Member postings for OldMetaller

You are right Clive and Rik, they definitely fall over like p*$$ed-up people!

Regards,

John.

An interesting thread, AJC. I'm looking forward to when you get to the cross slide, as I've been putting off fixing the play in mine for too long!

Regards,

John.

Wow! Thank you all very much gentlemen, I knew you'd come up trumps!

The next step is to go and see it working on Wednesday, then I've just got to get Madam to clear some of her antique stuff out of the garage, to make room for the lathe!

Thanks again, all!

Regards,

John.

Edited for this: The sheer amount of knowledge present on this forum still absolutely amazes me! 

Edited By OldMetaller on 18/05/2015 06:55:13

Hi, I've just seen a lovely Smart and Brown lathe for sale that I really fancy. I've looked on the excellent 'Lathes' website where there is a huge amount of information, but I wondered if somebody more knowledgeable than myself could comment on how suitable it would be for me, given the type of work I do?

I make small steam locomotives, normally 16mm but I've got a 'Tich' on the go too. I'm using a ML7 at the moment, but don't feel any need for screw-cutting or power feed on the small items I'm turning.

The S & M is a model 'L', plain-turning lathe. I assume this refers to the lack of feed screw and thus the lack of screw-cutting facilities. I've had a little play with it unplugged, what I love about it is as follows:

• Cross slide and top slide incredibly solid and smooth.
• Viewing window on the tailstock so you can see the indexed scale
• Built-in coolant, machine light and a big, solid stand.
• Lots of collets and a drawbar with a handwheel.
• A spindle lock operated by sprung push button.
• No play obvious anywhere.
• They only want £325 for it...with tooling!

As I mostly make stuff like loco wheels, axles, bushes, chimneys, domes etcetera, the collets in conjunction with the drawbar and spindle lock really appeal to me. The one time I hurt my back in the workshop is doing up the ER 32 collets I use now on the ML7, with the lack of a spindle lock and heavy hauling on the 'c' spanner.

I would really appreciate informed comments and suggestions, I don't even mind being told I'm an idiot, as I've only been machining for a short time and know that I have much to learn!

Regards,

John.

On the subject of colloquialisms, one I remember from my childhood was 'Cheese and ricecakes!', often spoken with passion after bashing one's shin!

Regards,

John.

David, I use watch glasses for glazing the cab windows on my 16mm scale locos, have a look at this website:

http://www.agthomas.co.uk/watch_glasses.htm

I use these people and they are good to deal with.

Regards,

John.

Thanks Hopper, I've learnt something else!  So I was right to have a dirty mind! 

Also I think 61962 has hit it with the trade union use of 'Brother'. I've worked on the railway all my life, and locomen would often address each other as 'Brother', although it was mostly done in an arch, slightly tongue-in-cheek way. LBSC would have encountered this in his young days as a railwayman.

Regards,

John.

Edited for an appropriate emoticon. 

Edited By OldMetaller on 16/05/2015 06:55:57

Hi Geoff,

I'm sometimes intrigued by LBSC's use of colloquialisms from earlier times. One that really had me going was, 'I don't give a Continental', used like we might say, 'I don't give a monkey's'. I was looking for something in locomen's cockney rhyming slang, probably rude, but then I thought to google it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_American_currency

It turns out a Continental was a paper American dollar issued around the time of the American Revolution, which quickly became thought of as worthless.

So much for my dirty mind!

Regards,

John.

Hi Michael, some great ideas there, thank you!

I've just seen a model reversing propeller that is going up for auction on the Unofficial Mamod website and I was very taken with the principle, I hadn't thought of translating it to full-size!

Regards,

John.

Hi MichaelG, I used to have a hybrid car, so it would make sense to have a hybrid boat as well!

JasonB, I'm going by the 'WS' and the 'broad arrow' symbol stamped onto the valve chest cover.

