Member postings for vintagengineer

The standard Greenwich Mean time is fiddled every year to make up for errors in our orbit. We are supposed to have a double leap year every 300 years but the powers to be have decided to adjust this every new year.

When I served my apprenticeship, the sparky's dept had a button on their counter with sign saying "do not press". Many an idiot pressed it unbeknown to them the button consisted of two contacts and when you pressed it you got a healthy wallop of electricity! Albeit with no amps.

Peanuts are not actually nuts they are legumes.

I have used a resharpened masonary drill bit to drill very hard steel.

Industrial bandsaws have butt welders on the side for making up blades. We used to make our own blades and weld them through a hole in the job to cut the centre out.

When welding aluminium it is best to use some of the parent material as a filler rod.

All my grinders are connected to a vaccum cleaner via 45mm sink waste pipe. It removes 90% of the dust, due to there being a partial vaccum in the wheel gaurd.

Caustic soda is highly aggressive to aluminium and very difficult to neutralise. Srcubbing with phosphoric acid works but you need to neutralise it with a baking sod solution afterwards.

When I did my apprenticeship we were only allowed to use 4 jaw chucks. 3 jaw chucks were for production work. I can set up a 4 jaw chuck faster than you can set up a 3 jaw chuck with soft jaws. We never used hard jaws except for in the maintenance shop where you just need to do rough work.

I have a 6" engineers square stamped RAF 1916 and it came from the Royal Aircraft Factory in Farnborugh.

Boring mills are much larger in diameter than the height. They are basically lathes standing on end. Very larger ones ar sunk into the floor so the face plate is level with the floor.

Anyone want a bigger lathe? **LINK**

To remove zinc, soak overnight in a saturated solution of malt vinegar and table salt. This will dissolve the zinc and works well on nuts and bolts!

That applies to all modern cars!

I still always test the cleanliness of tanks with a naked flame!

It needs to be nickel plated afterwards and I not sure if you plate over tin lead ?

I am making a handbrake lever for a vintage Bugatti. I need to increase the thickness on the handle end to a particular shape. Can I silver solder both sides of the join and then clamp together and heat to make the joint?

I would normally used Silver solder tape but have run out and cannot find a supplier.

Thanks in advance.

I have welded hundreds of fuel tanks. There is no danger what so ever if you follow the correct procedures. You need to use a good degreaser to clean the inside and then flush with water.

Edited By vintagengineer on 24/02/2018 17:32:11

I work a lot on vintage cars and what appears to aluminium castings are in fact ali zinc alloy. The foundries used to melt the ali then bulk it out with cheaper zinc. It is a real bugger to weld!

Even on huge lathes you need to balance the faceplate. The better it is balanced the lest chance there is of turning ovals. We used to cast lumps of lead in baked bean tins and used these as balance weights.