Member postings for Fowlers Fury

Reproduced - my posting here from 2018:-

The subject has been aired several times on here. After I made the simple version with vertical cutter, its shortcomings were soon evident. The main irritant being accurate measurement when advancing the tool tip. I then made one to the Geo. Thomas design and had no further problems.
(There were several postings on here in early November 2018 about b-c boring bars)
There are 2 sources of his design:-

1. GHT's original article in Model Engineer. Model Engineer, 3rd June 1977 p. 615 (Vol 143, No. 3562)

2. That most valuable compendium of GHT's articles - "The Model Engineers Workshop Manual (vol 1)" 1992. Pub: Tee Publishing, ISBN 1-85761-000-8. It's on page 92.

His comment about the normal, 90 deg tool resulting in flexure of a boring bar was well made IMHO. By putting the tool in the bar at an angle, that effect is very much reduced as well as resulting in very much easier ability to measure the swing with a micrometer. Geo. Thomas wrote “….the boring bar in its usual form leaves a lot to be desired. My main objection to it is the absence of any controlled means of advancing the cutter and all my design attempts to provide a suitable means ended in severe weakening of the bar at the point of maximum bending moment.”

IMHO it would time well spent to make one to the GHT design at the maximum diameter commensurate with your cylinder bores.

This was my GHT b-c bar boring out a 5" CI cylinder casting.

That brass item on the casting, under the boring bar, contains several small Neodymium magnets. It should have been within a plastic bag so that the collected iron bits could have been emptied straight in the bin !

Topic covered on here several times in the past.

I use Jenolite, painted on to the dried surface of the sink at night after working with CI. Next morning wash sink with water & all traces of rust spots gone from the acrylic and no aggravation form SWMBO.

However, potentially bigger sources of ear-ache can arise from the carbon particles deposited on clothes & in hair. These contaminate - so I'm informed - "everything around the house".
I've tried in vain to explain that machining close-grained cast iron is one of the few pleasures left to an old man.

Very grateful to Jason B and Martin K.
The Evans dwg of the valve chamber is reproduced below.
In answer to Jason ~ yes, his distance is 1.874"
I made one attempt to machine the valve chamber i.e. liner, in 2 parts but found particular difficulties with the varying bore and especially producing square holes for the ports in precise locations. So - next, the valve liner was made in 3 parts (see red lines below) which proved a much better method for maintaining accuracy.
However for months now, I've been unable to get the valve timing to make sense. Martin Evans did not make any reference to setting the eccentric etc. All my dimensions are within about 0.004" of Evans' dwg (checked innumerable times). I've tried the old LBSC methodology of equalising air bubbles from the drain cocks at F&BDCs but cannot get equivalent air flow. I've tried exactly centralising the bobbin within the chamber again though there's no logic to air emerging from the drain cocks as the wheels are rotated by hand. All done with the main piston at precisely mid point.
I've read ad nauseam articles by such luminaries as Dons Young & Ashton etc but found no references to this "exhaust clearance" or at least, nothing I could understand.
In desperation, I've spent many hours producing a CAD dwg of the entire valve chamber and bobbin in order to "move" the bobbin along the X axis and see how the ports were (theoretically) uncovered. It was checking Evans' dwg for the nth time that I noticed this "Exhaust clearance 0.020" which prompted the plea for help.

I think Martin however has identified the problem (and my naivety) .
Now though, machining the bobbin to create that "0,020" is easy enough so renewed thanks !

Duncan,

It's a subject I was researching intently just as the article appeared by "Artisan".
I have copies of that and other relevant follow-up articles.

This evening I'll PM you and if you still need them, I'll gladly forward.

In a Martin Evans series from back in 1975, he appears to have pasted, as an after-thought, a drawing of the inside valve "bobbin" of a 3 cylinder loco.
It's clear enough except for his comment "Exhaust clearance 0.020". (Elsewhere he specified exactly where the exhaust ports should be positioned within the valve chamber. Furthermore, he shows the ends of the bobbin (not the rings) at mid posn. exactly in line with the outer edges of the transfer passages to the main cylinder).

I'd welcome info please on what this comment might mean in terms of the bobbin.

Perhaps your greater concern ought to be exposure to oil mist viz " I have just fitted a mist coolant system".
It's less of a problem in a workplace fitted with approved, adequate exhaust ventilation, but if you've a home workshop without such controls or proper respiratory & eye protection, please consider doing a search on "Inhalation of oil mist".

"I've not got hard stops on the table."

I should have been more explicit. By "hard stops" I meant at the end of the lead screw (threaded rod) which moves the mill table i.e. the point at which the table wont move further. It is the reference point for repeated measurement.

"Doesn’t your method rely on the laser axis being absolutely co-axial with the body? I’ve had a couple of laser collimaters for my telescope, and even with those the dot describes a circle on a distant wall, if the body is rotated in a v-block. "

Apologies for previous brevity again. I don't believe that "being absolutely co-axial with the body" is too critical providing the laser pointer is held in the vice jaws at the same angle to the horizontal (hence shining on the cross lines on wall). The cross lines in the workshop are about 4 metres from the laser source so when lined up, it repeats the original, DTI-based, set up accurately enough. I do check from time to time and haven't found significant change. Below is a picture taken of the laser spot centralised.The image is poor as the laser spot didn't focus well.

