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Member postings for alan frost

Here is a list of all the postings alan frost has made in our forums. Click on a thread name to jump to the thread.

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Thread: Small vice at Aldi (no good as vice but good 3rd hand) £6
12/02/2012 20:35:35
I bought one of these about a year ago. Great thing about Aldi/Lidl is if you miss something it comes around in perennial fashion 12 months later.
 
The great thing about the vice is in winter when the workshop's cold it can be suction fixed to a laminate surfac in the kitchen for holding those awkward jobs of household maintenance where a third hand is needed or an awkward angle. You can then work away in the warm. AS a general purpose small vice its not at all bad altho I expect someone will post to point out that its not top engineering quality and won't hold an engine block . Poor value then for 6 quid.
 
I can't believe the resolution of the caliper however. Anyone bought one and can confirm whether it really resolves to 0.001 inch ? Probably irrelevant anyway as at that price it can hardly have that degree of precision. Still not a bad bargain though, the engineering houses sell these low end models for about double this.

Edited By alan frost on 12/02/2012 20:37:30

Thread: Lidl cast steel vice-16.99
04/02/2012 00:28:43
For God's sake ,Coalburner,grant us all a little intelligence. Aldi/Lidl prices are about 20-30% of top quality, maybe less. None of us are surely stupid enough to need it pointig out that at these prices the goods are not top quality.
 
 
What they are is quite good , usually sufficient quality, often better than goods costing 100% more, sometimes better than goods costing several 100 % more. personally I have found for the only two items I have ever bought that were faulty (among many items over the years.) I did n't have to jump through any hoops to get a replacement, both items were replaced by new and satisfactory items ,without question, very rapidly. They took my word for it and never even bothered with picking up the faulty item. I have rarely had this service bettered even when I've paid for top quality. Good job I\m honest !! Well almost.
Thread: London Model Engineering Exhibition
23/01/2012 17:06:00
Well said ,John. I left the exhibition at about 4.30, having had a good 5 hours worth. As I could n't find Ronnie Sullivan to win a few bob, I drove straight home arriving at about 12.15 in Stirling. Even Harrogate is a fair old trip.
Thread: Alba 1A Shaper Graduated Dials?
23/01/2012 16:53:24
We've got Napoleon to thank for 2.54. Bloody French, what can you expect !!
 
I expect his thoughts at the time were. "Vell, the bloody English fink they rule the world-ve vill see. I vill metricate and the world will follow. Now eet would be sensible to make the centimetre 2.56 to ze eench, but ve vill make eet 2.54. Eet suits me and I have ze beegest army in Europe. Ze Eengleesh will be so busy making 127 teeth gears France vill be number one for years"
 
What the basket forgot was we had the only universal language and once Le hotdog and Le computer were invented the French were on the slide.
19/01/2012 00:30:30
Don't you believe it ,Ady. Even the venerable editor is pushing his luck with a comment like ,and I quote, "..unlikely to want any closer measurement on a shaper". Some of us use a shaper to pare off layers of atoms and the really hot guys can even remove selected electrons. I can think of a website not a million miles removed where new members have been advised "watch out for the shaper boys ". Certainly no one on that site would be rash enough to make these sort of statements.
Like the laser profiling idea--Try that with a mill, if you get any spare time from sorting out the rough finish !!!

Edited By alan frost on 19/01/2012 00:31:54

Thread: Springs
13/01/2012 23:38:15
Wolfie,you might not need it this time but suggest you bookmark this article
 
Its such a good and comprehensive article on spring making its been on the internet for years and is written by a true expert. If you ever "Have" to make a spring and its either largish, or smallish with thin wire , this article could also save either a broken bone or a poked out eye.
 
