Member postings for Old School

These were the clocks my father made towards the end of his working life.

These were made in batches of five each batch was different..

This was the last orrery he made. After that he made a few clocks for pleasure.

His workshop was half a double garage only room for one person everything for the clocks was produced in the workshop. My mother made him keep four clocks one for each of their children mine is a long case clock.

Will someone please turn the picture the right way round please.

Edited By JasonB on 03/07/2020 07:52:55

I spent most of my early life around clocks my father made his living making clocks, he was FBHI. The lathe was a Myford super7 wheel crossing out and plates for skeleton clocks were done on a big pantograph engraving machine. Because of the reduction on the engraver patterns could be cut out on a bandsaw from 1/16” ply. Wheels cut on a modified horizontal mill the fly cutters made by hand and hardened and tempered.

Dials engraved using ply patterns on a rotary table with a face plate on it.

Clocks were usually made in batches of 5 nearly all skeleton clocks from the very basic to orrery clocks.

The saw in video looks very much like a fretsaw and not a piercing saw. I inherited all his hand tools all the machinery was sold. All the ply wood patterns were dumped.

Edited By Old School on 02/07/2020 20:59:29

The Raglan Little John is a superb lathe only parted with mine when I treated myself to a Myford 254 just before retirement

Yes you can citric acid and a little washing up liquid and do it hot you will get good results, change the solution regularly

Excellent video and tool, first time I have watched a video of this type to the end well done.

I use M-Machine for most of the metal I use, what I like is that they tell you the grades of the material and a lot of what I make I need to know for the application.

i was making some bevels gears that would be nitride hardened, they hadn’t got the size I wanted were prepared to get a bar in and sell me six inches.

I bought an 8” Grafton rotary table 5 years it has been used a lot with no problems at all. I think it spent most of its life in a cupboard and got a coat of paint occasionally.

The speed should be in excess of 300kph in an controline aircraft, the current tether car record is 285kph held by a Norwegian his car and engine are home built his engine revs to 42 to 43,000. Both types of engine run on straight fuel 80% methanol and 20% castor oil.

Barrie that’s an interesting engine project like the spark erosion for doing the transfer ports certainly better than the cast crankcases on my 2.5cc tether car engines. What piston liner set up have the gone for ABC or AAC ?Look forward to seeing some results.

I worked in the plastic pipe industry, making PE and PP pipes, all the purple pipe you see down motorways etc is mainly PE and is flame treated so that the print will stick to the pipe. Flame treat was phased out and we went to a plasma treatment and finally the ink producers made an ink that would stick and meet the requirements for print adhesion.

Not much will stick to PE or PP.

My X3 died a few years ago and I replaced the control board with one from Arc. My mate had one that died as well the fault was found on his by a friendly electrician it turned out to be a resistor the big white pot one one of the wires was broken on inspection mine had the same fault.

Thanks for the help got one on order.

Where can I get a knob for my Fobco Star drill like the one in the picture or something similar.

Thanks, Not on their website will call them tomorrow

Where can I get some loose needle rollers 1/16” diameter x 1/4” long for a Dooling 61 rebuild its the engine for the tether car below that I am building.

Must admit I am struggling to get it to work as well.

Martin Connelly, that Mach 3 milling wizard looks useful where can I find it.

thanks Oliver

I have heard nothing from from my local ME club since lock down, not much from the BMFA. The good news is my local fishing club has opened its lakes and the field archery club has opened its wood.

Guess what I am going to be doing it will make a change from the workshop.

Before I retired I ran a UKAS accredited test laboratory amongst other things we bought 2 digital callipers from Arc a 1000mm and 600mm at the price I thought it was worth a try. When we received them they went of for calibration at a UKAS accredited calibration laboratory both came back with calibration certificates confirming they met the required standard for that type of measuring equipment.

I will be 67 this year my 5th year of retirement, I buy what I want for my workshop and my sport of tethered car racing. Luckily my son has set him self up with a workshop now he’s moved out and also races tether cars and has a couple of fast old cars.
I am lucky he told my wife when I pop my clogs he is going have my workshop so she has no worries about getting rid of it.

Over the lock down I have built a Russian tether car kit from the 70s/80s it comes with a die cast chassis and the rest of the material to build it requires a lathe at least to build. The kits must have been produced in big numbers. They are still available on eBay.

The then eastern bloc had youth houses to encourage the youngsters to take up a hobby the one in Estonia still exists and has a nice workshop for the youngsters to use. They are fighting to save it at the moment they want to knock it down and build houses.