Member postings for Nigel Graham 2

Sorry - I forgot the anti-silly-face break has to be at least two spaces long. I had not intended that wink at all.

Can the site's managers please get rid of these childish symbols completely?

Obviously not wanting to abrade it, I'd start first with one of those plastic kitchen scouring-pads, the sort usually found backing a small sponge block. Use it wet with a spot of WD-40, paraffin or thin oil.

If that's not quite enough, try fine steel wool - raid the under-sink cupboard again, for a Brillo pad. Again, use it wet; but as these are impregnated with soap, use warm water.

Sounds odd, using soapy water on something you want to be rust-free, but not if you wipe the straight-edge clean and completely dry immediately afterwards then apply a smear of lubricating-oil or petroleum jelly (' Vaseline '.

Provided the working edge has not become badly pitted by corrosion, light rust-patches on its sides spoil its appearance more than function. You may have to compromise between some remnant etching and risking harming the working surfaces.

Used to use acetone regularly at work, because it will dissolve uncured synthetic resins (' Araldite ' and the like). It won't touch the cured resin.

Apart from tool-cleaning, and degreasing the work-pieces, it was necessary when we glued together stacks of individual parts, in jigs with large compression-screws.

Acetone was the only solvent to my knowledge at least, and the only one we used anyway, that would clean off the adhesive oozing from the compressed joints, whilst not harming anything; and with due care, it is relatively safe to handle in the modest amounts we used. (Lots of ventilation, suitable gloves and of course no ignition sources nearby.)

Unless I missed it somewhere, I'd add a point I learnt only recently, on HSS parting-tools. The cutting edge needs to be square with the tool flank, and that of course at 90º to the lathe axis.

Reason for the square-ness is so the swarf is no wider than the cut, as it would be if the tool is angled.

I must admit I was surprised I'd not known this ages ago after struggling to part off with the tool ground at a small angle as I'd long supposed, to minimise the burr or pip!

Insert-tool holders are precision-made, and I find it far easier and more certain to square the tool to the lathe by very gently pushing the holder's flank against the chuck face. Certainly easier when setting-up for threading, than trying to manipulate a V-notch gauge between a small insert and a small-diameter work-piece on a fairly compact lathe!

An excellent set of tooling there.

Referring to Paul Lousick's " I also spend .... time making jigs to hold the job. "

Whenever I make a jig, even of something a bit rough-and-ready for a simple, non-critical task on the bench-drill, I try to think " Can I also use this for XXX type of operation... " simply by , say, adding some extra mounting-holes, or making it bigger than for the immediate project so it can be modified readily. And doing so without undue extra time.

As an example, I needed an inner circle, so to speak, for the rotary table so I could round off the carriers on a Hemingway Kits boring-bar set. (My RT's T-slots end quite a way out from the middle.) While at it, I drilled and tapped quite a few more than immediately necessary of the clamping-screw holes, to cope with a range of similar tasks in future.

+++

On Ron's remarks about protecting DRO scales, the Allendale Machine-DRO set I am fitting to my Myford VMC comes with lengths of purpose-made extrusion. Fitting the Y-scale cause me much cogitating (it's all right, it's allowed) and a lot of making of brackets and semi-rigid PVC-sheet cover . The Z-scale is even worse because the machine's column is a cast frustum of a pyramid, but I have worked out a mounting arrangement on large-section aluminium angle that also protects the encoder by a sort of " wrap-around " assembly. It puts the strip facing the wall behind the machine.

The set I purchased does have a pitch-circle calculator, but all is not lost without it because tables of (x, y) constants originally developed for setting jig-borers are available, and it would not difficult to create a simple spread-sheet in, e.g., MS Excel to rattle off the actual dimensions from them, the hole-count and p-c radius. easily.

You do need to ensure good electrical contact throughout both anodising and plating, and anodising is trying to insulate the aluminium! Industrially, the work-holding jigs are commonly springy, which has production-handling advantages too, but keeps the contact with the work-piece.

Agitation: either user a simple stirrer, or, again borrowed from trade practice, bubble air through the fluid. I believe some people use an aquarium aerator for this.

Mark Smith advises on pH. It may be worth buying a pH meter and the better ones of those sold for testing home swimming-pool water might be accurate enough. They are colorimeters that examine a solution of a reagent in the water under test.

B++++y wink symbols! Does this site really need these gimmicky emoticons or whatever they're called these days?

I was sure I'd placed a space between the word " pre-loved " and the " mark!

