What Did You Do Today (2017)

Went to a meeting of EDMES. Photo competition. Secretary and Chairman's son both winners. I would have won too but apparently you have to actually submit an entry. Next year.

Just as we were closing up the chairman got a text from a new member saying how much he had enjoyed the eventing and friendly atmosphere. Nice touch making use of modern tech and gave us a good feeling.

That,s what they mean when they say "Terms and conditions apply" !!

Here we go... I cast this today:

I think I have the 'lost PLA' technique dialed now.

Neil

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Sure looks that way, Neil

Aluminium I presume ... but do tell me if I'm wrong.

MichaelG.

Thanks, brass scrap actually, with a small bit of 99% tin 1% copper solder thrown in so it is a sort of gunmetal.

The colour balance is a bit skew-whiff*, it's actually the sort of colour you would expect for gunmetal, a pale brass colour.

After the pour some 'partially dissolved' brass, leftovers from the previous run were still in the bottom, presumably it had lost zinc and didn't melt so easily compared to the other stuff which mixed with the tin. Luckily I melted a good excess of material.

Neil

*I think that's teh first time I have ever written that word down - I had to look up the spelling

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Thanks for the clarification, Neil

I really couldn't make my mind up about the metal.

MichaelG.

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Incidentally: Family History reveals that some of my ancestors "Tub Cast" Brass. I don't know quite what that involves, but I believe it was a 'Cottage Industry' activity.

Michael, a number of my ancestors were brass finishers, mainly in the Birmingham area.

Daveb

My maternal grandfather was a coppersmith in the RAF, which meant he worked brass...

Neil

Edit - apparently he would have been a C&SM "Sheet Metal and Coppersmith"

Edited By Neil Wyatt on 13/11/2017 02:05:46

I wanted to make some small taper pins, but the close proximity of the tail stock holding the work with a live centre makes it impossible to turn the top slide smoothly so i came up with this. (perhaps someone did this before?) The parts are all from redundend  Bridgeport quill feed gears

Edited By Mikelkie on 13/11/2017 20:47:50

Nice one Mike. That too would make a neat article for MEW.

Neil

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Small world, Dave

Mine were in and around Birmingham too ... one group [the Babbingtons] made bedstead fittings and 'coffin furniture' & the others [Huggins] were the 'tub casters' ... On the other side of the family we had people in gun-making and wood-working. The woodworkers ended-up working at that new-fangled Austin car business.

MichaelG.

Neil, At Vickers / BAC Weybridge, Coppersmiths worked tubes of tungum, stainless etc and tinsmiths worked flat sheet, Ali, SS and Titanium. Funny how metal working terms were used. Some of the tubes were rather large. I remember working 3" and 4" thin walled stainless and later Jet tubes for the RR Conway engines for the VC - 10. VC standing for Vickers Commercial number 10, and BAC 1-11 was the first aircraft for BAC but the 11 commercial aircraft for Vickers.
BobH

Finally installed my newly-turned swarf sampler, and put it to use. This allows swarf samples to be gathered directly from the cross slide before submission to the lab.

A subsidiary benefit is that I dont have to clean the cross slide screw every time I remove the topslide to bolt some other implement on.

Cheers, Colin

This must be in the interests of food quality control. I remember my friend Paul asking the new guy, "What do you want on your sandwich? Jam? Ketchup? Swarfega? You can guess why this was memorable

Had a good afternoon in my workshop only to discover that I'd failed to close a freezer door on Sunday morning and now have a soggy mess to clean up tomorrow.

In compensation I found this website which has some interesting stuff on boilers including how to detect a super-heated steam leak without losing a limb. Also, the accident on the USS Iwo Jima will make me think twice about choosing nuts and bolts more carefully in future!

I have a load of gravel to spread, and the last time I did a nasty to my back shovelling 5 tons around, so knocked up a scoop for the lawn tractor. The metal was mostly recovered from a Telephone Kiosk circa '82 which in turn we are making a book exchange for our tiny village in the 'sticks'.

Edited By Speedy Builder5 on 23/11/2017 15:51:04

tried to rotate on an Apple Mac, but couldn't get to anything for correcting the rotation.