What Did you do Today 2022

I see what you mean: the joint resting on the vice.

Is this a system that swings the clapper against a stationary bell rather than overturning the bell?

The sleeve can only have worn down over the years to something like dust then, fine enough to pass through a tiny gap; and probably dispersed by draughts.

The original sleeve might have been hardwood, such as lignum vita; but is there a reason it used a thin-walled bearing bush and an extra sleeve also with a very thin wall? I'd have thought it would have had a single bush of 8.5mm wall, that fills the annulus.

That this particular sleeve wore away but the others have survived, suggests it may have been a very slightly loose fit, so it was not long before it tried to act as a bearing. Is the tenor bell used a lot more often than its companions, so extra wear-and-tear?

'

As an aside I was in the village of Alston one weekend a few years ago, and heard the church bells there start on the Sunday morning. The first few notes seemed a bit hesitant then it set off.... playing a melody rather than changes. In fact I recognised it as hymm tune, though I forget what. Back home I did a little research to find the peal had been converted to a carillon because the tower was found no longer strong enough to take the stresses of conventional ringing by rotating the bells. I told a friend who is the tower captain at Priddy, in Somerset and well over 300 miles from Alston, and she didn't believe me! I've heard there is a similarly converted peal in a church in Cornwall. Do you know of these, or others?

My guess is that a bush was never fitted in the first place, and it's taken 15 years for anyone to notice!

The number of times I've reassembled stuff only to find a few spare parts left over...

Dave

As a ringer myself, that looks like a standard clapper for 'full circle' English church bell ringing. The Tenor bell is not normally rung any more than the others in the tower. The church clock might use the Tenor bell, but if so, it would strike it with a separate hammer when the bell is 'down', i.e. hanging down safely, rather than being propped upside down as they are when ready for normal English ringing.

I suspect that this Tenor clapper joint was assembled by the apprentice, who forgot the sleeve. If the sleeve had broken up during ringing, you wouldn't have felt, or heard much difference while ringing. When ringing the bell up, the clapper might have sounded more 'loose' or might have double bounced on the lip of the bell, but only if you are near enough to the bell to hear it.

My thoughts are the same as SOD and John Doe 2, there should be a sleeve that was never fitted. Mistakes do happen, most engineers would regard bell hanging as a bit "agricultural" in nature, but this is a bit excessive!

You might like to check this website for a bit of information.

https://witneyandwoodstock.odg.org.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/tbc04_clapper_bush_wear.pdf

I think your Delrin is probably as good as should have been originally fitted to reduce the shock load. I think that if I was curious enough I would drop one of the other clappers just to see what that one looked like. You could of course contact the last firm that overhauled the bells and ask, what might be for them, an embarrassing question.

I think I would wait for the warmer weather before checking, it can get really cold up in the bell chamber and handling cold metal and laying under a bell frame that is too close to the floor is no fun what so ever, done it too many times.

Keep up the good work. To often for church members, it's up in the tower, it's out of sight and out of mind! Only the ringers know what goes on there.

Neil

P.S. Nigel you might find this website interesting.

https://dove.cccbr.org.uk

Edited By Neil A on 30/11/2022 12:25:19

Neil, thank you for the link as it gives me plenty of confidence in my that ought to be good enough and I can do it right now repair. There's nothing tricky about any of the engineering once you get past fitting the frame into the building.

Somebody forgetting to fit a needed bush would explain why there are no traces of it, and if this had been a very recent installation would be easier to accept. That would still imply require lousy quality control. But I find it hard to believe that there is no damage to either the tufnol bush, clapper hole, pin or clevis from probably 20kg of clapper clonking around on/in them for 16 years! The reported play would have been just as obvious every other time the muffles were used too.

If it were still possible to speak to the installers about this, we would even if that were to acquire the 'correct' part.

Having seen the results of neglect, wishful thinking or inadequate repairs means not spending 5 minutes checking this a couple of times over the next few months isn't acceptable. Now we know about it, we can't justify potentially damaging a 500 kg, 130year old bell. Access is good and there's room to at least kneel under the bell, and I've done far harder jobs in much worse conditions. Dismantling a good part just to have a look is something I'm much less comfortable with.

As the tenor of a light-to-medium eight, it's rung every time the bells are. There isn't a clock, and that would strike the outside of the bell with a hammer.

