What Did You Do Today (2017)

[Clive HartlandParticipant @clivehartland94829]

Bees and things again, they have found an Asian Hornets nest in Jersey. The first this year, I expect more will be found on the mainland soon.

Otherwise the bees are doing well for a change, I counted 7 honey boxes that I can take.

Clive

[HacksawParticipant @hacksaw]

Clive ,do bumble bees have fights with honey bees or wasps ? T'other night ,there was a bee crawling on some clover in my garden ,it couldn't fly ..On closer inspection its wings looked half chewed off ?

[HOWARDTParticipant @howardt]

Rubber eyecup for a Canon 400D is an Ef type, £9.99 at all good camera shops, if there any around these days!!

Type Eb will also fit, but the rubber bit is bigger, this is meant for the bigger bodied cameras.

[Clive HartlandParticipant @clivehartland94829]

Hi Hacksaw, I have watched the bees busy on plants and flowers and have never seen aggression from Bumble bees, they have a defense response which is in 3 stages. The first is they raise 2 legs up in the air and if further pushed will raise up one side of the body with 3 legs raised up and finally they will rear up in the air and appear aggressive. On flowers where there are other nectar gatherers they will shift away, the aggressive nectar gatherer is the wasp which will settle on a flower that it thinks is giving nectar because another insect is on it.

Bumble bee stings are mild and basically it is not always the bees that sting people but wasps. If you sat on a bee it will maybe sting you but it will not attack you unless you are in close proximity to it's home hive (Say within a meter or so)

Clive

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

Fixed the washing machine yesterday but now it's raining. Hope it clears up before my clothes run out.

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Posted by Hacksaw on 10/07/2017 21:02:03:

I've lost the rubber bit on my 400d view finder too

I haven't, it's taped up with duck tape to keep the light out.

£1.79 on ebay. Free p&p.

May not be OEM part

Neil

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Got caught on the A38 is an incredible and long-lasted downpour. At one point a lorry on eh oppositr carriageway went through a puddle. I literally had a wave coming at me, like a solid wall, in all my years of driving I have never had that much water dumped on my windscreen in one go, just keep going strainht and wait!

[Mike PooleParticipant @mikepoole82104]

Posted by Hacksaw on 10/07/2017 23:23:51:

Clive ,do bumble bees have fights with honey bees or wasps ? T'other night ,there was a bee crawling on some clover in my garden ,it couldn't fly ..On closer inspection its wings looked half chewed off ?

I observed exactly the same thing a week ago, I was cutting my lawn/clover and saw a bumble bee crawling with wing damage, I thought I may have been the culprit and terminated him as he did not seem viable.

Mike

[clogsParticipant @clogs]

Hi all,

I think u'll find that the Bumble bee's wings are just worn out…..

very similar to Honey bees, after their hard work they don't all make it home and in the final stages look very tatty indeed…….

out of interest, if I remember correctly H/b's only live for around 6 weeks anyway….. .

Clogs

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

Posted by Clive Hartland on 11/07/2017 08:36:37:

Bumble bee stings are mild and basically it is not always the bees that sting people but wasps. If you sat on a bee it will maybe sting you but it will not attack you unless you are in close proximity to it's home hive (Say within a meter or so)

Clive

Once on a Scout Camp the bees decided that the inside of my uniform shirt (which was hung up in a tree to keep it out of the way) was a good place for a kip. The little so-and-sos certainly stung me when I put it on. However even about half a dozen bee stings were nothing like as bad as one wasp sting. Ever after that I'd give clothes a good shake before putting them on if they had been hanging up.

[Anonymous]

Admin this morning and ordering materials for a work job. Also set up a DD for my next payment to HMRC.

This afternoon I knocked out some brass gland nuts, as the last time I made a batch I unaccountably didn't make enough with a 5/16" through hole. All machining other than threading was done on the Britan:

Internal thread, into a blind hole, was done on the manual lathe, apposite to a recent thread on the forum as they're 3/8" BSP, ie, 19tpi. Less than 3 minutes each:

I've also recently made a batch of M6 studs and nuts to hold the clack valves onto the boilers, the boiler maker being metric, despite me settling on ¼" BSF for everything else.

Also this afternoon I thought I'd get a price for some tungsten alloy bar, as I had a thought of making the governor balls from tungsten as it is much denser than steel or brass. I asked for a quote for 300mm of 20mm diameter. They sent me a quote for 300mm of 25mm diameter, £689 I still haven't picked myself off the floor. I don't know what plan B is yet, but I'll be following it!

Andrew

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Andrew could you not make them from the shank of a 20mm cutter, not sure what you would cut it with but you may be able to arrange some form of grinder and template to do the outside. Is it a pickering type as the slot for the spring steel strip may be more of a problem?

J

PS I'll resist on complementing your nuts

[David Standing 1Participant @davidstanding1]

Posted by JasonB on 11/07/2017 20:51:42:

PS I'll resist on complementing your nuts

I hope you meant complimenting Jason, I don't know which is worse

[Frances IoMParticipant @francesiom58905]

re complementing nuts – my now deceased friend’s favourite T shirt (bought in Spain and worn on any ‘car bashing’ occasion) was a rampant machine screw (male) approaching a demure nut (female but with a very worried look)
– he tried to get the Spanish missing phrase ‘not without a washer’ added but no joy

[MikeParticipant @mike89748]

Had a real laugh this afternoon – recorded a programme of my favourite music for the local radio station. If anyone wants to torture their eardrums, it's just come up on their website: http://www.radiobuckie.co.uk/index2.html .

