Member postings for OldMetaller

By sheer coincidence I've just been reading ME 3536, 7th May 1976. On p450 there is a short article on making these dials, with what looks like a good, clear drawing.

I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post a scan of this article here, maybe a Mod could tell me?

John.

Brian, Technobots do nice chain and sprockets, the online shop is pretty good too.

John.

**LINK**

Hi John, I don't know if this is any help as it's copper, not aluminium, but a splendid chap from the Coventry MES told me how to do this when I admired a model of his at the Large Scale Model Rail show at Leamington last year.

I put an offcut of copper water pipe into the lathe and knurled it, and whilst it was still spinning I took the sharp edges off with emery. I then opened out the pipe along the long axis, and a very crisp, smart piece of chequer plate emerged. The pipes in the picture are 15mm and 22mm.

I hope this is of some help.

John.

A very interesting link, thank you Michael. I'm moving house soon, and hope to eventually have some bees of my own...along with a couple of Alpacas, but that's another story!

John.

Wow! Thank you Nick! That's great, I can hopefully get some more now. I'll have a good trawl of that website, looks very interesting!

I've just finished machining the wheels, as predicted, they turned beautifully and I'm really pleased with the result.

John.

Greetings everyone! I've just started machining these wheel castings, I've got four of them and (I think) they will end up under some sort of 16mm scale locomotive, maybe a light railcar for inspection purposes or something.

My question is: Can anybody identify the maker? They are 1.450" diameter, have 'T15' cast into them, and are, I imagine, what LBSC would have called 'good, grey cast-iron', as they machine beautifully.

I can't for the life of me remember where I got them from, possibly a steam fair or similar: I'm in the habit of buying any little thing like this that grabs my attention.

The picture shows one of the wheels before I started machining; you can see how clean the casting is, with no tidying needed.

Thank you!

John.

If it was pink it could have been Dentyne or Big Red.

John.

Hi Bill, what a coincidence! Mrs Metaller is Sue Wood, the area organiser! Hope to see you at a Kelsall workshop, when all this madness is over!

John.

Hi Mark, welcome to the forum. If you need any photos of detail I can help, I drive them for a living, although not very much at the moment.

John.

And so perfect for me, as I can't do even simple arithmetic!

John.

Hi Bill, we're members of the North Wales and North West branch of SoB, Mrs M bought a litho stone, some paper and yet more bl**dy flat irons, you can't move in her workshop for them already!

I'm not actually a bookbinder, I joined because I like to learn new stuff, and they are a great bunch! I did learn to do leather inlay at one of the SoB workshops, though!

John.

I got ordered to drive Mrs Metaller, who is a bookbinder, to an auction of bookbinding tools in Leicester a few weeks ago. This one item caught my eye, and I was able to successfully bid on the lot that it was in. The other stuff wasn't very exciting, but this tool is a little gem.

It is minutely marked 'Made in West Germany', so presumably that dates it from a few decades ago. It opens and closes with a lovely, smooth action and the points are extremely sharp. I imagine it was used to mark out for when a book gets stitched together, but Mrs M was unable to enlighten me on it's precise use.

It's quite nice that, when a bookbinder retires or otherwise stops binding, the Society of Bookbinders arrange for his or her tools to be offered to other, still active, bookbinders, which removes the dread possibility of an avaricious dealer offering a widow or widower a ridiculously small sum for what are, very often, lovely tools that have been cherished.

I don't know if I'll ever use it, but it's taking up next to no space hanging on hooks along with the protractors and spring-leg callipers.

John.

Vesta Curry...

God, I loved that...with a cup of Camp coffee and for dessert, a bag of wine gums!

How the hell I'm still here, fifty years on, is a mystery to medical science!

John.

That is ingenious.

John.

The frequency of their website updates has increased dramatically- great entertainment value in these lockdown times.

At the moment they have a lovely narrow gauge version of 'Juliet', very characterful!

John.

I like the primitive 'deadman', where if you take your foot off the pedal, the belt slips.

John,

Posted by Neil Wyatt on 15/07/2019 01:42:38:

The effect of acidic sweat on instruments can be dramatic!

He could certainly sweat that man- I remember seeing him in the mid '70's from what later became known as the mosh pit- every time he moved his head we got showered in it!

John.

Wasn't that the car that had the petrol tank right behind the front bumper?!

John.