This is now a ground floor ring, so the congregation and vicar can at least see us, even if what we're actually doing takes some explanation. As for keeping it up, I'm out every night of the week learning the stuff I should have done before I stopped in 1991. This repair used material I'd bought for another job, so they'll replace that and the time will cost my round at the post-practice 'theory session'

Tufnol is quite a resilient material, but as you say, 16 years of use without the outer sleeve should at least have shown some signs of wear or deformation. Perhaps there was one fitted originally and it has just completely disintegrated, we'll never know now.

At least it was caught and corrected before any real damage occurred.

Post-practice theory session? What ever could that be?

Neil

In my experience of being a steeple keeper as well as a tower captain; some clapper pivots in some towers are quite loose, and allow significant sideways movement.

Many ringers, however, are not engineers, so they may not realise that pivots are excessively loose.

Also, when full circle ringing; the sound of the clapper striking the bell is so loud ~ 110dBA; that clapper pivots and bad headstock bearings simply cannot be heard. It can be quite a shock to ring a bell with a silencer fitted, (for training new ringers - this holds the clapper and prevents it striking the bell, but the bell can still be rotated to learn the feel and balance and how to ring the bell).

With a silencer fitted, you can suddenly hear all the bearing groans and clunks when the bell rotates - but not those from the clapper pivot of course.

Secondly, even if a problem is known about, it is not always so easy to fix, unless one of your ringers has access to engineering facilities. The money has to be raised - some towers have a modest bell maintenance fund, but this is only filled by public donation - usually only from the ringers themselves - you cannot always just ring-up the PCC and invoice them to fix such issues.

For major work, a "faculty' has to be applied for via the PCC and the money raised from public donation. Then a bell hanger company has to be engaged, but there are only a few such companies in the country and they usually have very full books. (I led the project to augment Wendover tower from 6 to 8 bells and tune them, so I know how it all goes !)

A loose clapper pivot will not significantly damage a bell - but it will allow a wider depression to develop on the inside of the bell; instead of a single dent of about 50mm diameter where the clapper strikes the bell; an elongated depression, or a double dent can form.

.

Edited By John Doe 2 on 01/12/2022 09:58:05

A trap....
I completed my train rail V-Block groove, but then fall into a trap trying to make it deaper than the size of the mill cutter=12mm size, I made it 14mm.

The trap(Vertical Z1 access) is going back using the movements of table vertical or quil(Tilted Z2 acess)l is not straight forward anymore...

-I managed to get it corrected by milling it down in .02mm increments(with Magnifying glasses nr 4) till and I was lucky at last milling, feel no groove at all, it looks like you get with facemilling overlappings.

-I was more surpised than how I could trust the digital caliper I fitted to the quil travel, which movement accurately was needed here, not the vertical Z1 access.. Well I learned something here.

Note: I have to say if I scribe the trainrail, its definately harder, its just a mark hardly not like on normal steel, but the carbide cutter handled it well right through.

Been making these for Christmas presents just one more wooden thing to make then I can get back to working on the Rob Roy.

Beautiful workmanship were they steam bent.

Frank

No they are made from solid Oak and cut using the bandsaw lots of cutting and re-gluing back together to keep all the grain running through them

Nomex Thread arrived in the post, so cracked on with a little bit of (Flame Retardant) sewing...

I dislike being backlit when welding, and a mating my shield with a hood solves that pretty well, whilst also giving good protection when in vertical and overhead positions.

3M used to sell one designed specifically to work with this unit, but it's now ancient and officially obsolescent, so I just made one from a cheap nomex hood and some press studs.

Being PAPR, it's not actually hot or stuffy in there with the hood down, which is a nice touch.

Thanks to John Lisles' excellent translation of the XSY AT VFD manual, from this very site, my mill finally has a credible on/off, reverse and speed control for the vertical spindle

Next, I put the same at the other end of the ram for the horizontal motor, or maybe I will do the swivel arm conduit I have planned for those wires dribbling out the side.

So much to do and all of it fun

bestest, Robin

Well, starting yesterday evening but going on to gone 3 a.m.