Rgds. Alan
Thread: Angle Grinder Cut Off Saw Attachments any good?
12/01/2012 11:09:59
Reading Nicholas'post on Ady1's comments I bought from I think Aldi a sort of handheld circular saw designed for metal cutting diamond discs. (all as part of the never-ending quest to own every tool known to man ). It ain't big but boy can it cut although the noise and sparks would frighten the grandchildren.
A perpetual problem I have is cutting up large steel plates/sheets (usually donated by the local university's scrap heap. Being funded by tax payers cash they tend to throw out stuff once it becomes dusty).
I have a nibbler (good but the waste is sharp and deadly), a couple of models of reciprocating saw (also good but noisy on sheet metal), a bandsaw I have modded to cut horizontally on a table (best and quietest but limited by available throat) and a few angle grinders ( wonderfully aggressive cutters but noisy and spectacular sparks, best used at dusk for full appreciation ).
I need all of this armoury at times depending on the size and thickness of the sheet but the little aldi cutter is moving rapidly up my affection table.
12/01/2012 00:23:09
Bit late to insert my two pennoth but I bought one as part of my quest to own every tool known. B------y useless. I think you would get better accuracy and a faster cut with a man-sized angle grinder and a vice, in the open air.
On this subject I recently had to cut a large amou nt of steel stock to increase the capacity of my machine collecting trailer. I found an interesting side effect was that large parts of my patio now have an interesting brownish shade ,despite sweeping up well, and in future I will put layers of old damp newspaper down to collect the colourant.
Thread: TEST POST
12/01/2012 00:06:19
Careful, Roy, it made me chuckle but watch the humourless ones don't accuse you of wasting valuable thread space. Did you happen to get the answer to question six by the way ?
Nice interchange of Olde worlde manners in posts 2 and 3.

Edited By alan frost on 12/01/2012 00:07:47

Edited By alan frost on 12/01/2012 00:10:35

Thread: Axminster Power Tools milling vices on offer
24/12/2011 10:33:40
Read it with great interest ,Harold-excellent as always, although I would n't claim I could do this lot in a couple of hours.(read it on the archive on this site of course).
 
I agree with you about the excellent proportions of most drill press vices. Why,oh, why can the makers of milling vices not achieve as good a basic design. If they then substituted a clamp screw that pulled the moving jaw onto the fixed jaw (operated from the fixed jaw end ) , incorporated a "lock down" action that worked , and added a base big enough to have longish slots at right angles to the jaw movement (easiest flexible mouting to the infinite variety of tee-slotted tables ) THEN we would have a vice worth the exorbitant prices charged for top quality machine vices.
Of course they would have to get a bit of iron and steel back from our Chinese friends, nothing like a bit of mass to keep a workpiece happy and stopping it getting restless.
 
EDit-Oh, and incorporate a handle like the Axminster one-Long enough for good leverage, with a swivel for tightening when space is at a premium,a ball end for speed , and chromed or painted in "find-it" fluorescent yellow.
 
Rgds.

Edited By alan frost on 24/12/2011 10:44:46

23/12/2011 18:23:24
The Kurt is supposed to be a lock down design and they have a good reputation as far as I know. A jaw lift of a few tenths is I would have thought pretty good.
You did very well if you got a proper shaper vice for £20, finding them is next to impossible and an Abwood one for £20 with 8 inch wide jaws is a real bargain, 8 inch wide jaws is a big B*gger. What size shaper have you got ? Only thing I am surprised at is that a Kurt has vee form thread. There must be a good reason for it as I would n't have thought they would have skimped on the thread without good reason. Maybe a vee form locks better than a square or Acme thread ?
I would n't purport to be an expert on vices but I assume my rack vice locks down well (I've never measured the jaw lift ) by the very nature of its design. I'm also always puzzled by the trouble designers seem to have in making a very low profile vice, that locks down. On the face of it ,it would seem a pretty straight forward piece of design to design a screw vice with zero jaw lift and a low profile. There must be more to it than is apparent to me. For instance why are vices almost always of a pusher design ? It seems more logical to me to have a clamp screw that pulls the moving jaw on to the fixed jaw, and that design certainly suits shaper usage.
23/12/2011 00:22:52
A lock down vice as I understand it is a vice that does n't like headaches. To avoid them as you tighten it ,the vice applies a fair bit of the clamping force downwards so that you don't have to mallet the workpiece downwards with a gentleman's persuader. I think its an American term. Along with the Ozzies they are good at descriptive names.
 
