Member postings for Brian G

I'll see your 1932 and raise you a 1774 plan of Chatham Dockyard shewing amongst the various houses, lofts and cabbins (yes, two 'Bs before anybody asks if that is the question) the Glazier's, Brazier's and Plumber's Shops, the House Carpenter's Shop, the Wheelwright's Shop, The Smith's Shop, the Armourer's Shop, the Stone Mason's Shop and the Painter's Shop.

Brian G

I just wanted to say thanks to everybody for their advice on this. We ended up getting a bar of Tufnol Whale which my son machined to make the replacement parts. Here is a photo showing the original and replacement switches, with one in place in the Planet gearbox. I wonder if they will darken over time to the colour of the original?

Brian G

Tufnol Kite is available in black.

Brian G

Nice. Apart from its several meanings (which include precise, giving us an engineering connection) it is also Garibaldi's birthplace, so connecting it to two different biscuits.

Brian G

(Currently wishing the Nice biscuit in front of him was the much nicer Garibaldi)

Or possibly an epicyclic speed increaser like the one offered by Hemingway Kits, that would give you up to 6,000 RPM without running the mill beyond 2,000?

Brian G

Hobby's have the plan in two scales 1/8 and 1/12

Brian G

Edit:  I found the plan using this website, which you might find interesting Scale Model Horse Drawn Vehicles 

Edited By Brian G on 22/04/2022 17:43:39

I have a Proxxon TBM220 which has three speeds - 1,800, 4,700 and 8,500 RPM, although to be honest I have never needed to use its top speed. Using the included collets (which don't go below 1mm) isn't very convenient, but the nose is threaded 3/8" to take a 0.5-6 mm screw-on chuck, and Proxxon sell a decent Rohm chuck for it.

(I also have a 10mm Rohm chuck which would theoretically let me drill 10mm holes in aluminium on the slowest speed, but it seems a bit unkind on a tiny machine with an 85W motor to try this.)

As a comparison, it seems to be at least as rigid as my Unimat SL in drill mode (both are more than rigid enough for small drills), and can go faster than the Unimat's 6,000 RPM.

Brian G

Perhaps the most egregious instance in engineering terms (by a factor of 40) is "mil", which puts the potential errors in "gallon" and "ton" to shame.

Brian G

This firm stocks 6" lengths but says larger quantities may be available, perhaps worth contacting them?

stainlessautomotivefastenings

Oddly enough I found them when looking for 1/4 20 UNC which I thought might be an alternative.

Brian G

I'm quite fond of a quick wipe over with 3 in One or WD40 for anything that will be out of use for a while. Woodworker Paul Sellars uses a small tin stuffed with old flannels as an oil wiper (there is a video but I'm not sure of the current rules on linking to professional YouTube videos). It strikes me that a Duraglit tin would be ideal for this, it would certainly be better at holding 3-in-One than their plastic bottles with ridiculously brittle spouts.

Brian G

I'll be honest, I'll happily switch between units depending on specifications, drawings or materials and to me 10' is about 2" over 3m. I have no problem with railways being measured in chains, within the railway industry it is an established and internally consistent unit and any attempt to change it would almost certainly be expensive and prone to (potentially catastrophic) errors during the transition period. On the other hand, I had no hope of guessing how long 2,300' is whilst 700m or 35 cricket pitches (chains) is easy to picture.

I fail to see why anybody would consider the imperial/customary system simpler or more natural. To switch from mm to m to km is just a matter of moving the decimal 3 places between units, whilst to go from inches to feet, to yards chains, furlongs and miles requires a number of sometimes complex divisions.

Consider the difference in gauge between the Iberian railways 5' 5 21/32" and the rest of Europe's 4' 8 1/2" standard gauge. To convert in imperial/US customary units it is necessary to either carry out calculations in three different units and somehow merge them together or convert everything to the lowest common denominator. In the metric system it is just a matter of 1.668 - 1.435. An engineer designing variable gauge wheelsets would find it far easier in metric than adding the further complication of converting the final 5/32" to thou.

Brian G

What error are you getting?

The only error message I could get up was "Add to basket failed" which appears if I try to add something to my basket without logging in first. Other than that, which if probably "a feature not a bug" as the saying goes, everything else (apart from checkout which I couldn't afford to try with my wife watching) is working for me on Chrome, Firefox and even Edge. I couldn't test IE as like my AMD graphics drivers it didn't survive my W11 "upgrade".

Brian G

I used to use a spring centre, either in the tailstock, mill or pillar drill, but this didn't work for small taps where the diameter of the rod was larger than that of the tap. One of these from Warco proved to be the solution.

Spindle Tap Wrench

I assume the link will be OK with mods as I can see their ad on the right.

Brian G

Hi Andrew

I'm not sure sending me any photos would help as I know almost nothing about large scale or GWR locos. I did however find something that may be useful. Take a look at this website The Steam Workshop which shows a example of a Greenly Hall. The first photo in the fourth row seems to me to show a rocker in the same place as yours. I have snipped this from the image.

Brian G (Edited to remove rogue smiley - this forum seems to breed them)

Edited By Brian G on 26/03/2022 19:14:31

Maxitrak can supply drawings from the Greenly archive, perhaps you could buy the GA sheet for his 5" Hall and see if yours matches?

Brian G

A Vernier? (It seems popular with calipers)

Incidentally, Gauge vs. Gage provides written proof that English and American are different languages as Starrett UK and US use different spellings in their catalogue / catalog.

Brian G

Can the user easily descale a combi boiler in a hard water area? With a separate hot water and header tank it is a simple job to remove and replace or descale the hot water tank and doesn't require a gas fitter.

Brian G

The term goes back a long way, Joseph Priestley invented a new lute that wouldn't contaminate his experiments on gases, and on one occasion noted that so much gas was produced that it broke his lute.

Brian G

My suspicion is that this thread may be self referential.

Brian G

When we moved to the country none of the wired providers could connect us as the phone lines weren't good enough, so we used 3 home broadband until we could get fibre installed thanks to the rural broadband subsidy. My son is also using 3 despite his road being cabled for Virgin because it is so much cheaper and it is faster than any of the non-Virgin services he could get. The only downside seems to be the latency, which sometimes leads to lag in online games.

It is worth testing the connection with a PAYG sim first though just in case the speed isn't enough and to get 3's existing customer reduced rates, as of today £14 pcm including a 4G router (I think we were paying £18 last year).

Brian G