What Did You Do Today 2019

[IanTParticipant @iant]

Posted by Nigel McBurney 1 on 02/11/2019 22:59:19:

Andrew those 2 Es are nice machines,watch out when you go to get one of your files from the wall clips,dont come up quick and bang your head under the mill overarm sticking out the back

I found that the vertical head gets heavier as you get older,I used to get my mate to help me lift it,they can be lifted with an engine crane

Andrew/Nigel – The overarm on my Victoria tends to be mostly parked at the back and I've lost count of the times I've come up under it and banged my head. It now has a towel wrapped & tied around it and whilst I still occasionally hit it, it's not nearly so painful…

I use a very simple A-frame with pulleys to lift heavy things up and down in my workshop. No wheels, it gets moved to where I need it and assembled in-situ. I couldn't get an engine frame in the spaces available. Mine is made from doubled-up Dexion and cost nothing. Stores flat against the wall. It was a temporary solution that has served me well over many years now. Quite safe provided you don't go daft.

My vertical head is also very heavy but gets put on/off in two stages. One is the lift to the table, the other the lift to the bolting position. The A-frame lifts it to the table but I have an MT3 'dummy' (fits into the heads mandrel) on the table and then it's simple to use the table to hold and position the head using the knee & table controls. I'd do myself serious damage if I had to hold the head up whilst trying to get the bolts in place otherwise…

Regards,

IanT

[Phil WhitleyParticipant @philwhitley94135]

Today I lit my forge for the first time, filled the workshop with smoke, set the CO detector off, and had to open all the doors and windows, but it was fun! Some mods to the flue system are needed! However, the Bosh is full and I added a bottle of CH leaksealer to be on the safe side, and no leaks! big relief. I have it on video and will post up a link to it when I upload it.

Phil

[Martin King 2Participant @martinking2]

Hi All,

Decide yesterday to have a bit of lathe practice and turn an old brass plumbing fitting into a watchmakers oil dribbler.

Bored out the inside of the fitting and faced the ends, then cut 2 discs to just fit in the ends leaving a really small gap for soft solder to run. Tapped one end 5/16 BSF then soldered on the ends and clean up in the lathe.

Can't see the joins!

Used a couple of small scraps to make the cap and needle. Turned the needle taper as close as I could and finished off with a needle file.

A simple task but for a newbie like me a confidence builder!

Cheers, Martin

[DalboyParticipant @dalboy]

Not so much metalworking but I did need to sort out my draw that I keep my micrometres in as two of them don't have there own box well the 0-2" did have a metal box mut was falling apart. So rather than have them keep knocking about I decided to make an insert for them.

The base is lined with a swatch that you find in shops I had a complete book of them and kept only those that I thought would come in handy for small projects. A little piece of mahogany a router and they now have a nice place to keep them secure.

Edited By Derek Lane on 10/11/2019 15:00:02

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Fine work there, Martin and Derek, there.

My work today was more on the heavy and rather somewhere-near side, continuing to install rails for a light-weight over-head travelling-hoist in the workshop. By setting up the rails and their columns first, I'll have something I can at least use with a scaffolding-pole and block-&-tackle until I've designed and made the travelling beam and crab.

I foresee its main use will be for handling the rather heavy chucks for the Harrison lathe: being short and not as strong as I was, changing screw-on chucks is a bit iffy for both machine and I when done entirely manually.

I've also a small Denbigh horizontal mill to re-commission, and both a motor conversion and quill service on the Myford mill, to consider; with lifting-gear likely to be very useful for these.

[Mark RandParticipant @markrand96270]

Did a productive job in the shed today! I painted the dining room radiator. Unfortunately, that meant that I couldn't do anything else in the shed for the rest of the day in case I raised some dust.

[Anthony KnightsParticipant @anthonyknights16741]

Today (well actually it's yesterday now) I decided to see if I could repair a quite old, but good quality ink jet printer, which has been stood around for ages doing nothing. Tried a test print and sure enough, the heads appear to be blocked. A look on the internet showed the correct sequence to dismantle far enough to remove the cartridge holder with the print heads. Did my best to avoid getting blathered in ink, without success. Cleaned up everything and appear to have successfully unblocked the print heads. Water with a bit of detergent seems to remove the ink from everything except my skin. Swarfega had limited success and the only way to get my hands fairly clean was to use a Brillo pad which I presume removed the top layer of skin cells. Printer is now re-assembled and I am expecting a new pack of ink cartridges to be available later today.

[thaiguzziParticipant @thaiguzzi]

Martin & Derek;

simple but nice work. Congrats.

[Ron LadenParticipant @ronladen17547]

It was yesterday actually we were in the town and passed the 3 mobile shop so as a long standing customer popped in to see if I could have a free upgrade to a new phone, no problem sir and after 20 minutes walked out with a new £400 phone. We had a coffee in M&S and as we were leaving and standing at the top of the stone stairs the wife asked to see the new phone she was admiring it when she dropped it and I watched it bounce down 12 steps to the bottom. It was wrecked the screen was smashed and wouldn't work, I went back to 3 but I hadn't taken out any cover so had to buy a pbone. I didn't spend £400 but they did me a good deal on another model which is still street's ahead of my old phone. The wife is still upset over it despite my telling her not to worry about it in fact the new one seems to be nicer to use and the camera is excellent so not all bad. 

I know I know it was a bit stupid handing the wife the phone at the top of the stairs

 

Edited By Ron Laden on 15/11/2019 05:57:44

Edited By Ron Laden on 15/11/2019 06:15:45

Edited By Ron Laden on 15/11/2019 06:16:24

[V8EngParticipant @v8eng]

Ouch really sorry to hear it she will take a long time to get over that!