One of those many jobs awaiting my getting 'a round tuit' is to mount the laser pointer in a substantial block which would sit within the vice jaws at the correct angle and orientation just to save a few minutes each time.

Re "Are there any tips/tricks/standard procedures for doing this more efficiently? "

Not professing this to be more efficient, nor is it a standard procedure but it might qualify as a tip........

• Ensure vice is pulled back so mounting bolts are tight against T slots, tighten bolts enough for light grip.
• Use one of the methods (dti against a parallel?) for aligning your vice with the mill table wound right out - or in - so its hard against the stop. Tighten the vice down.
• Lightly clamp a laser pointer (ideally metal bodied, there''s one for GBP1.99 on Fleabuy) in the vice jaws so the spot shows on a far surface.
• Now you need a vertical line right under the point (I find thin black felt tip line on small piece of baking foil glued to wall is best with a red laser).
• Despite the invited ridicule, I find this to be reproducibly accurate with the mill table in original full out (or full in) position to reset the vice parallel to table movement.

You state they were prescription reading glasses. If the optician's prescription was to correct astigmatism (unlikely for reading glasses) then I would not attempt to modify the lens surface, however slightly.

As most of the cheapo shops sell 'self-select' reading glasses for less than a fiver (e.g. B&M, Poundland etc) - why bother?

I'm 100% in agreement with Dave (SoD) above. This subject of damnable cookies, privacy and "solutions" was aired on here not so long ago. The whole business reminds me of the old adage "you can't win you can't loose, you can't even get out of the game".
I use Firefox and have added the excellent Extension "Behind the Overlay". When confronted with that infuriating overlay demanding you "select" cookie preferences, "Behind the Overlay" will, with one click of their icon - remove it and you can then use the website without more ado. But - and there's a but - a few sites have got wise to this and the screen freezes i.e. you can't win, you can't.........etc. Bit if I really need to view that site then the other option is to load the free programme "Sandboxie". This AFAIK - will permit you to accept all cookies from the site and any other crap the site chooses to dump on you. When you've finished your browser session, you then empty the sandbox, so nothing is retained.
A decent VPN is also a safeguard but that brings its own irritations and still requires a Sandbox. Furthermore Google will bombard you with notices that some foreigner is trying to use your passwords.

Like many others above, I've used Firefox for years through its various versions, studiously ignoring all of M/soft's browser offerings.
However, the full version of Firefox has become a bit "resource heavy" of late. It is showing around 300Mb of memory usage just now on my system.
(Press Ctrl+Alt+Delete together in order to load Task Manager and see).
Whereas loading Edge instead shows it uses about 100Mb less.
So maybe if your system is short on memory (if still using Win 7 that maybe the case) then you might find Edge is less stressful despite its many annoyances & frustrations c/f Firefox.

Nigel's reference to a "gripping" screwdriver prompted a visit to the garage to retrieve a similar sounding device made by Draper and purchased within the last couple of years. The other tool shown was purchased in one of the 'Pound shops'. Depression of the spring-loaded, red T-handle pushes out from the end 3 little prongs which can grip surprisingly well when needing to recover bolts dropped into crankcases.

What really annoys me is that if perchance I do not drop something of value during time in the workshop, that little sod who lives under the bench satiates him/her-self by tangling up all the mains leads on my power tools during the hours of darkness.

Dave's bullet point 1 has prompted some investigation which has confirmed his thesis.
I selected a b&w image of a loco from my files and pasted it into the blank posting space.
Pressing <Add posting> brought up the message "xxxxx characters too many, spilt into different postings" or words to that effect.
The image was progressively reduced in size and dpi until it was just 55Kb and that message still came up though with a different value for the "excess" characters. I tried it in various file types (jpg, png, pdf etc) but no joy.

Thanks for the enlightenment.

Howard - this is by way of an experiment as I no longer have Win 7 but it "should" work with any screen text or image. I wont know until I press "Post a reply" and see it !!!

1. I opened a blank "Post a reply"
2. I held down the right mouse button whilst dragging the cursor over the text in your letter above.
3. Then released the right mouse button and moved the cursor to the blank "post a reply".
4. Then, I used the standard Windows command of Ctrl + V [which means "paste"]
5. The captured text from your post then appeared.
6. In the top right corner there was a red arrow. Clicking on this created space above the copied text which is where I am typing this.

Howard Lewis	19/03/2021 16:20:38
4554 forum posts 9 photos	Looks like there is no hope of my being able to use Windows 7 to paste / import an image into a post! Can JUST manage to paste / import (whatever the term is ) to put an image into an Album. No wonder we dinosaurs became extinct! Howard
	Message member Ignore member Send to friend Quote Report

Edited By Fowlers Fury on 19/03/2021 16:36:00

Re. "The other question is, can the font size in a post I’m writing be changed? I find it far too tiny to see write and read and have to [copy] and [paste] with Arial 13pt using LibreOffice, as I've done here."

