Member postings for Stuart Bridger

My Dad, now well into his '80's has been gardening all his life. he never uses growbags, but large individual pots.
Last year I had an excess of plants so grew some outside the greenhouse in pots. They did MUCH better than those in growbags in the greenhouse. I suspect the quality of compost in growbags is not what it used to be,
This year I will try the pots in the greenhouse.

Most of the paint used for pylons is micaceous haematite based.
I learned this from a visit to the excellent Kelly Mine in Devon LINK

Edited By Stuart Bridger on 09/03/2022 14:48:46

I would say essential on the mill for ones own sanity. Mind you there was never a DRO on the mill I used during my apprenticeship 40 years ago.
Even for basic work the thought of counting turns and remembering backlash increases the chance of making a mistake. Let alone the convenience of the divide by two function for centre finding. There are still enough mental challenges in the hobby outside this.

I agree a luxury on the lathe, I don't have one fitted.

If you are willing to look beyond castings, take a look at Elmers Engines. Free plans available online

Not a beam, but I am (slowly) working on #29 mine engine

Hi Peter,
tbh I have never compared a sound bar to a full setup. Sound bars "weren't a thing" when I first invested in my setup. I would say budget and room layout/WAF are the key factors. Nt everyone wants a full sized speaker under the TV. I would recommend going to a decent dealer e.g Audio-T or Richer Sounds (will have lower cost options) and explain your problem and get a demo.
By modest setup, I mean I have a pretty much entry level AV receiver and speakers. If you are not that technically savvy a sound bar will need less integration and be easier to manage than a home cinema setup.

Personally I think this has a lot to do with modern flat panel TV design and potentially the decoding of surround sound audio to the TV speakers. There is no room for anywhere near decent sized speakers in the cabinets. The sound experience is going to be seriously comprised, without investment in external kit such as a sound bar or full home cinema setup. It amazes me that all the technology seems to go into the display with sound being an afterthought. I have a modest home cinema setup with a full size front speaker delivering the center (mostly speech) channel. Two additional stereo speakers deliver the L&R front effects, which is mostly the incidental music.
I have no issues with the vast majority of programming as the sound is well separated and I can adjust the levels if needed. Without such a setup and relying on internal speakers, I wonder how they balance the centre and front LR channels? If the L&R effects are too high compared to the centre channel, it could well lead to the challenges some are reporting. Not sure if there is any controls that can be tweaked to adjust for this?

My chipmaster didn't come with a guard and the first thing I did was fit a quality industrial guard.
This was based on my experience in industry many years ago, where safety was heavily enforced.
A properly designed and installed guard shouldn't interfere with the majority of operations.

I needed to make up a missing nut for a thermal cutout. Thread was M11 x 1. Tracy tools to the rescue as usual. Tapping drill 10mm and so easy to cut.

Autoglym Fast Glass for me, not cheap, but a little goes a long way

Just had a positive experience with Hermes.
Ordered an electrical spare and it was delivered today, albeit a day late, but not on a premium service and I was kept informed via email of the delay.
The delivery agent advised the box was slightly damaged (I have seen a lot worse), He was happy to wait while I opened the box and checked the contents, which were fine.

About 35 years ago, a short part of my career was spent both using and repairing AVO multimeters.
The company I worked for had several hundred that were on a 6 monthly calibration cycle. If they failed calibration, they came to our department for repair. It could be a very time consuming task depending on the fault. Two faults filled us with dread, one was rotary switch replacement when the contacts wore out, as it was a complete strip down.
The second was the overload cut-out, which was a fiendishly cunning mechanical system that relied on the acceleration of the movement pointer to open a push to reset switch. It was real knack to get this this to trip or not to trip within specification.

Also we went out of "field jobs" outside of the workshop around the factory. If an Avo was needed this went in the basket of a butchers style trade bike as they were damned heavy to carry any distance. Hand held Fluke DMMs were a godsend as they would just fit in a lab coat pocket.

I have a 70 series Fluke handheld, that I have had since the mid 1980's. It is bulletproof in its rubber holder.
The only thing it lacks is capacitance. It gets used regularly. New Fluke pricing is eye watering though. I also have an analogue Avo, which hasn't been out of its case in well over 30 years.
Screwfix have a LAP model for less than a tenner, it lacks a continuity test buzzer but at that price....

Iain, agreed cloud backup is very viable. I use Carbonite to back up my files from my home PC

As "one of the pros" I worked in backup and storage for over 20 years. I would say that home grown backup solutions are not the way to go. This is one time to get in the "pros". As others have said, it needs to be implemented, documented and restore regularly tested. I have too many "war stories" of data loss and inability to restore data when it is really needed. There a lots of network backup solutions out there, but also remember you need copies offsite as well. What if you have a fire? A simple copy is NOT good enough, If you have bad data (virus, corruption, etc) having an exact copy of bad data on your backup drive is not good enough...
Your solution will be determined by two objectives RTO and RPO Recovery TIME and Recovery POINT
The first how quickly you need your data back and the second, how much data you are prepared to lose. I.e. if you backup daily at 7PM, your RPO is 24 hours. The smaller both these values the higher the cost, but this has to be compared against the value of the data.

One of the worst situations I encountered was an administrator who was religiously changing the backup tape every day and putting the tapes in a fire safe. I was called to help to restore data following a disk failure. I test read the tape before restoring and the date on the files was 8 months previous. There was no backup process running on the server. So the tapes had been changed daily, but nothing had been written to them

Not just the fuse rating (100A is normally recommended), but some older buildings have a "looped service". This is where the main incoming supply cabling is daisy chained in and out of properties along the street. This you can tell if you have two big cables coming into the fuse block. If this is the case you will not not be allowed to connect an EV charger until the looped service has been upgraded to a conventional star type feed. This means running in a new cable.

The ideal situation for home charging has to be Solar PV plus a power bank. But how many homes can accommodate this? Suitable roof layout and direction, plus it is a significant investment. It certainly doesn't work for my property. Sucking huge amounts of power off the grid is not attractive to me and if everyone goes that way can the grid support it? I already have a ground source heat pump, which is not cheap to run

Second point is whole life cost of the vehicle. I have an 11 year old diesel Saab. It passes the E5 emissions MOT fine and owes me nothing. I have no plans to replace it in the short term. I generally try and avoid cities. Locally Oxford is so car unfriendly, so I tend to use public transport anyhow (diesel bus??) I know at some time I will have to make a decision, but I am holding off as long as I can.

Last time I got the washing machine warranty call, I decided to play them. Showed great interest and got transferred to supervisor to finalise the contract Then came the key part they wanted my bank details. I say no, I am paying you money, give me your bank details. The guy soon got tired of this and dropped the call.

The Microsoft one can also be fun. Once I told them that I have worked in IT for 30 years. The cheeky scammer then said I should know how serious the problem is.... Either that or play completely dumb. Anything to tie them up and delay calling anyone more gullible

Nottingham Knockers, usually have fake ID and have nothing to do with probation https://www.oprepeat.co.uk/nottingham-knockers/

I agree the voice-over is very poor. What did for me last night was in relation to the Napier Railton.

I will paraphrase "it was a racer and weight was everything, it doesn't have electrics, it doesn't even have ignition,,,"

Still got mine from the late 80's. The plastic clips locking the legs down failed recently, but replacements available at a sensible price. 8