Your second post's just blank Nick. You did nowt on Tuesday beyond inspecting the freezer, or such a heavy machining task everything had vanished in a dense fog of suds vapour?

'

Me: steady but slow progress on making my steam-wagon's compound engine's crankshaft.

It started as a bit of scrap axle from a rebuilt narrow-gauge quarry-wagon, so of well-weathered Ferromysterium; definitely not of "Incisic Liberare " grade when milling the rusty round into shiny L-section. It ate most of my small slot-drills and end mills, and ensured that the sharpest of my few slitting-saws were soon not.

I don't think the milling-machine was too impressed, either, but cutting conditions should become easier.

I have no drawings for this thing, so the whole project has been dogged by design-and-cut, redesign-and-recut.... I bought TurboCAD knowing I still have to design the machine, but CAD would facilitate drawing it; and TurboCAD usefully allows direct orthographic without needing that prior 3D rigmarole I find impossible anyway! However, though the crankshaft's CAD drawing gives all the dimensions, I had not established its "way-up".

So first task this morning, searching my library to see which leads, by 90º: HP or LP crank.

The books revealed no definite answer; so I worked it out by covering the blank back of a caving-club document (paperwork has its uses), with hieroglyphs alleging piston-travel, steam flow and crank-pin positions for forward running.

The answer? LP leads. I hope. I am not sure if it actually matters, but I was thinking of one side pushing while the other pulls, as it were.

I don't need re-draw, just hand-annotate the print. Then mark-out and cut the blank being very aware that the shaft is not symmetrical, and which side of each cut is the waste. I may finish the blank to size, then prior to marking-out, de-grease and paint the ends green or red - starboard or port - designating HP (offside & flywheel) or LP (nearside & transmission).

Incidentally, I have found spray-can primer and pencil good for basic marking-out on hot-rolled (and for me, often very rustily " pre-loved " steel.

"My" first was one I rescued from a local scrap-yard for our club workshop, to replace a hefty great shaping-machine.

It really was a museum-piece. Made by the French company HURE, probably in 1880s or so, it was an early universal-mill with an L-shaped turret. One arm carried the horizontal spindle of unknown taper (I made a fitting for it, to carry a 3-jaw lathe chuck). The other arm carried the vertical spindle with a curious precursor to the Autolock principle. The collet- or tool- holder had a large nut resembling a union nut, but with one thread where you'd expect, and a second, finer one in the smaller diameter. We never discovered how it was meant to be used - probably with long-lost tooling.

To change spindles entailed slipping 2 or 3 flat belts off, removing a dog from the turret rim, rotating that and replacing the dog in a second V-notch, then fitting a second set of belts. With its confection of plain cast-iron pulleys on steel spindles, the whole thing was almost too much for the 3ph, 3HP motor donated from the displaced shaper. (The rented workshop had a 3ph mains supply.)

Subsequently I replaced it with a (Denbigh?) horizontal mill surplus at my work-place. The Hure found a happy new home at Weston Zoyland Pumping-station museum for a while, then a change of direction sent it to a new owner. I learnt that by a fluke - the new owner happened to a friend of one of my caving-club fellow members! Then this year, visiting the Museum, I told one of the volunteers of that machine. He knew of it, and said it's moved on again. It gives one a rather warm feeling knowing that my rescuee for all of £30 (in the 1980s) is still in good hands.

I believe HURE still trades, making very large, very sophisticated NC machining-centres.

'

So whilst nominally those were my mills, my own first were a WARCO mill-drill with round column, and a Denbigh H4 horizontal. Both were second-hand but the Denbigh, from a bereavement sale, was in the most intriguingly ramshackle workshop I have ever seen, in an old sheet-steel garage next to a house.

It had been built for line-shaft drive so its owner had blessed with an angle-iron tower above the machine, carrying an old 1ph motor with belt drive to a Ford 3-speed car gearbox thence by chain to a motorcycle sprocket screwed to the standard cone-pulley on the mill's spindle.

The Warco has found a new home, replaced by a Myford VMC now sporting an Allendale DRO set and awaiting the 3ph conversion still up in my bedroom.

The Denbigh is in a queue of tasks and projects but I intend to put it back into service, as a small but potentially useful machine. The original arbour was badly worn but I found a replacement at an exhibition. The spindle taper is a convenient 3MT.

'

I did have a Centec 2A and fitted it with a Tony Griffiths raising-block, but when I moved home a few years later, something had to go and it was that, as more saleable than the Denbigh.

