Member postings for lfoggy

Saw a man wearing a full face-motorcycle helmet in the supermarket today. Has the added benefit of protecting against tins of beans falling off the shelf onto your head. Won't protect against airborn droplet spread though.

Sadly the garden cloche idea won't help much either. To make it work you would need to draw air in through a filter and maintain a positive pressure in the cloche. That is how the best medical protective kit works.

I purchased a peice of cast iron around that size on ebay last year. It was an offcut from a workshop. Not that expensive either.

Some very good suggestions.

I am about to install a 2.4m wide workbench and have purchased a new 40mm thick solid beech kitchen worktop as the top surface. £165 for a 3m length. Solid oak is not that much more.

I can think of much worse ways to spend £15,000. I am sure the model will give the new owner plenty of pleasure and satisfaction.

John Wildings tower clock is on my 'to do' list as well. Can't answer your questions but good luck with the build.

Fusees with completed grooves. These were 'screw cut' in the usual way (2mm ptich) with the cross slide screw disengaged and manual pressure applied to the cross slide to keep the tool following the curve of the fusee. Finish in the gorooves is not bad but not perfect either. I will be using steel cable which tends to mark the grooves anyway so will leave as is. Now I just need to trim to length, tidy up and drill holes for the cables.

There is definitely a clutch on feed shaft which can be used when turning to a dead stop. Works well.

There are many ways to cut a clock fusee ranging from complete freehand turning with graver to machining a mathematically perfect curve on a CNC lathe. The commonest method recommended in books on the subject is a copy lathe arrangement where the cross slide follows a template. I've just cut a fusee using the Turnado free-hand turning system and I have not seen this described before. The Turnado system consists of a flat surface bolted to the cross slide on which a tool post is free to move under manual control. An option with the system is a copy attachment and I set this up with a template of the fusee curve as below

This is the fusee during cutting

and this is the final fusee before cutting the grooves

This was my first attempt at using the Turnado copy attachment and I was very impressed. The tool post followed the template very accurately and the whole set up is much more rigid than you might imagine. I was very pleased with the result. My preferred method for fusees from now on I think. Thought other constructors might be interested. Could be useful method for other curves on a manual machine.

P.S.. cant work out how to rotate the pictures.

Edited By JasonB on 01/03/2020 17:12:43

I've had two Brompton frames fail in normal use. Both at brazed joints. To be fair to them they did replace them without any question. Given up on Bromptons now, but not becuase fo frame failure - I just no longer need the folding feature. Odd bikes to ride. Very wobbly, fast steering and hard work, particluarly up hills. And their small wheels don't like potholes !

Looks impressive but difficult to make, particularly in small sizes. I also wonder if the rollers would actually turn easily on the pins ?

Medicine and science in the UK have been fully metric for decades (certainly long before I qualified in the late 1980s). Even in the USA, the last bastion of of Imperial weights and measures, medicine and science largely abandoned pounds and ounces years ago. If you do want quick conversion though, there are many simple charts and apps to assist.

Curiously, we still measure blood pressure in the archaic units of mm mercury (mmHg).

Thanks Phil P,

That looks very similer to the Myford rack operated tailstock attachement currently available on the Myford website...and I agree, not cheap for what it is.

I am considering fitting a rack operated tailstock attachment to my Myford 254+ to help with drilling and reaming etc. For these applications the ability to rapidly move the tailstock barrel would be handy for clearing chips and the extra sensitivity of the rack mechanism should add feel to drilling as well. I am wondering how good the rack operated tailstock is for other applications however, like pressing a revolving centre into a work piece.

How convenient do users of this type of tailstock find them? Is it a worthwhile mod?

I use a lot of anaerobic adhesives in my clock making for permanent assembly of components, often where soldeing, interference fits or brazing might have been used before. Not sure what you would ever want to use a thread retaining grade for though. I have never had an issue with screws coming loose in a clock in normal operation....

I have just aquired a rather nice Starrett #650 'back plunger' type indicator. I've never used one of these before as I have always used the more conventional dial indicators and lever type dial test indicators. The back plunger type seem more common in America maybe.

Any tips or comments on their use? Any advantages over the more usual types for general workshop indicating?

I had a similar issue a while back. i wanted a piece of 10mm silver steel, ideally in the 9.99 - 10.00mm range. I had all sorts of pieces of 10mm silver steel and most varied from 9.97 to 9.99mm. Also some were not exactly round ! I have found 'precision ground mild steel' to be more consistent and nearer to nominal size. In the end I extracted a beautiful piece of precision gound steel measuring 10.00mm from an old piece of laboratory equipment.....

Edited By lfoggy on 20/01/2020 21:04:23

Welcome Dave,

There are a few clockmakers on this forum but I think we are outnumbered by the steam & IC engine makers. I've built good few clocks over the years and would recommend any of John Wilding's books as a very good starting point. There is a Wilding book on a skeleton clock. Never made one myself but have seen many at ME shows. Also look at the British Horological Institute which has a very good journal and website including a forum.

What are you building at the moment? I am working on an English bracket clock with a double fusee....

Regards

How are you going to make the balance spring?

That looks like the electric balance wheel clock described by John Wilding. I built one a few years ago. It was an interesting build with quite a few challenges. The Hipp Toggle and the electrical contacts were tricky to get right I seem to remember. Enjoy your project. Any questions feel free to pm me...

Edited By lfoggy on 16/01/2020 18:22:43

I have had your experience so many times with cast iron castings that I now only use indexable insert endmills. I have several from Greenwood tools that make short work of chilled cast iron and stay sharp for ages as well.