Member postings for Nigel Graham 2

Nicholas and Martin -

One of the delights of the MSRVS Rally in Tewkesbury is the venue being close to the Abbey, so a striking clock, and the ringing on the Sunday morning.

I was in Alston, up in the Northern Pennines, for a weekend a couple of years ago, and was surprised to hear a definite melody from the church bells on the Sunday morning. I remembered it as a hymn-tune, but also remembered a friend who is a Tower Captain telling me tune-ringing is not done in England. (She told me this when showing me the bells in her local church, in Somerset.) So I investigated: the tower is no longer able to take manual-ringing stresses so the peal was converted to a carillon. I can't recall when, but I think it must be unique in this country.

A break from the workshop today; caving instead.

Only not quite away from model-engineering as we were using a winch I'd made from, among other materials, some lengths of scrap 7-1/4"g track rails long past their best for railway use; and I collected some angle-iron from a club clear-out to make a trolley for my small horizontal miller! (So I can push it back against a wall when not in use, as my workshop is becoming quite cramped.)

Also realising I may need thin, non-magnetic shim / feeler-gauge material for setting the Myford mill's DRO pick-ups, I went round the house with a micrometer, investigating assorted plastic items...

A lid from a "bread-grease" tub, a B&Q store-card, even last year's British Caving Association membership card (similar to a bank card but without the chip and embossing). Best not cut up the B&Q card but otherwise, all viable shim material <1mm thick!

Don't worry - a push mower doesn't make much noise, and my lawn's quite small!

Unfortunately I can't hear my local church bells from home - just a bit too far away and shielded by houses.

Mowing the lawn...

I think that will Sunday's task! In the coming months I have to be careful doing that not to kill any of the frogs that have adopted my garden. They hide in long grass.

Bit more accomplished with fitting the "Machine-DRO" set to the Myford mill, still so far on the X-travel. Allendale obligingly supply some die-cast allow brackets and plates with assorted slot to help the task, but I still had to mill rebates on one so it would fit the front face of the cross-feed saddle.

Also rang Allendale because the digital micrometer I had bought, would not switch off. Well, it would but as soon as I so much as looked at, it would come back on. After a couple of phone calls between their very helpful sales staff and me, they established that movement of the barrel over-rides the ON switch, and it takes the barest movement, too. Lock the barrel and it stays off.

(I do have manual mics too, but these days their little divisions are smaller and fainter, rather like the "thirty-tooths" on steel rules.)

Thank you Tom.

Sorry about the slow response.

Since then I've regained access to its own users' forum.

I know the feeling! I never thought an Edwardian end-of-terrace 2-up,2-down + a bit out the back (the kitchen and its en-suite bathroom) could shrink, but it has - even though I viewed it still furnished and occupied by a family.

Mind you, an industrial-pattern A0 drawing-board on its stand does rather dominate the dining-room, albeit that it's set nearly vertically. There is some room in the centre for the dining-table, surrounded by a motley collection of tools and equipment.

Meanwhile the 16ft X 6ft concrete-block shed that clinched my buying the home has also shrunk. Hacking the motor-box off the back of the Harrison L5 lathe's cabinet and putting the new motor on a frame above the headstock gained some useful width. A half-built steam-wagon right inside the door, and a Clarke band-saw on a trolley filling much of the gap between the Myford ML7 and the bench that holds a Meddings bench-drill and Drummond hand-shaper, don't help.

I put the band-saw on a proper trolley, replacing the, frankly awful, pair of wheels it had when I bought it "pre-loved". All I've to find room for, are a small Denbigh horizontal-mill, another drilling-machine, an engraver, a small fly-press, the lawn-mower, smaller gardening tools....

Most of these smaller machines will also go on trolleys so they can be pushed back into corners when not in use.

Oh sorry, belay the last. The lawn-mower's standing on two tool-boxes, in the dining-room, and the other garden tools are in the bathroom. Don't worry, I oiled their blades to protect against rust.

Finished the special V-nuts needed, and fitted the long-axis magnetic strip for the DRO to the Myford VM-C milling-machine table with them.

This means the table no longer has travel-stops because the only way to fit the profile was by the V-nuts in their slot, and of course the stop-block had to come off too.

These strips have to be fitted to quite close parallelism but I think I managed it eventually. The drawback with that design of encoder strip is that you cannot remove it from the machine without destroying the magnetic strip itself, because it is stuck on across the mounting-screws.

