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More about me:

Retired in Devon and trying to teach myself the rudiments of metalwork. I have no experience whatsoever, not even school metalwork - we did realy useful things like Latin instead - so a fair bit of catching up to do. Was involved in engineering contracting through work, largish scale though, our standard fasteners were M24. Started out as an industrial chemist but moved into engineering fairly quickly. Have run my own businesses for the last few years but all sold up now and not a single moment of regret. Actually running a business is fine apart the two major problems , these being employees and customers. Take those away and it would be a pleasant occupation. No particular flavour of model engineering at the present, I just want to teach myself a few basics. I am building a generic beam engine from Oldboatguys plans on the HMEM site but this is really just to give me a bit of a push to use and learn techniques. I am lucky enough to have a double garage for my workshop and now that the cars haves been banished outside, it provides a comfortable retirement home for some ageing machine tools. Current line-up is a Bridgeport mill, Boxford 500VSL lathe and an Elliot 10M shaper that I have yet to get to grips with. Along the way I have also acquired a muffle furnace good for 1200 C which I want to fit with a decent ramp / soak controller for heat treatment. I have also just bought a compressor as I want to put an air system in for a bit of bead blasting and painting, not to mention running my beam engine in a year or so!

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