Member postings for Brian G

Another option might be to use brass leaf (I didn't even know it was available).

**LINK**

Brian

Looks like the absence of a rope loop is to be expected on cannon made before the introduction of the Blomfield pattern in 1794. **LINK**

Given that ships of the line could spent years laid up in ordinary, I suspect that the earlier Armstrong pattern (typically confusing that two different Armstrongs a century apart gave their names to guns) would have remained in service throughout the Napoleonic wars.

Brian

Quick check is to try and fit an M6 bolt into them. If it looks like it will go but locks up solid, odds are it is 1/4 BSW.

I speak with the voice of bitter experience here, on taking over another company one of our storemen put all their 1/4 Whit hex nuts into the same bins as our M6. Luckily most of our stock (around a million nuts) was in sacks, but it was cheaper to scrap our loose stock than sort them.

Another Brian

If you scroll down this page **LINK** you will come to No.1 machine shop built in 1861 for the construction of HMS Achilles At that time cemented armour hadn't been introduced and the wrought iron plate could be formed, punched or drilled with heavy machinery.

See here http://www.naval-history.net/WW0Book-USN-Armour1937.htm for some information on the laminated wrought iron armour used in the American Civil War and its later replacement with steel and finally cemented armour.  D K Brown's "Warrior to Dreadnought" has a lot of content on the development of armour plate through the latter half of the 19th century, and of the tests carried out on it.

Brian

Edited By Brian G on 28/07/2017 11:52:14

It isn't just the obvious modifications. If you own a car with a claimed top speed of 113 mph and only fit S (112 mph) tyres, your vehicle may be considered unroadworthy and your insurance invalid, despite both speeds being more than 40mph over the speed limit.

Brian

Is there any machine not on lathes.co.uk?

**LINK**

Brian

Hi Liam. Have you tried bookfinder.com **LINK**? It tends to list books from more US bookshops than Abe Books, and is to my mind easier to use. The cheapest 5-volume set I could see was in the UK at £39.35 including shipping, but to try the books out, volume one for example comes from the US at £6.79 plus £3.07 shipping.

I have bought quite a few books from the US via Bookfinder or Abe Books, and don't think I have ever paid much more than £3 for shipping. (Vol. 7 of A History of the British Steam Tram was published as two A4 hardbacks totalling 1008 pages yet only cost £2.79 shipping from Chicago, less than I was charged to post one book from a UK retailer).

The odd thing is, bookfinder.com is also branded as justbooks.co.uk and justbooks.de and all are owned by Abe Books, who are in turn owned by Amazon, who therefore have an effective monopoly on second hand book searches.

Brian

Edited By Brian G on 04/07/2017 09:27:18

Hi Ken

I don't think anybody on the Unimat group has attempted that engine, but several members have made and used riser blocks, extended motor mounts etc, so if you hit problems it might be worth asking there. The general attitude seems to be that if it can be made to fit an SL or DB it can be made on one.

**LINK**

Brian

Sorry, but I thought from Ketan's post and the exploded drawing that the (M5?) cap head screw on the left above the fine feed (at 2 o'clock to the spring housing) pressed on the side of the quill in the same way as on my son's Seig mill.

Brian

Is it possible to tighten the quill lock enough to prevent the drill being drawn further into the workpiece, then push against the friction of the lock until the depth readout says stop?

Alternatively, you could try the method I use with my Unimat SL. As it hasn't got a depth scale, I place a spacer on the table (in this case 0.5mm), loosely clamp the drill in the chuck, then set the height of the head such that the drill is pushed further into the chuck at the limit of the quill travel. Tightening the chuck whilst holding the quill against its limit sets the drilling depth exactly. Replace the spacer with the workpiece and drill.

Brian

At least you will get a new Mersey crossing for it. Hopefully this will not go the same way as the Dartford Crossing charges, which have continued (and increased) since the PFI-financed bridge which was paid for in 2003 despite earlier promises that once the improvements were paid for charges would stop.

Brian

Don't forget BS spanners, which should fitr BSF nuts directly without the need to go down a size. Personally I quite like Britool's old spanner numbering system, where the spanner number is the across flat sizes to 0.01" (double ended) or 0.01" (single ended) for BSW/BS and AF, or in mm for metric.

Brian

I understand that over the pond, inches, gallons etc. are officially known as "US Customary Units". They aren't imperial as they rebelled before the British Empire was formed, hence their use of Queen Anne's wine gallon instead of the 1824 Imperial Gallon. Within Europe, and particularly Germany, pre-metric inches can vary significantly from country to country or even city to city. **LINK** Interestingly, the 25.4mm inch is described there as the "Imperial Inch".

Brian

Because the crews are no longer considered expendable, and because the expense is too great when the aim of the Apollo project (beating the Soviet Luna project) is no longer there.

In the 60s and 70s astronauts and cosmonauts were widely publicised as heroic ex test pilots and their deaths served to demonstrate to the public just how difficult and dangerous the mission was, possibly increasing public interest and support. Once the shuttle programme began however, the public face of the missions became that of a bus taking scientists to work (possibly to cover up for the military nature of most of the earlier missions) and each failure became a public relations disaster as "ordinary people" were involved. (Try naming Mercury, Gemini and Apollo crew members, then do the same for the Shuttles).

As far as landing on the moon in 1969 is concerned, I think the answer is found in three questions:

1: Is the basic technology behind space travel possible? (The physics works, unfortunately there were plenty of holes in London to prove Von Braun's rockets worked, and artificial satellites have entered everyday life. It would be difficult or impossible - not to mention pointless and expensive - to fake GPS transmissions, in a way which would be consistent around the world.)

2: Which would have caused the US a greater problem, being publicly found out in a lie by the USSR at the height of the cold war, or losing a second Apollo crew? (Apollo 1 delayed manned missions, but development and testing continued.)

3: Could NASA have successfully predicted the composition of the mineral samples returned by the USSR's later Luna missions in order to fake Apollo 11's samples? (And would they still be faking data to produce the LRO photographs of the Apollo landing sites?).

Brian

Silver has even better anti-microbial properties. Judging from how it turns (I used to prepare electrodes for a quantometer) I think it would take a lovely knurl as well

Brian

Edited By Brian G on 16/05/2017 17:27:01

It might be worth trying HS Walsh **LINK**

Brian

Make sure you leave enough length for the self-eject to work though.

Brian

Because the last thing the jewellery trade want is objective buyers?

Brian

If I still had a Cortina that coathanger machine would be a must. I will agree about paperclips though, a hand-cranked version would be the ultimate desktop toy.

Brian