If you are any where near a Timpson store take the damaged phone in to them for an estimate I found .surprisingly low Repair  costs.

I have no connection to them other than being a satisfied customer and many other repairers are available.

Edited By V8Eng on 15/11/2019 08:17:35

[JourneymanParticipant @journeyman]

Posted by Ron Laden on 15/11/2019 05:53:45:

… dropped it and I watched it bounce down 12 steps to the bottom. It was wrecked the screen was smashed and wouldn't work, I went back to 3 but I hadn't taken out any cover so had to buy a phone.

Ron, worth checking your household contents insurance, the phone may well be covered on that.

John

[Ron LadenParticipant @ronladen17547]

Thanks V8/John

I will check our contents insurance to see if it is covered.

Ron

[DalboyParticipant @dalboy]

I received this Depth Micrometer after putting a bid on E bay for the grand total of £22.60 but felt that the box needed tidying up before putting it in my toolbox.

The first is the before and the second after with a new piece of sponge in the lid to hold everything in place as well as some bits of felt where all the components sit. This was after a cleanup and reseal the wood.

[EmgeeParticipant @emgee]

Quality tool, bargain price, nice looking box.

Emgee

[The Novice EngineerParticipant @thenoviceengineer]

Finally found an easy way of making gaskets for small steam engines, though took all day to get a useful sample. The original engine was not made with CNC but by hand with holes not quite lining up with my precision made bits !

A laser cutter -engraver with a 2 watt [how do you check the power ?] laser,

I used Fusion 360 to create the drawing and the G-Code, that was then copied to LaserGRBL , 4 passes and the gasket dropped out of the sheet. Now I can mass produce them ! Though I only wanted 2

Edited By The Novice Engineer on 17/11/2019 21:24:54

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

That's an easy way?? 5 minutes with a craft knife and a punch would have made 2 gaskets. But there again I am an old ****

[mechman48Participant @mechman48]

Made some mods to my Clarke 4" x 6" band saw yesterday. I was cutting out the frames for my latest project, a beam engine, as owners know the band saw table is nowt but a flimsy bit of 1.5 mm sheet steel with an indent to fit a fence on one side, also inherent is the gap in the plate where the blade travels through so all the cuttings can fall in between the guide rollers which won't do them any favours in any way. It was on my toduit list but as we all know that gets left 'toduit later' so as later has arrived I sorted through some of my stock to stiffen it up.

I found apiece of 3mm aluminium that I had for another project that has gone by the wayside so what better to use. A couple of simple measurements later & I had the right size to fit under the table in the larger section. How was I going to fix it I sez?, a bit more rooting around & I found 4 x 2 BA countersunk screws doing nowt so they were pressed into service. I decided to go a bit OTT with the securing so used some 2 part metal epoxy mix & stuck the aluminium plate to the plate. When dried ( overnight ) I drilled through the original c/sunk holes, plus adding another 4 2 BA tapped holes & tapped the aluminium plate 2 BA. After careful measuring I slotted the assembly to the centre line long enough to match the original fixing screws set up.

Not a great mod but it certainly made a much better support for the band saw, no more flexing table !. I know there are some members have described making tiltable tables but I didn't want to faff on with some thing complicated when I didn't need to; saying that I s'pose this mod is now a mod to mod later … back to the toduit list.

With aluminium plate fixed the risk of any small pieces falling down between bottom guide rollers is virtually eliminated …

I'll probably fit a small piece in to bring table flush around the blade but as said … toduit list… 'mod a mod'

George.

 

Edited By mechman48 on 18/11/2019 19:14:30

[mechman48Participant @mechman48]

Ooops …  Double posted.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited By mechman48 on 18/11/2019 21:21:42

Edited By mechman48 on 18/11/2019 21:22:30

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

All you neat storage buffs put me to shame!

Not today, but yesterday, went hillwalking just north of Calander, managed eight miles and had unbelievable still, clear weather so despite it being very cold, I still worked up a sweat at times!

Just went up a big hill, not those lovely Trossachy bits at the back!

[GoCreateParticipant @gocreate]

I made this simple tools some time ago and put it to use on my drilling machine with my Spin Indexer. It helps accurately position holes on a machine without any X & Y axis let alone without a DRO. Today I published my video showing how I used it to drill a matrix of hole in a cylinder.

[Jim NicParticipant @jimnic]

I'm intrigued by this tool; but is it just me or is the link not working for anybody?

Jim

[Anonymous]

Having discovered that the top of my bench had broken due to over-enthusiastic operation of the flypress while riveting a rear wheel for my traction engine I've now fitted a 600x500x15 steel plate with M12 screws to stiffen things up:

And bolted the flypress back in place:

The whole set up feels pretty solid and is better than it was before.

Andrew

[DalboyParticipant @dalboy]

I watched your video last night very simple device and so easy to use.

[GoCreateParticipant @gocreate]

Thanks Derek

Glad you liked the video, not sure why the link in my post isn't working, but you've solved the problem. Unfortunately I can't get back in to the post to edit it.

I've used it with a toolmakers vice, (which has all the sides flat and square with each other), to accurately move the work in both X & Y directions.

Thanks Again

 

Nigel

 

Edited By tractionengine42 on 22/11/2019 12:31:34

[DalboyParticipant @dalboy]

Your welcome Nigel it was just that I subscribe to your u tube channel as I enjoy watching your Lion build.

[Author]

Posts