If you're one of the myopic dinosaurs like me using Windows and a wheeled mouse, then hold down the Ctrl key and rotate the mouse wheel.

Neil > "You can switch off defragging for an SSD, it doesn't speed one up as there's no seek time with an SSD "

Exactly ~ and of course as mentioned above, regular defrag procedures are detrimental to the life of a SSD, which is anyway less than that of a HDD.

Though others may well have had better experience, I recently HAD to buy a new drive as the old HDD gave up the ghost. OK, more expensive but I'll get a SSD.
No anticipated problems in configuring the SSD I naively thought - I have a weekly Windows backup on an ext HDD and everything will copy over OK.

It does not. "Gotcha No. 1"
As multiple searches online via a laptop confirmed, a Win10 backup keeps a copy of your personal files only - not the OS + your progs.
Ah well then, there's plenty of guidance on d/loading a copy of M/soft Media Creation Tool and from there, the creation of a new, up-to-date Win10 OS.

"Gotcha No. 2" is that it is hellish hard and takes many hours to try and incorporate all those personal files into the new OS. Docs, images and music etc are no problem but reinstalling emails, e-addresses via .pst files and your progs are a subcategory of Gotcha No 2. I gave up on that after many hours.

Naive thinking Chapter II
I also had taken a disc image of my old, defunct HDD. It was about 3 months old but "it'll be dead easy to just recreate the image onto the new SSD".

Wrong again = Gotcha No. 3.............
As further online searching revealed, M/soft will only allow a disk image to be restored to the original disc from which it was taken !!!
(Expletives deleted)

Eventually discovered that you can partially defeat Gotcha No. 3 by a tedious process which will "mount" it. This produces a huge, multi Gb file of everything in the image. (Yes, you find you need a high capacity ext drive).

I can appreciate M/soft don't want to invite litigation for allowing the easy copying of commercial, copyright progs. This would be the case if it were possible for the unscrupulous to sell copies of disc images or backups loaded with pirated s/ware.

But I will be truly delighted to read of others' easy solution to this not-so-unusual need to reproduce your entire, up-to-date but failed HDD on to a new one. Perhaps one of the commercial progs have been proven to accomplish this within a few hours without tears or constant monitoring so that you finish with a fully working, 100% restored main drive. I'll gladly buy a license if so.
If it's suggested that a total clone of your HDD is taken onto a 2nd HDD every night, then that doesn't satisfy the criteria above !

There's an old saying "You'll never know how good your backup is until you really need it"

You wrote " I don't want suggestions for 'fixes' as I've guaranteed to have already tried / implemented them with no perceivable difference."

Hence you will have done the following:-

Pressed Ctrl + Alt + Del keys together when your pc has finally loaded up.
Then clicked on Task Manager.
Clicked on the tab "Startup" showing you the impact that start up progs are having on your computer's resources.
You will have disabled any progs you don't need at start up.

Also, if you have a 'big' antivirus prog installed e.g. Norton, you will have already checked that it's likely to be examining all running boot processes etc when starting and you will be aware it can delay things appreciably.

Yes, absolutely a SSD (Solid State Drive) will speed things up no end. But you'll be well aware of the numerous Windows "gotchers!" in transferring your operating system from a HDD to a SSD.

" I just wonder if this type of OS is just becoming outdated and too top heavy."
I don't find it (Win10) "outdated" in any way. Not sure what "top heavy" means but in its current manifestation, it certainly occupies a vast number of gigabytes.

A lot of justified support above for a spotting 'scope to meet your needs.
A tripod is essential and the 'scope needn't cost a fortune. At the Midlands ME exhibitions some years ago, there was often a stand run by a Chinese (?) lady who sold various optical devices. I think I paid GBP70 for one of her spotting scopes with tripod and coated lenses. Its performance is impressive even if the focus control knob is a little imprecise. Here is a composite image taken with a Leica Q2 of a cement works about 2.5 miles away. It shows the images taken at x25 and x75 with the camera via a home made adapter coupled to the 'scope. (For posting this, the image size and resolution has been much reduced).

Nick, not sure I'd want to use expanded polystyrene in a garage/workshop location even when the EPS contains fire retardant. Have you had a look at Kay Metzeler's safety data sheet?
Some points therein:

• Extreme caution must be exercised when storing, shaping and applying EPS to ensure total protection from flame and/or fire.
• EPS should be kept away from all substances of unknown composition that could contain solvents e.g. paints or adhesive.
• Avoid all sources of ignition: sparks, open flame.
• Incompatible materials: Solvents e.g. paints or adhesive / Creosote / Diesel / Heating oil / Petrol / Paint thinners / White spirit

Some years ago, I went for this product to insulate the inside of steel garage doors:- https://www.weatherstop.co.uk/collections/garage-door-insulation

Very effective, it seems to be polyethylene "bubble sheet" inside a double layer of aluminium foil.