Finished assembling the steam-wagon's smoke-box.

~~~~~

Became absorbed in a "driver's-eye"  railway video, Voss to Oslo.

This is not the right link but opens the general area:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrUbNEHd3Kg

The video lasts about three and a half hours, with some station and loop waits edited. Norway's railways are mostly single-track, even from Oslo to Trondheim and onto to Bodø.

It was made 4 years ago, it said, and on a rather gloomy and sad Autumn day. Plenty of snow and ice on the mountains but not as we ran down-hill from, I think, the Hardangervidda plateau.

Our train, from Bergen, stopped at few places past Voss: Gol, Drammen, one or two others nearer "Oslo S." I think 'S' means "Sentrum" ('Central' ). Some other stations look very closed and forlorn.

I was struck by there being more tunnels the further away from the big hills! None among the mountains, more numerous lower down the major valley to Drammen.

I was very impressed by the length and complexity of the tunnels between Drammen and Oslo - with cross-overs and even junctions inside them. Even a brightly-lit, busy station in one.

Signals stopped us in one tunnel, for a train approaching from one of the subterranean junctions. Our driver switched his main headlights off to help the other; but had also slowed us to a crawl far enough back to avoid needing stop completely. I wondered if that continual movement was to avoid alarming the passengers.

By then I was beginning to understand the signals' static and flashing greens as well as amber and red. The signal lamps seem smaller and less intense than on Britain's railways.

I expected we'd stop in Oslo S, and I could turn the computer off and go to bed.

Wrong! The title is [i]Voss to Oslo and Beyond. [/i]

"Beyond" was the depot - passing a parked Flamsbahnen train - and into the big servicing shed. The train would have been there for some while but the video was edited, because we soon moved on, to stop in a tunnel where we walked through the train to the other end cab, to take it back out to the sidings.

I won't give the rest away!

.

No shot of the driver and a "Tewsen Takk", (lit. "Thousand Thanks" ) which would have been nice. Possibly the driver himself (or herself) was the camera-operator, clipping it to the console. The view is central to the track and I don't know if the class used has a second cab seat.

This in a series made by a "Traincowgirl". I don't know if she was in the cab all that time. I would be very surprised she'd be allowed alight within a running-shed track fan. Yet we'd started "on the cushions" with a passenger's view of the passing snowy countryside, then walked with camera along the Voss platform to the cab. (Driver change?)

There are captions, no speech apart from hearing a short muffled conversation, probably driver and guard.

'

I couldn't help comparing their slender, simple electrical overheads supports, in this land of severe Winters, with those massively over-engineered versions near Bristol. The structures in the North of England are very similar to the Norwegian ones, and obviously work, so what is different about the railways in the SW English sub-tropics?

The attraction for me? Partly a love of Norway and Northern anyway; with memories of many caving expeditions to mid-Norway, well North of Trondheim. Voss holds a key road-junction for driving inland from Bergen.

@@@@

Then today?

A lovely Radio 4 programme, visiting the Taylor bell-foundy in Loughborogh.

It talked about the museum but nothing about opening times or visiting.

Casting: loam moulds, slow cooling develops a coarse grain for better tone. Tuning: helped by a "computer" I took as running a spectrum-analyser programme.

Also the casting in the 1880s, of the 17-ton tenor bell in St. Paul's Cathedral. That done, it took two traction-engines, fore-and-aft of a purpose-built trolley, 11 days to move it to London; and there Royal Engineers' expertise, blocks-and-tackle and lots of muscle to take it into the church and lift it into the tower. Then a string of repair bills for the damaged roads and bridges.

The oddest contract must have been a bell they made for the AC/DC rock band's tour, using in their Hell's Bells number.

'

This afternoon....

A little light CAD!

Cardboard Aided Design, that is.

A deflector from a food carton to experiment with aiming the air from the vent on my car's dashboard, to clear the side window in front of the external mirror. Presently it blows anywhere but.

Measuring all those compound curves and angles and plotting a development would be impossible. So cut, tape on, test, a card template for a thin sheet-plastic version.

I don't use the car every day so it may take a while.

Edited By Nigel Graham 2 on 08/12/2022 19:55:23