Oh the edit vanished -I was going to say who could ever forget "budgie smugglers" or closer to our interests a "come along " (one of them horizontal lever hoists we all " illegally" use vertically for pulling engines out of cars-until we get our first engine crane)

Edited By alan frost on 23/12/2011 00:38:09

Edited By alan frost on 23/12/2011 00:41:16

23/12/2011 00:19:09
Where do them shaper vices go ?? I've had two 10Ms, neither with a vice. BBC machine tools at Carluke had,a few years back a lot of 10M vices but they wanted more than I paid for my shapers. I called in about six months ago as someone wanted a 10M vice but they had got rid of their big" hanger" of m/c tools (probably gone to China) and no 10M s.
 
By that time I had read Adrian Nicolsons article on shaper vices (homeworkshop forum) and knew that although Elliotts usually had good vices this was n't true for the 10M vice. Adrian has a few shapers and is pretty knowledgeable (including two big Elliotts with the proper and good vices they fitted to their 14 inch shapers, and a 10M )
 
Rick's vice seems pretty good and he's achieving some amazingly good finishes on a modified Gingery shaper (and he's still chasing better-the chain drive is currently under very close scrutiny ) but due to the size limitations of the Gingery I did n't like his mounting method and he's had to put up with milled finishes on the vice elements. I've suggested he runs the non-critical surfaces over a linisher.
 
I did get a very good design of rack vice with my FW mill (vice manufacturer unknown ) and I must have a look at the arc Eurotrade one you mention.
Thread: 0.5mm hole drilling
22/12/2011 22:21:45
I would recommend the purchase of the Arc Eurotrade microdrill adaptor mit appropriate chuck. One of the bargains of the century if you look at what these things normally cost even from good value suppliers like J and L. No connection with any of them (or even with reality)-just a happy customer of both..
Thread: Axminster Power Tools milling vices on offer
22/12/2011 21:55:10
Paul, sorry for delay, spent afternoon visiting Grandkids. Only needed 3 minutes actually. Thats how long it took to verify with a piece of ground flat stock in the jaws and a clock to check the jaws were pretty well perfectly square with the base .Total maching time zero.
Harold Hall's excellent "Milling a complete course" on page 86 will tell you practically all you need to know about bringing a vice (in this case a drill press vice ) up to milling standards. As Harold is using a cheapo drill press vice he only advocates this for vertical milling but obviously the Axminster vice is of more than sufficient mass and rigidity to apply the same principles for horizontal or vertical milling. I obviously did n't have to mill one side and end of the vice to squareness with the jaws as as I pointed out it came with the all important tenons, although I will obviously have to check their alignment when I use the vice in anger, but the omens look good.
If you are interested in vices (and who is n't ) Rick Sparber submitted an excellent series of posts to the Yahoo shaper group , where as a group(along with the milling group ) we jointly designed a shaper vice which Rick made. As Rick pointed out even the hugely expensive Kurt vices (and there are better ones ) are not that good at operating as lockdown vices. A shaper vice of course in many ways has more stringent demands made on it than a milling vice and the Axminster vice looks very suitable and has the jaw mass to make a good shaper vice wirh a leadscrew modified to pull the movable jaw to the fixed jaw instead of pushing. Unfortunately altho not excessively high, it is a little higher than I would like in a shaper vice. The old joke is of course that if you're lucky enough to buy a shaper with vice for £1000 you are paying £999 for the vice and £1 for the shaper. Now a shaper vice for £57--that would be something !!
 
Edit-- a PS will post a pic to show how the jaw mating after repeated openings and closing is perfect with the "join " invisible and no detectable ridge anywhere around the jaws using my calibrated finger nail. Should add the clamping force thanks to what IMO is the optimum design of vice handle seems massive, Also just read Andrews post--do Kurts really have a vee form thread ?? -the cheapskates!!