I do though also have a BCA jig-borer that came with a 3ph inverter of unknown history and condition for its original motor, so I crossed Messrs Newton's and Tesla's palms with silver yet again, for the full 3ph set.

My first lathe was an EW Stringer 2.1/2" centre-height, BGSC machine that was an 18th birthday present from my parents. Dad had bought it from someone at work. A few years ago I discovered from Tony Griffiths' site that it had come complete with all extras except one - the change-wheel guard.

I still have it, but its very simple plain-bearing, 2-part headstock and the spindle are worn and won't be easy to repair, though I'd like to do so.

'

My model engineering society rented for a long time a large shed we equipped with various machine-tools including a Drummond hand-shaper and an IXL-badged Ehrlich lathe, 6" centre-height X I think 3ft. It certainly had no trouble holding a 24" long shaft between centres. I don't know its origin but it was in good condition for its line-shaft-drive era (1930s?), fully-appointed, with power feeds, T-slotted saddle, full set of change-wheels, chucks, etc.

When business rates hit the landlord hard (he rented the land occupied by the shed, from a quarry company that also bumped up the rent for a small pony paddock nearby) the resulting rent increase, plus rising electricity costs, meant it was no longer viable. We sold off the equipment to members for Society funds, and ended up with the shaper and IXL lathe which duly lived under a sort of lean-to in the yard of my first home.

House moves later and the lathe had become a problem so I donated it to Lynton & Barnstaple Railway via a friend who said they were looking for machine-tools to equip their repair and restoration workshops.

'

My present set are:-

- that dear little EW (sentimental value!),

- a Myford ML7 I'd bought in very bare condition several years ago and since then have treated to a proper stand, change-wheel set, and the rest. Plus Newton-Tesla 3ph conversion that has proved its worth, first by totally eliminating a very loud resonance in the cabinet from the original 1ph motor. Recently I bought a second-hand gear-box for it, but that will wait in a queue of other tasks. I think fitting it entails the rather daunting task of shortening the lead-screw, and indeed the seller suggested I try to obtain a spare lead-screw and alter that.

Or make a new lead-screw to suit? On the....

.... Harrison L5 for which I have just modified the fixed steady of unknown make that came with it, actually to fit it. That too enjoys an N-T 3ph conversion with the motor on a wall-frame rather than the space-wasting box once welded to the back of the cabinet. It's just completed its first task in its new home, making the bolt for that steady, screw-cut and all!

- via Axminster Tools, a " People's Glorious Mini-lathe ", about 50mm centre-height I think, still awaiting properly setting up. So far it's a corner of the kitchen and will probably stay there for using in comfort when the dark wet Winter nights deter me even from the 20 yard expedition down the garden to the workshop!

'

Oh - and I still have that Drummond manual shaper, and indeed used it a few days ago in making the Harrison's steady clamp-plate!

Or when dealing with drawings from unknown professionals....

I once helped prepare for testing a newly-built boiler whose wide firebox shape suggested an LNER locomotive, in 3.5" or 5"g. The metal-working including the silver-soldering was immaculate, but inverting it revealed the inner firebox looked more MacDonalds than Gresley, so badly crushed-in was the crown.

Closer inspection revealed only about 8 or so stays, and only in the back-head and throat-plate.

The builder was a retired coppersmith on his first foray into model-engineering, so he had decided to start with the boiler as the simplest part for him, whilst admitting not knowing much about locomotives.

He assured us (club members) he'd tested it hydraulically but only to working pressure. We believed him, but realised he'd not have known to look for more than just dripping water.

Fortunately he had the drawing with him. It was a low-quality photocopy significantly lacking any designer's or publisher's name or other source details. The poor chap had followed it accurately, not knowing it was so flawed. We had explain to him why the design was dangerously poor, and break it to him that the boiler would not be repairable.

We wanted to write to ME with a warning; but for some reason he would not reveal where or how he had acquired the drawings. They might have been made privately by some past model-engineer for his own project, perhaps from railway-literature drawings, but who had a weak knowledge of design principles.

We never saw him again.

The Tich design and constructional articles have been collated into a single book. I don't know if it's still in print: TEE Publishing would be a good place to start looking.

Tich's advantage is that its Walschaert's Valve-gear and valve-chests are external, so easier of access for construction & maintenance.

Also, LBSC's layout of inside Stephenson's Link Motion as on Juliet is fundamentally weak, relying on a single-sided suspension point so when wear takes place it loses a lot of valve-travel for little pin wear. I have seen this happen on a 7-1/4"g version, to the point it failed one day in heavy club revenue-earning service. It had been built by simply doubling dimensions from the original drawings, and after it was rebuilt with a much better link suspension and substantial valve-rod guides, it was a far better engine.