Built a pneumatic rivet queezer - I use 3.2mm semi-tubular aluminium rivets in the mnfr of Lion tracking collars here in Namibia. I have so far manually squeezed about 8000 rivets in the past 4 or 5 years...I am also changing collar strap material to a much tougher material ( biothane) as the Lions keep biting through the collars..Which mean new molds for the epoxy encapsulation of the electronics, etc..So while busy with it all, I made a pneumatic riveter - used some Festo products - a double acting cylinder, 80mm diameter piston, so adjustable restrictor valve to slow everything down to my speed, and a foot pedal. It works like a charm...

The two rings with rod holes allow exact setting of river squeeze length - photo below, right.

The rivet snap is removable as well. Also, the snap head is spring loaded, about 10mm of spring depression before the rivet starts squeezing - giving me time to line the snap pip up with the rivet tubular inlet.

Bunch of test rivets for length, snap profile testing, etc.

Previous collar material - A high strength belting, but not high enough..! Hand squozen rivets!

Edited By Joseph Noci 1 on 19/12/2022 11:54:18

I had some trouble with dormice in the attic once but this is in another league

Clearly need lion-proof collars then, your dormice do. Just shorter, narrower ones.

What did I do.... Oh, er. Not much.

Part way through improving a previous owner's attempts at insulating the loft. I need a couple of downlight protectors, once I'd found out from a friend in the building trade what sort of things they are called. No luck.

Actually, the main dealers' web-sites seem to indicate insulating lofts is everyone's favourite hobby at the moment as "out of stock" for anything and everything. However, I have blanketed the worst area, and discovered there is nothing special about the protectors that means you can't make or improvise them. As one electrical-supplies dealer told me!

These protectors, or guards, simply stop the light fittings above the ceiling being buried in insulation so don't need be anything fancy.

.

So back to engineering.....

Tried after a lapse of a few months probably, to resume teaching myself Solid Edge (Community) but I've lost it. The first instruction told me to select one of the primary settings - found the path to it but could not use it or return to find the next step. Still no explanation why that setting: Siemens does not define its own jargon.

I left the first part of the last exercise, the first component of a bearing assembly completed satisfactorily, but the next section seemed a big jump forwards, it overwhelmed me, and I left it at that.

This new attempt was a different one, a simplified micrometer, but I could not even start it.

It's just too much for me. Ah well. Life's too short to waste on what I now know won't really help my model-engineering .

I think I can still use TurboCAD in orthogonal-only mode for moderately complicated drawings, though I have not touched that for several months now. Otherwise, having destroyed my drawing-board, a sketch-pad and pencil; even just designing the next bit in my head and marking off metal from the existing metalwork.

.

This evening, l listened to an engaging programme of the sort you'd not find anywhere else but BBC Radio Four: an insight into the work of the shunter drivers and crane operators at Southampton Container Terminal.

Southampton... The programme was produced in Aberdeen!

What came over, and the presenter remarked on, was the evident skill, care and pride in their work, in their part in moving many millions of tons of goods a year by rail around the country.

One of the drivers said she prefers working at night, finding it easier to concentrate. She made the rather surprising comment that it's not coffee or sugar drinks that help her stay alert, but plenty of water.

This reminded me of somewhat similar advice at work several years ago. I still have the free water-bottle with valve cap, issued by the Occupational Health people.

Graham,

When a friend had their loft insulated the installers suggested he protect his downlights with clay flower pots. I did the work for him and they work a treat. I used a small grinder to cut a piece out of the lip to sit over the supply cable.

I have recently re-installed Solid Edge to see if I could get used to it. It's better than I thought. I have been so used to DesignSpark Mechanical I was finding it very hard work with SE. I still use DS for most of my designs as it is so easy to use, but I will persevere with SE. Not synchronus mode though, ordered only.

I am building 4, 1/10th scale models of my 1930 Austin Seven car. One for me and one for each of my sisters. I did most of the design work with DS and 3d printed the parts with my Ender3 fdm and Anycubic resin printers. The detail the resin printer produces is amazing. I am also designing the same parts in SE to see how I get on. I used SE to design and produce the STL for 3d printing the hand operated klaxon for the car.

+1 on flower pots for down-lighters.

Looking at what is available for that actual purpose, they range from metal boxes, to plastic cages, or material hoods.

And they are all bl**** expensive !

Plain brown clay flower pots from B&Q are fire proof, have a hole in the bottom (top) for ventilation, and only cost £2.27 each !