While at it I tried adjusting the gib. That proved problematical, with very little available travel on the adjusters, and the two locking-screws doing nothing at all. I took the screws out... Someone had sawn them short!. I made up little steel slugs to take up the space, so I can now lock the table's long travel at least.

The Myford mill is not designed to take DRO encoders, though a 2-axis system is listed in the service-manual as an accessory. My thinking with the Y and Z travels is to put the strips on backing bars screwed to the machine outside the profile's width, since there are no machines surfaces available for them and I will probably need to make special spacers. The Z-axix encoder strip will be the worst thanks to the shape of the machine body.

There is another advantage to that approach. I can assemble the profile and its backing bars(s) in comfort and good light on the table, rather than in the very awkward, cramped, gloomy and grubby conditions around the machine.

It is the Myford VM-C. I have just verified it.

By "head" I mean only the section containing the spindle: the whole unit appears to be called the "turret" although not strictly accurately since the machine is not a true turret mill.

The parts drawing shows the (spindle) head to have a large hole through the bracket by which it's bolted to the rest of the turret, and this would give access to the interior. There is no matching hole through the bracket.

Thank you all for these various suggestions.

I'll work from the easiest and safest first of course, but studying the machine and the manual suggests I may need go as far as removing the head..

I can't say who originally published the idea, but the or a design for a tool-holder made from a bicycle crank is in a book of which I have a copy.

It is: Lathe and Shaping Machine Tools, by "Duplex", first published in 1949 - mine is the TEE Publishing reprint, 1992.

Duplex was the pen-name of a regular contributor to Model Engineer.

The tool-holder described was for a Drummond hand-powered shaper, and takes tools ground from standard round tool-steel rod. A chapter on sharpening lathe and shaper tools includes basic designs for grinding-jigs.

This reference also explains that internal shaping (keyways and splines) is by draw-cutting, not pushing the tool through the bore, for which the clapper-box has to be locked. Duplex' method is a steel bar screwed across the clapper-box jaws, but loth to drill and tap potentially-weakening holes in my shaper or indeed modify it anyway, I would use the extended tool-holder fitted with a jacking-screw, above the box.

Thank you for those references: I don't have copies of ME from the 1970s but my club has a sizeable collection so could have that one.

It's not shown in the Atlas catalogue but I take it there was some sort of support for that overhung dividing-head? I realise the frame was made for a massively-built industrial machine whose table is far heavier than the attachment and work, but it still looks a bit unfair on the shaper.

I had wondered about attachments for my dear little Drummond hand-operated machine (fuel: tea, and more tea!) and realised that for the way I have installed it, additional support for overhung loads would be fairly easy.

Many moons ago I formed the concavity in the fabricated-steel smoke-box saddle for a 7-1/4"g loco, on an ancient, very basic but hefty shaper in my club's workshop it had then. This operation was possible, though a bit hazardous, because the clapper-box was on a toothed quadrant rotated +/- about 45º from vertical by a worm fitted with a small handle. I set the tool to radius by measuring to its tip from the quadrant-pin centre; and used the smoke-box itself as a gauge.

I believe that the principle of gear-tooth generation by moving the table (and correspondingly rotating the gear-blank), is that used in the Fellowes Gear-shaper. I think the cutters for those was of rack form rather than single-point, but the essentially the same idea. One advantage is that for involute-teeth the tool would be straight-sided, (rack tooth-form), so easier to grind accurately.

Advice please...

The quill travel on my Myford mill is very sticky, to the point that is useable but lacks drilling sensitivity and its return-spring won't return it.

Thinking - simple solution first, ensure the clamp is not jammed. It was not, but I cleaned and oiled it before replacing it.

Broken or unhooked spring? I do not have the appropriate tools and knowledge, beyond knowing that handling powerful clock-springs without is hazardous and very difficult. Luckily, VERY careful inspection suggested the spring is intact.

So could the problem be dried grease on the rack and pinion? If so can this be sorted with the machine intact or would I need to remove the head - as I suspect? I know I'd need to tram the re-fitted head, but I have an indicator for this purpose, bought from this Forum's sponsor!

I have a copy of the manual, which gives a sectional drawing, but does not advise on taking the thing to bits and re-assembling it.

All help gratefully received!