Otherwise, I would not say there is much difference in building difficulty although Juliet is markedly larger, with a bigger boiler.

On rough surfaces such as hot-rolled steel or cast-iron, where I don't need a fine line for the first operation at least, I have sometimes degreased the metal then applied a spray primer (ordinary car paint) or strip of masking-tape and marked out with a sharp pencil.

For removing marking-out fluid or paste blue, use methylated spirits; ditto for cleaning the artist's paint-brush with which I apply the fluid.

Neat air-driven version of the industrial tumbler, with uses abrasive-stone shapes and soapy water in a revolving octagonal drum.

A jeweller's tumbler might work too, for small items.

Although water rather than air-powered, you used to be able to buy potato-peeling machines that worked in the same way! I wonder if they went out of use because they used so much water, straight from the tap.

Finished modifying the steady that came with my Harrison L5 lathe, so it actually fits the lathe! had to make a new clamp-plate and screw, entailing slotting the hole in the casting slightly so the screw-head would pass the upper parts of the steady.

This was my first use of the lathe itself in its new home, and with its new 3ph motor conversion (Newton-Tesla) and lots of thick oil in the gearbox. It runs far more quietly than it did with the hulking great, cabinet-mounted, 1ph motor and nearly-dry gearbox it used to have. Will have to watch the oil though as it does like to escape.

Cutting the clamp-screw's 1/2" X 16 BSF thread by single-point insert tool was even very satisfying - the machine is no spring chicken but heavy enough to give consistent results, in back-gear, over short, fairly shallow (0.040" threads. Still needed several spring-cuts to finish to depth but it nicely matches the tapped hole in the clamp, so I'm happy about that.

The gearing's low enough too , for the motor to run as it likes, at about 1000 - 1200 rpm.

One advantage of those insert tools is that the tip is aligned accurately w.r.t. the holder, and both are precision-made. This makes setting less fiddly than with a thread-gauge's V-notch, by using a square or the chuck face; over a larger reference area.

'

Just had a thought.... For some reason, being too accustomed to the Myford ML7 a few feet away perhaps, I took without verifying the L5 has an 1/8"-lead screw, so automatically counted the primary pinion (20T, not marked) so duly set up an idler and 40T wheels. And it worked. Yet a second look now makes me think 1/4" lead. Memories stir, about that gearbox on the feed-shaft and lead-screw. I will have to Read The Flippin' Manual, won't I? (Now there's a thing)....

Well, yesterday but I was too tired by the time I arrived home!

Not so much What Did You Do Today?, as How Stupid And Selfish Can People Be?

Retuning by Cross-Country Trains from Leeds to Bristol, our steady 90 - 100mph trip was interrupted in South Gloucestershire by a rapid slowing.

"For Bristol Parkway", I thought.

Then drawing to a stop, with the engines idling. "Signal", I assumed - until the last few tens of yards were accompanied by awful grinding noises from somewhere below. (I was near the front of the train.) I wondered if a brake lining had broken up.

We sat still for a while, with a fair amount of to-ing and fro-ing by the crew, and doors slamming somewhere fo'rrad.

The Guard apologised for the delay and explained we'd hit an armchair someone had placed right in the Four-Foot! He and the driver managed to remove it from under the train; but the delay was lengthened to nearly half an hour in all by our losing our planned Bristol PW and TM access to what should have been services following ours.

Just as well the driver had seen the obstruction far enough ahead to slow us to perhaps 10mph or so before hitting it.

I hope they catch the wilfully-useless scum responsible: they might live in the new-looking housing estate we'd stopped alongside, some miles N of Parkway Station.

'

Ironically, earlier in the trip a young man told me he'd been on one service that derailed, throwing him against an electrical panel that gave him a shock right across his chest (by induction I assume rather than contact) - pace-maker and all - whose circular scar he showed me. The cause was similar vandalism, a mattress placed on the line.

After our incident, a fellow passenger agreed with my hope that because such vandals are so stupid, that they'd boast about it on Facebook or similar... not realising they can be traced.

(BTW, I know its original thread was closed by straying well off-topic, but does anyone know if the wilfully-rubbish who destroyed that model-railway exhibition have been caught and at least charged, if not yet tried?)

