Anecdotes-04-Paulines cube .

I'd go along with the spirit of that. On your journey through life you can either pull up the ladders behind you or for each river you cross turn round and build a bridge for the next person.

regards Martin

Michael.

Do you have a phone number for Pauline ?

You get it with every digital subscription to ME <g>

Chris

Using different machines and hand work ? If I remember right one face was done on V. mill, one on H mill one on lathe in 4 jaw, one on lathe on F/plate, two by hand, saw and file. Also made ahole in gauge plate to test all sides. Mine was not very good, but I'm not very pretty either.

This was one of the first trade training tasks that I did as an Army apprentice back in 1953 after 6 months square bashing..

A 1" square block and a 2" plate about a half inch thick. The block had to pass in all faces and we were not allowed to draw file. Got round that by using chalk on the files.

Firstly I filed and squared up the plate to size as it then only needed the square hole doing. Then I set to and filed up the block using the biggest roughest file I had down to about 5 thou over size.

Then I drilled out the plate hole and filed that to about 5 thou under size and square. Back to the cube and dressed up 2 faces parallel and then worked on 2 adjacent faces ensuring squareness, no light visible under the square on 3 faces. Then filed to size to make it all square and to size, this now became my gauge. All this under the scrutiny of the Instructor who would walk by eyeing up everything you did.

Next was to fit the cube to the plate which just took a bit of time by using one corner of cube to get a fairly tight fit on opposite sides. Slowly dressing the hole out until it was a push fit all faces. then I used the finest file and chalk to clean up and qualify the fit as a sliding fit. lastly I took off the sharp edges and handed it in for assessment.

The following week I was transferred to the Instrument Wing and became an Instrument Tech.

Then I spent 6 months bench fitting using different materiels like Tufnol and Brass to do much the same thing before going on to make tools that I would use in my trade. Calipers and Dividers and Scribers and Tap wrenches and Die holders. This set was then entered into the Model Engineer Exhibition in London and won a Diploma of merit, signed by the well known J M Maskelyne, this was in Aug.54.

Clive

Clive, it's a wonder that they didn't transfer you to the cook house after that test piece. Ian S C