Member postings for John Allan Watson Brown

Glad someone else has a ML4. Can you join or pop along to your local Model Engineer society? They would have machines to get your pulleys true again. You might even have a fellow member with our type of lathe and chat about the best way to fix this over a cup of tea?

Perhaps a flat plate type gauge would suit? It gets you away from the small bore tube difficulties. A lot more work involved mostly in the clamping bolts / screws to hold the press plates together over the clear lenses. Lots of images if you search "boiler gauge glass flat plate".

Ralph. In my mind the benefits to joining a local club are always going to be positive. Access to people with some or more experience and the odd loan of a tool your budget might not afford, is the main point of model engineering. Even if its a odd piece of advice because " I made one of those 20 odd year ago and ..." will stop you losing a work piece and could finish your project quicker. Like all social activities an individual might fail where a collective can win.

Ady1. Totally agree. My ship now has a 'china' clone bridgeport mill and a nice big lathe. When I got there not only had the mill never been used from new (in five years). It had no tooling as nobody knew how to use it. I rescued the milling vice a big 8" vertex clone from the floor of the welding area. The full universal dividing head was stuck in a cupboard with the gears. I have taken some cutting tools on board and made some things to show the Fitter / Welders how do make stuff. M24 stainless steel castle nuts last trip. 8 lobe plastic drive coupling spiders trip before that. First job I had to made a drawbar, 7/16" UNF for the R8 tooling on the mill at my house and take it to the ship. I started in Leith shipyard and a marine fitter apprenticeship. I despair at what will happen at sea when the old guys retire?

The idea is already out there, sorry. They are AUV and I was on ships that launched them. See this site for an example.

http://www.km.kongsberg.com/ks/web/nokbg0240.nsf/AllWeb/D5682F98CBFBC05AC1257497002976E4?OpenDocument

Try a project in a field, which you have a actual interest in. If you like music then a autonomous band playing actual instruments, if you like politics a vast autonomous fan that blows hot air ever where to no effect. you get the picture. Good luck my Thesis was about ECA, Embodied Conversational Agents.

This is a great question. Remember in work holding the quality of the vice tends to give you a certainty it will not move or distort the piece you are machining. I mistakenly bought a "cheap" machine vice, when I started and even with a bit or work on it, found it not good quality. It has sat on my pillar drill since. If you are like me and machine as a hobby but require precision, our work holding machine has to be the best quality we can afford.

Welcome Joe.

You have started a ball rolling here. Your own interests will be the key I think. If your intentions are for small models and clocks you are not going to require a large diameter swing or longer bed. After this your man cave or workspace will physically limit your Boxford choices. I assume that your CL500 is to be replaced by your new Boxford? I had a smaller space and started with the CL250 and have graduated into a new workshop adding a Myford ML4 which is big enough for clocks and small models. I'm not building a railway here. I added a separate mill machine, as my CL250 had the add-on mill stand. You may have had one on the CL500? I recommend this action. Enjoy the search for your perfect machine anyway and good hunting.

John

I spend the first 11 years of my life watching these engines jump up and down. Started as a 6th Engineer Officer. Olly is right the engine reversed after stopping, using air starting valves. 380cst heavy oil fuel was the usual fuel until we arrived at port, where marine diesel was mixed and took over for manouvering. Getting via the panama and suez canal was tedious control work. We used to carry out our own maintenance, so we seen the fine machining work shown in the picture galley first hand. Side piston top end bearings were the worse to open for inspection. In ports around the world, we started at 8AM and removed both pistons from the cylinder, cleaned and check the wear down readings inside the 760mm or 670mm bore and returned it to running condition before 4PM. Ready for shore leave. Now I start these "little" medium speed diesels using a mouse, watching a monitor. We shared the same space with these engines as the controls were beside the engines. We still get to go inside the engineroom to look at the engines but its not the same as staring at the 6 top pistons of a Doxford beating up and down a full speed. Thanks for this link Bazyle. I better get back to work we are close to Aberdeen.

Hello ML4 club members. My machine is D2017, which I recently bought from a club member. I have only just finished setting up my workshop and your post has prompted me to reply. I carried out the rollie's dad method of lathe alignment and after some adjustments I am happy with the accuracy. I checked against any potential twist using a fancy new electronic level device when I fitted the lathe to its bench top. I am lucky to have the adjustable type tailstock. Which I found, after checking had been offset to parallel?

My method to overcome the register diameter issue was a internal bush fitted inside a new purchase ML7 backplate. This allowed me to use the three jaw chuck that fitted the register and a four jaw chuck was fitted to the new backplate with its internal register now at 1.125". I will most likely do the same for any other backplates I get in the future.

Somebody once said there is life in the old dog yet. For our venerable lathes this seems to be the case.

I purchased wheel and pinion cutting in horology, J M Wild FBHI. ISBN 978-1-86126-245-5. That shows a wheel cutting engine from 1670. I recommend the book for the insight into cutting your own wheels and pinion. I am building Mr Parslow's 15 day skeleton clock at the moment. As an absolute beginner, engines or a exact method to cut the teeth are the major issue. With brass the price it is getting it wrong on £5 worth of blank brass gets me all wound up.