel under bits of aeroplane under construction and pinch anything that had dropped onto the floor - amazing what you could find.

Amongst my finds were quite a few rivets, all colour coded. From what I remember, black was soft aluminium, mauve was a little harder and used for most joints, however there were self coloured and green rivets. These had to be annealed before use and had a 'short life' before they age hardened. So much so, that these rivets had to be drawn from stores in coloured pots, and each coloured pot had a life of about 6 hours. If you were caught using the wrong coloured pot outside of its 'life time' you could be dismissed. Does anyone know what the annealing / precipitation process could have been, as these 'hard' rivets tend to crack if set in the hard state. They were obviously an aluminium alloy of some sort

As an aside, all (dry) panel joints had a yellow anti scuff / corrosion treatment whereas wet (Fuel) panels had a short life Thyacol mastic applied - a devil to get off your clothes, but super for mending old car fuel tanks.

Last night I was also getting a bit miffed with the banners. At the time, I had BearSoft as the search engine on IE 8 running under XP on a notebook computer. Tonight I got rid of the BearSoft search engine and the banners aren't a problem. Does this help ??

Bob

I am suprised that there hasn't been a model engineer out there that has designed his/ her own lock which dosen't look anything like what these people have come accross. How about a big boxing glove on a delayed swipe arm mounted just inside the door. Open door, pause a couple of seconds and wallop. Boxing glove floors Mr intruder. Alarm goes off. Wife goes out and sees you on the floor with a broken nose !!

Plan b) ...............

I have cut out an intricate weathervane in galvanised 16swg steel sheet with the jigsaw. Place metal on top of some closed foam insulation sheet just thicker than the length of saw blade and cut thro metal and insulation. BUT do use goggles - a bit of brass in your eye is a hospital job.

Jeff,Joseph and Michael - that's the positive support I was looking for - Thanks.

I believe that most of the bad joints (Riveted stays) have been cured and the last one is a bush / longditudinal stay on the 3/16" thick backhead. I don't see this as a problem as they are easy to get to, but previously there was one little 'tinker' of a leak on a tube at the fire box end which was only cured by bringing the whole firebox up to a reasonable temperature. Interesting that you say use the tenacity flux on these 'repairs'. Wil bear that in mind.

Thanks once again

Bob

Well, that has just about put the lid on that. Lets all pack up now. How I do love negativity.

So which thread form uses 82 degrees ?

Well there you go Julian. Where we live (France), we don't have boiler inspectors . Once a boiler has been completed to a recognised design, the whole boiler is presented for inspection and test, ratified by two independant club officials.

So back to my question - what do you do with a porous joint - pour more solder onto it, drill out and refabricate, try to scrub it off whilst molten or what ?

Didn't they strap a Bristol Sydney Olympus engine on a Vulcan for the Concord(e) - remember the (e) when the British govt succumbed to the French and added the (e). Sorry I digressed. The Vulcan was shown off at the Farnborough airshow circa 1964 flying around on just the one Olympus - great stuff.

Thanks for the info. Terry - you are spot on, but its near impossible to use refactory brick inside the firebox when trying to cure a leaking tube joint. When I use the propane torch in that confined area there are two problems.

1) The hot air exiting the box tends to extinguish the torch.

2) Its not just the leaking joint which gets melted, all the rest get a good burst of heat which can then cause expansion fractures on adjacent joints.

Ok, so I hear what has been said and will keep in mind for the future, BUT if you have a porous joint, what it the correct proceedure to rectify it ?

I thought it was just me. Have used easyflo #2 for 45 years and this new stuff IS different.

Is it me, but I am having more than my fair share of porous joints with cad free silverflo 55. (630 - 660 deg C) Never had a porus joint with the old Easy flo #2.

These are copper joints using the new correct flux (Cup alloy type EF) and a mix of propane torch or oxy acetylene.

Pickling using 20% sulphuric acid.

Any ideas out there ?

You could run the pump off 240volt if the pump is dual voltage (440/240). Use the 240 volt legs.Put a capacitor across 2 of the legs, and live / netral from one end of the capacitor and the spare leg

I got this information from J.Olsen:-

Uh - thought model engineers screwcut things like nuts !

And for soft solder, phosphoric acid or Jenolite rust proofer

Great bit of kit, now we look forward to a compact unit so you can use the table in both horizontal and vertical axis. By the way, what was the clunk clunk clunk at the end of the video ?

Years ago, after a pint or two, a little group of us 'dreamed up' Magnetic Holographic Projection, wherby metal particles would be held in space by the process and then heat fused into the solid. That seemed impossible, but it will probably be reality one day.

REPRAP seems like a clever application, but like all applications it must suit the process as does the laser / resin forming process.

When I served my apprenticeship in the A/c industry, we wern't allowed emery cloth on aluminium - wet and dry yes. Reason - emery particles embed themselves into the softer materials, so beware. Brass/bronze etc - don't use emery for moving parts.

Yes, good idea if you can find one the right size. I forgot to mention that its probably best to find some stainless steel ariel - not the brass ones.

Following on from my enquiry about small head Hex bolts, I needed a 9Ba box spanner (Nut runner actually). Sorting through the come in handy metal stock box, I found a snapped off telescopic car ariel. One of the sections was about the right size to make a small box spanner. I took an old hex key and ground it such that it would enter the tube. I 'drifted' it into the tube to form the right size hex, then sawed the tube off to length. Cross drilled for a tommy bar and silver soldered it into place. Magic. Perhaps not the strongest, but suits my purpose. I suppose I could get the next sized section tube, slide it over the hex portion and silver solder into place etc.etc