My ML7 won't cope with a 10 - 12" flywheel, but I'm looking forward to making the bearing brasses and also a pair of cylinder drain cocks, at the moment there are just plugs in the holes where the cocks should be.

Regards,

John.

Hi everyone, thank you for all those helpful comments, it's nice that it's not just me that's excited about it!

It's very interesting about the way the nuts have been put on (thanks, MichaelG), that hadn't even occurred to me! I will photograph the dismantling process carefully, to make sure I get everything right when I put it back together!

Neil, thanks for the suggestion about retiming the engine, that's a damn good idea!

The chap I bought it off said that the bearings would need replacing if I'm going to do more with it than just watch it tick over- they appear to be split brasses, something I've heard about but never encountered. It looks like my lathe is going to get a grown-up job to do, soon!

Thanks again for all the positive comments, I'll keep you all posted but it may not be for a while, as I'm doing college work until the end of June and that doesn't leave me much workshop time, sadly.

Best wishes,

John.

Hi everyone, I've just got home with my first full-size steam engine, admittedly only a very tiny one. There are more pictures of the engine in my photo album of the same title.

It's about 24 inches high and weighs about 140 lbs...it took me and my burly mate Lawrence to lift it onto my kitchen table, I'll not be trying to move it myself.

Apparently, it's out of a Royal Navy ship and was used to drive a generator or pump. It was found a few years ago in a Portsmouth ship-breaker's yard. It has a bore and stroke of about 3 & 1/2" x 3 & 1/2" I am told, and has a pressure test date of 27/7/05 stamped on it, making it nearly 110 years old!

I don't have a definite idea what I am going to do with this little beauty, but a couple of possibilities so far are driving a line shaft in my outside workshop, or possibly, with a reversing gearbox, driving a steam launch.

I've never had anything to do with a steam engine this big (!) before, so I'd like to hear opinions from more knowledgeable members of this forum. The main thing I'd like to know is, how big a boiler would I need to run this little beast? I'd like to go for a proper coal-fired boiler, because...well, just because! ...I love the smell!

Please feel free to comment, even if only to tell me I'm barking mad!

Best wishes,

John.

Thanks Ken, that's a brilliant idea!

Regards,

John.

I now have The Hokey Cokey as an earworm...

D'oh!

Regards,

John.

That's very helpful David, thank you. I'm seriously contemplating ordering a WM-16 at the Midlands Engineering show, it's reassuring to hear from somebody who is pleased with their mill.

John.

I'm still a beginner (4 & 1/2 years) but I knew I was getting somewhere when, at the Midlands ME show, I was talking to the guy behind a tool stall and saw he was trying to force an ER collet into the nut without giving it the little twist it needs. I took it from him, popped it in, and handed it back. Neither of us said anything, but I was conscious of a feeling of personal progress!

Regards,

John.

Rik- mechanical inbreeding..?! *sound of banjo being played on the porch*

I looked at the Ikea lamp base, but decided it was as Mike says, resin-based, and would probably crumble like a ginger nut at the approach of a round-nosed tool.

My job takes me all over the rail network and, when it's safe to do so, I keep an eye out for what I call 'railway swag'. It's amazing what you find that's just been thrown down trackside twenty years ago, until I come along, that is..!

The North Lincolnshire resignalling project is getting off the ground...for me, that means lots of 4 or 5 inch ci rollers, unmachined, that are used for reducing the rolling resistance of point rodding...it would be rude not to rescue a few for the 'might come in handy' box!

Regards,

John.

I bought a couple from Tesco, one I made into a lamp base. It turned very nicely with no hard spots and I press-fitted an aluminium bush into the hole to hold the lamp.

Regards,

John.

Wow! No more turning boiler bushes!

Regards,

John.

Hi everyone, here is a link to the 16mm Association website. The association is a flourishing organisation involving some friendly people, meet-ups are regularly organised at members' garden railways, you can run your own stuff if you want.

http://www.16mm.org.uk/newsite/default.html

Regards,

John.