Clive -

Sorry, I could not cite it, but as I had rather hoped, at least I have inspired others to supply such information; for which thank-you!

John Olsen -

Yes, that seems to be the arrangement I meant, but I could not recall the details of where I'd read of it . It was most likely your ME article!

I take it the shaping between centres is by putting the cross-feed in neutral and notching the dividing-head round a few degrees at a time? It may be feasible to make an attachment driven by the table-feed, that drives the dividing-head (or a rotary-table) instead.

On thin plate-work, and assuming matching radii, I often use a washer as a filing template rather then revolving button.

It won't work for thicker, quality pieces like those connecting-rods... unless your filing is rather more accurate than mine!

Unless you need to use filing-rollers directly on the work-piece very often, they could be simply of mild-steel and allowed to spin on the shank of a bolt (preferably to a screw), held by lock-nuts tightened just enough to allow free movement.

John Reese:

AWOL micrometer? One knows how one feels....

Awkward steam-engine design calculation a bit beyond my brain and paper-and-pencil range, and before I had a computer.

Find calculator. Oh, can't find calculator.

Slide-rule? Can't find my slide-rule.

Nothing for it: logarithms, with a quick self-taught refresher lesson.

Next day, bought new scientific calculator (surprisingly, significantly larger than the lost one).

Three weeks later, opening a drawer to retrieve something else, there was the absent calculator.

I'd swear homes and workshops develop black holes. Tiny ones, without the power of the cosmic sort so unable to sustain themselves, consequently dispersing fairly soon and dropping their "eaten" hence temporarily invisible items unharmed wherever they happen to have drifted as they dissolve.

If you need to turn lots and lots of tapers, I wonder how feasible it would be to fit a secondary change-wheel train to the saddle, and linking lead-screw or rack to cross-slide, thus generating the taper?

In fact I have seen several You-tube videos of lathes apparently built with this facility - all were in Russia, being used to make large-diameter, quick-taper "wood-screws" the videos went on to reveal are log-splitters.

A good number if interesting suggestions for which as originator I am pleased and grateful - and I note the warning about silicone for work that is to be painted - but I had meant protection for metalwork where and when mineral oils (including ones like WD-40) are not wanted.

Thank you _ I'll try to remember that!

Some discussion sites let you re-open your post after sending it, to correct errors, but I don't think this one does.

Why have those wink symbols appeared? I did not try to use them, and they and don't add or mean anything here! They seem to have been created by what was meant as normal punctuation: a pair of parentheses and quote-marks.

Sometimes the Inter-web can be too clever for its own good!

Looking for a way to protect bare steel from all that hungry oxygen about, but in a way that is a bit cleaner and less dust-attracting than mineral grease or oil, including petroleum jelly ("Vaseline", I found aerosol furniture-polish very effective.

I applied a liberal spray, with just the lightest rub with a soft cloth to soften the worst accumulations.

I doubt it's tough enough for outdoor protection, but indoors it's fine.. I am not sure, but I think it contains silicone.

It kept the un-painted parts of my part-built Hemingway-kit tool-grinder rust-free through its four days in the marquee annexe at last year's Midlands ME Exhibition, and that and a boring-bars set (also Hemingway kit) have over-wintered in my house - which is no dessicator - since with only the merest touch of rust here and there.

Another very good steel protective, and kind to the hands, is straight Lanolin ("wool fat", though I am not sure how obtainable this is now.

For owners of miniature traction-engines fitted with full winding-gear, lanolin solution in white spirit or meths (I forget which, perhaps both) was an old, well-tried way to protect small-diameter steel-wire rope. The solvent eventually evaporates, but not before transporting the wool-fat well into the rope. You can buy spray-on cable-grease but it's pretty unpleasant stuff and possibly no better than ordinary grease or heavy oil for most of our applications. I first encountered this use for lanolin, in protecting the wire stiles of caving ladders, where you are very likely to get some of the grease on your clothes and hands.

Which way are you trying to remove it?

When I dismantled my L5 to move it (it was the only way available), I removed the leadscrew and feed-shaft completely, chocked the underside of the apron with blocks of wood then separated the apron from the saddle by removing the Allen screws that hold it up.

There also a couple of dowels in there so be sure to lower it and refit it vertically.

Obviously, take the leadscrew especially out carefully and slowly, with as much support as you can give it, so you don't bruise its and the half-nut's threads against each other.