What did you do today (2015)

Spent yesterday in loft clearing it out ready for it to be deep insulated by British Gas, my wife and I made the decision to get shot of the lot up the tip as most of it had been up there since we moved here twenty eight years ago so boxes of very old and later model engineers magazines got dumped as well, mainly because SWMBO kept me to our promise.

Martin P.

That'll stop you putting anything up there in the future as you'll not be able to see the ceiling joists. When I improved the insulation in our property I did it at roof level 60mm Celotex between the rafters and 60mm over and mother in laws loft over laid with 100mm of Celotex across the centre section, then over boarded and fluffy stuff up to external wall plates. Did have a large section of the ceiling being replaced so it was easier to get full sheets up there, cost a lot more but loft is still usable now with all the usual junk that lofts accumulate.

Bob

Bob,

Thats the general Idea, changed the family Idea to if we dont need it we dont keep it, for instance our Daughter is thirty four and we still had here cot and pushchair, my two sheds and garage have enough in that would keep my wife clearing for months but she doesnt go in there thank god

Martin P

Edited By martin perman on 06/12/2015 11:39:50

Perhaps I should delete your post in case it encourages anyone to copy you

Glad you're in one piece

Neil

If you need extra loft insulation and storage space, fit loft legs, made from recycled plastic and available from several DIY outlets. Screw them to the ceiling joists or trusses and fit boarding on top. No connection with manufacturer, just a satisfied customer.

Gordon.

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I was up there with a mastic / sealant gun. With the high winds and driving rain there was a small weep coming in through the roof so decided to issue corrective treatment to the guilty fixing point.

Damage.! Safest would have been to have landed on my head as there is nothing to damage in there but rusty bolts and sawdust.

Nick

Gordon

Thank you!

I am about to ( after Christmas I think! ) increase the amount of loft insulation as the final part of upgrading the " comfiness" of the house. (Heat pump fitted and all double glazing renewed). I was a bit fazed by the amount of "stuff" in the loft - mostly owned by my kids and largely by the one in Australia ! I think the "Loft legs" will be just the thing.

Norman

Edited By NJH on 06/12/2015 15:15:21

I think I will be buying loft legs, didnt know they existed until this morning. Norman you copying me, not long had my secondary glazing and crittal windows all replaced, also going for a more efficient boiler, nothing wrong with current boiler apart from the fact that its over 25 years old, I'm doing all this work ready for retirement in a couple of years, so spending while I'm still earning.

Martin P

Today I bored and filled the drill holes in my jig borer table prior to surface grinding. I bored them flat bottomed with a 12mm cutter and then turned cast iron bar to a push fit for each hole. JB Weld was used to glue them in place and I milled the tops flush when dry so the grinder can just skim straight across.

I also made a tool trolley for my new machine, simply a set of Ikea wooden drawers on a wheeled trolley and a tool tidy made and fitted on the top made of MDF. I can keep my Int 30, Morse 2 and Morse 1 tools easy at hand.

Hi, having been a bit heavy handed the other day when using my threaded insert riveter, this hapened to the 3mm pulling pin.

So today I set about repairing it. First things first, I measured the diameter and length of the plain shank portion and then the overall length of the the plain shank and the threaded portion. I then cut off the plain shank and mounted the pin into my ER collect chuck and faced off the last little bit of the plain shank. I then drilled and tapped it 6mm deep for a 4mm internal thread.

I then threaded a length of 4mm silver steel about 4mm long at one end. Using a little Loctite 270 studlock, I screwed it in as tight as I could, into the threaded hole that I had just made in the pulling pin.

This was then cut off just slightly longer than the overall measurement I had made earlier. It was then faced off to the correct length and turned down to the diameter of the plain shank portion and then to the 3mm diameter for the length of the threaded portion and finally threaded 3mm.

I then finished putting in the rest of the inserts with success.

Regards Nick.

Edited By Nicholas Farr on 07/12/2015 22:17:55

Looks like an excellent repair Nick, well done. I like to see that sort of job keeping everyday tooling going, rather than waiting for something from ebay or running to the shops every time a tool has a fixable breakage. JD

Just spoke to my Dad - there will be a three page article on my dad's boats in the January Marine Modelling International

Don't suppose they'll use this pic:

Finished my first tool for the lathe.

Centre height tool. Happy with the results but could be better.

G.

What? It looks great!

Pete

Thanks Pete! Cosmetically, it would have looked better if all the knurled bits where shouldered/sitting slightly proud. Functionally its spot on, so happy with that.

G.

Santa called early and dropped off a new mill, an SPG 2217-II, a lot beefier than the Clarke CMD10 that;s been used and abused over the past 10 years or so but surprisingly has only ever had to have one new motor drive gear. Nice to open the crate and find it not covered in packing grease but clean and well oiled but not so nice when you realise it weighs 110kg and had to be moved from the garage at the front of the house to the shed in the back garden including some steps. Had to unbolt the column and head from the base then just about managed to carry the base and table on my own but needed help to lug the column/motor. Now reassembled,trammed and has a lovely solid smooth action, well pleased with it and now ready to do some bigger heavier duty work ,

Found some cable drums in a skip and now have a dozen 1ft M6 bolts, matching nuts with those spikes on them for gripping in wood, 8 ply circles, and 4 thick cardboards tubes. Pity it's been raining but the tubes after about 6 moths drying may be short end storage, the ply might just be drilling pads, but can't say no to a few yards of steel rod.

Yesterday I got my now annual visit to Chronos when a work trip allows me to deviate off the M1 during opening hours. Pity they don't do shows anymore.

I got some through bolts from cable drums a while back, 6 x 5/8" x 36" long, the four drums were about 5ft diameter.

Ian S C

At work, I got an Arduino Uno working with a brushed motor controller shield to implement closed loop control of an electric actuator (for turbocharger wastegate control). The actuator has a 0-5V position sensor and a simple brushed 12V motor, so I set up 2 analogue inputs for a setpoint (pot, 0-5V) and the position sensor. Then I implemented a PID controller using the standard Arduino PID library, did some processing and sent the resulting speed and direction signals to the H-bridge driver "shield".

It works quite well after a bit of tuning, although the PID library was obviously written by a "non-professional". I had to modify it to generate a proper bipolar drive - presumably it had only been used on unidirectional systems like heaters etc. You wouldn't normally expect to have to fiddle with the standard library but at least nobody died.

The Arduino has several spare analogue and digital I/O that you can read from and write to for debugging purposes. The language is basically a version of C, so fairly simple to work with and the IDE is pretty straightforward. When I finally got round to it, I found the Arduino quite straightforward to set up and bring to life.

Murray

Not today but yesterday evening I was looking up the specifications of the latest Beretta shotguns, and I note that they are now using an alloy steel called Steelium for their barrel tubes. All I can discover is that it is a nickel/chrome/molybdenum steel, but can't find out much more. I note that TATA produce it in rolled sheets, mainly for car bodies I think, but if anyone is making bars, then they seem to be keeping very quiet about it. Is the specification patented? Anybody know anything about its exact composition and properties? I'd be grateful is anyone could point me in the right direction.