Edited By alan frost on 22/12/2011 22:03:24

22/12/2011 15:37:42
Paul. I have a doorstop. If you like I could forward to you and you could see if you could produce a vice of the quality the Axminster will be in two hours machining. Tell you what I'll err on the side of foolhardiness and grant you two days machining.
As the owner of a CVA toolroom lathe, a Haighton Major mill and a Fritz Werner mill I am fairly well placed to judge top quality, good and poor machinery and doorstops. Would that my skill matched the quality of the machines but most experienced machinists can produce more accurate work with almost any equipment than a poor machinist with Swiss quality machines. All it takes is flexibility and imagination, and a bit of fettling. The colour of the machine is usually immaterial.
22/12/2011 13:06:29
All I can say Nigel is thanks for the tip. My Axminster vice arrived this morning (almost before I had ordered it-how do they do it??). Not up to Axminsters usual quality but still very impressed. Except for the v form thread mine seems very well made and for £57 I was n't expecting sub micron accuracy.
I don't understand half the users of this forum who seem to expect to pay £1 and get £500 quality. I have some good quality vices ,including an Abwood ,none of which approach the Axminster one for value. Whats more it came with the vital tenons for alignment. I have n't had time yet to thoroughly check it but I'm sure that a couple of hours machining will give me a pretty high quality vice and even replacing the clamp screw with a square or Acme thread won't be a huge job if i deem it necessary. Either way if I cost my time at an exorbitant say £25 an hour (exorbitant because I shall enjoy doing it-paid for pleasure) I shall end up with a very good quality vice for £107. This is about 25% to 30% of what I would expect to pay for for a vice of the quality I expect it to end up at.
Oh , and if I was so shallow as to object to the colour , I could repaint in any colour I want in another half hour or so . That would n't change the Incredible value a lot.What would you like Myford Grey, Panther pink , non-council green, virgin white-- you don't get those choices with a Kurt !!! ,
Thread: Respirators
19/12/2011 00:46:29
I must admit I did n't take an awful lot of notice but was visiting a friend recently who is clearing a workshop , the owner of which did a lot of welding. I noticed that the workshop had a compressed air line running round the shop with an o/p to a welding helmet (presumably with a regulator to give a suitably low pressure ), and presumably to give a slight positive air pressure inside the welding mask to protect against some of the nasties which can be given off when welding automotive parts. I mentally noted it as a good idea. Full face shields (protective not welding ones ) can be bought for around £5 and a very flexible rubber pipe feeding the mask from ceiling height would protect against paint fumes and not be a terrible nuisance, and with a full face welding mask you get the same protection against welding fumes. There is of course no need for an airtight mask, just ensure a positive pressure inside the mask, and the airflow could be pretty low.
Have n't tried it but as I say it seemed a very cheap way of getting an airfed headscreen, providing you have a compressor. And if you have n't got a compressor already ,I'd recommend getting one anyway.. I have a few fancy machine tools but I certainly would n't undervalue my less costly three good friends , my 4X6 bandsaw, my engine crane, and my compressor. They get used a lot..
Thread: Slitting saw thickness
29/11/2011 13:11:33
Thanks for link,Nick. Evry day is a schoolday. Otherwise concur with JS provided a finishing hatchet is used NOT the roughing hatchet used for remodelling H & S inspectors..
Thread: Moving a lathe
27/11/2011 19:48:09
Last thought. Professional movers go home with part of your regimental funds that is better spent on pints of muscle relaxant. Your engine crane won't go home with bags of your gold and will be there as a friend when you find you've installed the lathe in slightly the wrong place.(inevitable in my experience)
As you age your trusty engine crane will lift for you machine vices, dividing heads and heavier workpieces that you once casually tossed into position one handed. Don't tell health and safety but with the addition of a mast (two scaffold tubes if you are particularly safety conscious one if not ) and a few bits of welded steel your new friend will transform itself into a safe, stable hydraulic platform at up to eaves height.
When I'm buried I shall request that my engine crane and bandsaw are interred with me to face with me whatever awaits in the next world.
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