This has either consolidated my position of village eccentric, or got me firmly labelled as village idiot!

[David Standing 1Participant @davidstanding1]

Posted by Frances IoM on 11/07/2017 21:31:54:
re complementing nuts – my now deceased friend's favourite T shirt (bought in Spain and worn on any 'car bashing' occasion) was a rampant machine screw (male) approaching a demure nut (female but with a very worried look)
– he tried to get the Spanish missing phrase 'not without a washer' added but no joy

I remember a cartoon of that hanging on the wall in 1969 when I started my apprenticeship at Marconi!

[Clive HartlandParticipant @clivehartland94829]

Yes, a bees life is about 6 months through late Autumn to Spring. But a bee emerging in the Spring and flying as a foraging bee may as you say last 6 weeks. They forage and the wings start to tatter and they can only bring a small amount of nectar back and then they just go out and do not return.

A bee has two stomachs, one for it's own use and one to process the nectar it collects. It produces an enzyme which converts Sucrose (Nectar) into Fructose during its foraging.

Clive

[Anonymous]

Posted by JasonB on 11/07/2017 20:51:42:

PS I'll resist on complementing your nuts

The only thing I can say to that is balls.

Tungsten that is. All the tungsten balls I could find were precision balls, on a par with slip gauges and priced accordingly. Initially I thought about tungsten carbide balls, as used in ball races, but just didn't see how I was going to cut them. I hadn't thought about tool shanks, but the same problem, how do I cut the material.

The governor is of the Pickering type with two hemispheres (one with a slot) screwed together. Also there are hoops in the balls to stop them flying too far out. So ideally I need to be able to drill 1mm holes in said balls.

I went for an alloy W97-Ni-Fe, it being the densest of the heavy tungsten alloys. The alloys are not particularly hard and are regarded as being straightforward to machine.

So far the best I can find, from China on Ebay, are small lengths of pure tungsten or tungsten-copper alloys. Pure tungsten seems to have a reputation for being poor to machine. Possibly like pure aluminium versus the alloys? Tungsten-copper is regarded as easy to machine. It's density is about twice that of steel, and on a par with tungsten carbide. So about 20% worse than the best of the heavy alloys but still a darn sight better than steel.

As a starter I might buy a short length of small diameter pure tungsten just to see what it is like to machine.

Andrew

[PeroParticipant @pero]

Andrew

I have some pure tungsten rod ex China but haven't had the courage to try cutting it as yet (and won't be for a while due to other priorities). It is very brittle – two pieces broke during transit (fully compensated for by the seller).

My intention was/is to use it for governor balls as the SG is about the same as gold and twice that of lead which should address some of the scaling issues. From my reading I understand that it is machinable using standard tooling but as it is a sintered product it can vary depending on exactly how it is formed and this information is not always available from the small suppliers.

Apparently there are also health issues with machining it – from inhalation of fine dust – so a dust mask may be appropriate.

I would be very interested to hear how you get on machining balls if you go down that route.

Cheers Pero

[Anonymous]

Posted by Pero on 12/07/2017 02:57:14:

I have some pure tungsten rod ex China but haven't had the courage to try cutting it as yet (and won't be for a while due to other priorities). It is very brittle – two pieces broke during transit

That's interesting, thanks. May be that's why pure tungsten is tricky to machine?

Andrew

[Sam Longley 1Participant @samlongley1]

Being a beginner & at the risk of looking a total idiot – does the tungsten have to be "pure".

Surely the SG will not vary much if it is mixed with a few contaminating metals. I ask because I wonder why you could not save a fortune by just buying some tungsten fishing weights & turning those. The impurities would probably make them softer & the cost would be softer on the pocket. I cannot imagine the specific gravity being that much different, or is it? Or would the balance between 2 different weights be the problem?

[Martin KyteParticipant @martinkyte99762]

Out of curiosity, is the mass so much of an issue. Not having ever made a governer so far as I can see the position is not mass dependent but the controling force is. Could you not arrange an increased preload?

regards Martin

[Ian S CParticipant @iansc]

When I rebuilt the Stuart Turner S9, the fly balls for the governor were missing, so I softened a pair of ball bearings a fraction bigger than the size on the S9 drawing, and with the extra weight the governor was able the hold engine speed over quite a range of load and pressure.

Ian S C

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

I wonder how much heavier balls are really needed. Model engines tend to rev faster than the full size with the reves going up as they get smaller so you will have more force acting on the balls due to the higher speeds.

A slight adjustment of pully diameters would also give greater ball speeds without looking too out of place except to the most avid of rivit counter. Added to this you could also use a thinner spring material so again less force needed to make them swing out.

Can Tungsten be cut on an EDM? or could you grind away half a ball on the surface grinder with a suitable wheel, then use a narrow one to cut the recess for the spring. Silver solder the retaining loops on.

J

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Posted by Martin Kyte on 12/07/2017 09:35:01:

Out of curiosity, is the mass so much of an issue. Not having ever made a governer so far as I can see the position is not mass dependent but the controling force is. Could you not arrange an increased preload?

regards Martin

Just like the ideal banking angle for a track or the lean of a cyclist, the angle depends only on gravity, diameter of the circle and speed.

But the FORCE is in proportion to the mass so heavier/bigger balls can apply a greater force to the valve.

This is only true of simple unsprung balls. Once you start playing with the geometry with things like crossed levers or adding springs this changes, of course.

[Author]

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