Three notches cut in the rim with an angle grinder for the wire and the retaining clips, and you are done. Being a bit OCD, I just wish there was a neat way to cut out a neat, uniform hole in the bottom layer of insulation to go snuggly around each flower pot, rather than having to cut a rough triangle or square. You don't want the insulation to be held up like a tent over each light. Some sort of giant cookie cutter type thing would be good.

I spent a long time compiling a spread-sheet of various loft insulation suppliers and types, before discovering that Wickes sell the same stuff, (Knauff) at a much cheaper price. The local store manager told me they sell it at a loss to get customers into the store. On hearing that I bought 12 rolls and cleared out their shelf completely !

Happy Christmas to all !

PS, I also changed all the old down-lighters in our new house for these LED ones. There is no gap around the light which prevents all your expensive heat going up past the bulbs into the loft ! I actually put plaster around each one from above to make them a very snug fit, but still allowing the light to be removed if required. Very impressive lights, very bright. Oh, and no separate LED drivers required, just mains in, that's it.

.

Edited By John Doe 2 on 23/12/2022 13:55:33

Lee -

(Oh, you can use my first name on here!)

The electricals dealer suggested I make a guard from an empty ice-cream tub! A plant-pot with the bottom cut out might be better, and it probably would not matter if plastic, it it is reasonably large. A piece cut from heating boiler flue tube would be effective.

.

I met a complete mental block with SE. I had thought it might be easier to learn than IMSI's TurboCAD, and certainly with more advice available beyond Siemens' own painting-by-numbers tutorials on its confusing web-site. Those seem conversion exercises for people already familiar with earlier SolidEdge / SolidWorks editions.

They don't help you understand it, hence the air of drawing-by-numbers. TurboCAD comes with no tutorial material at all, although its retailer, Paul 'The Cad' Tracy, has written ones for it. TC's on-line "Help" manual is frankly dreadful: minimal explanations, bad layout and no index.

TurboCAD's 3D mode is far harder than SE in one respect. It contains a hidden trap giving effects impossible to correct. SE seems not to have this trap.

'

I'd basically tried re-learning CAD from the start, because the two makes differ so much. That showed suddenly I need learn and understand a vast store of knowledge before producing any useful drawing of even the simplest, single component.

Basic manual orthographic draughting is fairly easy to learn or revise, and is transferable. Ignoring any latest ISO-rhubarb, a drawing text-book from 1938 is as valid as one from 1978; especially for a model of something introduced in 1908. What matters is a clear, unambiguous and accurate drawing.

The primary drawback of manual drawing is that copying a part or sub-assembly across a GA or from sheet to sheet, needs you draw it all individually. Easy but slow manually, rapid but very difficult digitally.

'

Not just CAD. Similarly, a foreign language, advanced mathematics or a musical instrument needs memorising and understanding a huge volume of knowledge, to use any of these even at basic level. If so swamped by seeing how much, that the brain closes in self-defence, you have no hope.

I think too, we all have both an innate ability for particular classes of work, and an innate, finite "volume" for it to occupy. The brain is not like a computer RAM at all; but though I have no idea if it imposes a physiological cell-count limit, it still limits the subject's volume or level.

Where I go from here? Probably, TurboCAD in 2D mode only, ignore its 3D mode; but do I even need make proper drawings at all? My "life-long" project has no drawings and progress is painfully slow due partly to so many changes and re-makes necessitated by unforeseeable problems I have created, perfectly unwittingly, sometimes years previously. Making pretty isometric pictures on a computer won't solve that problem; but I cannot make such pictures anyway.

'

That is a lovely project, your model Austin Sevens.

My approach to the initial drawings for something like that might be a set of orthographic-view photographs I can print at reasonable size (limited by the A4 printer and print definition), then trace.

I have used this to a point with my steam-wagon. Although I have not used it extensively, I discovered I can import photos of the work so far into TurboCAD, and dimension them. This does not give absolute dimensions of the photographed metal, but dimensions the photo itself sufficiently to guide the proportions and arrangements of the next stages. I can also measure the work itself for scale and accuracy; then edit the image's dimension values to match the real thing without changing the image.

(In SE's dimension tool, altering the number actively alters the drawing. Useful, if you know how to avoid some peculiar results; but not for dimensioning a photograph - if that's even possible.)