'

On Tuesday afternoon, all services - DMU as well as EMU - around Leeds, Bradford and Skipton were disrupted for over an hour by balloons entangled in the overheads near Silsden. My own trip, Skipton to Horton-in-R, on the Leeds-Settle-Carlisle route, was delayed by an hour though luckily that did not matter to me. (It would have been personally serious on the Up service that morning, when I was on my way to a funeral.)

That was probably due to some child losing helium-filled party balloons quite accidentally, but such and other problems with them does add weight to calls for the gas to be used only for serious purposes. It is a possibly-finite resource, and "used" or lost helium diffuses and floats irrecoverably to the Upper Atmosphere.

Andrew -

Quite possibly forged originals, but very likely drop-forged, not hand-made. The technique was well-established by the end of the 19C.

Alternatively your method was rather closer to the original than you suggest, because that's a large amount of steel to remove compared to the total, by forging. Also of course, the factory needed to make a lot of these components! So forged to form the head, then the shank drilled, and not broached but machine-slotted. (Dedicated slotting-machines were common then, especially good for cutting internal splines and keyways.)

Sometimes the sender's visible e-mail address is a genuine one "borrowed" by the criminals. A common example of that is the supposed "Help I'm stuck in Paris" message supposedly from a friend, probably a fellow-club member after the club list has been "found".

I don't know if other providers do this but BT allows you to "View Source" - an exercise that gives you a screenful of gobbledegook but within that, shows the originator's numerical address and sometimes the country of origin. Comparison with the Source of a genuine message from the named originator reveals the truth...

I have tried using the Action Fraud web-site a few times, for both phone and internet attempts, but I don't bother now because it so badly designed. It's a typical IT / telecomms trade database; absurdly awkward, long-winded, difficult and narrowly presumptive; too inflexible to allow reporting some attacks properly, or at all. You'd expect it to ask you to forward e-posts, to a ring-fenced computer, so their sources can be analysed... but no, that's too obvious an action for its administrators.

Sometimes I use the neutral " Hello " but on a forum like don't usually add a salutation, unless replying to a specific contributor, and then just the name.

However, it's important to realise one can be offended even if reasonably thick-skinned, by something in the text itself striking a nerve not known the writer. I've upset one or two individuals quite unwittingly (not on this site... I hope), and have been put out myself (on this site, too.)

In the latter, a machine-setting suggestion I'd used successfully, was rather sarcastically rubbished by someone who appeared not to have understood my point. I replied with a "Don't worry, I won't post anything else", and left the thread.

'

As for the word "gentlemen", I am old enough to remember the light-heartedly erudite My Word on the BBC Home Service; played by a regular panel of two men and two woman, all writers and literary critics. In particular I recall the definition given in one edition by one of the men - Frank Muir or Denis Norden - of Gentlemen and hence explain that which seems to bother the ladies so much. The matter of leaving loo seats up!

Mr. Muir or Mr. Norden explained that railway coach lavatories used to bear a brass plaque, Gentlemen Lift The Seat, pointing out the brevity and lack of punctuation made it admirably both complimentary definition and peremptory command. It would seem therefore that we males leaving the seat up shows us to be Gentlemen.

[As an aside, the instruction I remember, I think from many trips on the ex-Southern Railway EMUs in my native Hampshire, was " Gentlemen Adjust Your Dress Before Leaving ", sartorially puzzling me for years....]

Well, yesterday really, but never mind...

Completed modifying the unknown-make but right height fixed steady to fit the Harrison lathe.

It needed a new V-groove cutting, encroaching on both the original, shallower groove and the relief in the sole of the steady's foot.

My original idea had been to square it to the sole and machine the casting's vertical face to give me a clamping-surface on the angle-box. Then I realised I could use the set-bolts holding the fingers as adjustable spacers, with lock-nuts on them. Squared the assembly using the bench-drill's wide base (a Meddings, without separate table) and drilled a pilot hole on the marked-out new apex.

The groove-cutting went reasonably well, using an end-mill, though the side-cut portion ended up a bit lumpy and I had to dress it a bit with a file.

I found I'd cut it a fraction deeper than necessary. Now that might not have mattered in practice because I'd simply align the steady to the sloping face of the ways, but I wanted as much contact surface as possible. Tried to face-mill the sole down but after a couple of near -disasters as the set-up was not rigid enough for that, I completed the task by careful filing and a finishing rub on emery-paper with a squirt of WD-40, to gain a satisfactorily close sliding fit.

Took a while to clear the embedded graphite / WD-40 / marking-fluid mix from my hands!

I've still to make the clamping-plate, replacing the lost original.