What Did You Do Today 2019

[TrevorhParticipant @trevorh]

Hi George, Bri

I purchased the same unit from Warco and they only come in White/cream, its the same company that supply's both outlets,

Bri, have a look at my album where I fitted the same unit onto my WM 16 and had similar issues but it does work well and yes it is slightly noisy but that's because of the poor quality of the gears – seem to be different profiles and dont mesh as they should

for me its not an issue as I dont use it frequently to be a problem – one day I will make my own gears and throw the supplied ones away

if you want a spare end plate casting I have it put to one side as I never used it or the other parts like the trough and the centre stop assembly

cheers

Trevor

[John HaineParticipant @johnhaine32865]

Don't you get corrosion mixing Whitworth and Metric in a marine environment?

[LainchyParticipant @lainchy]

Posted by Neil Wyatt on 12/12/2019 12:52:15:

Posted by Lainchy on 10/12/2019 10:35:35:

Thanks, yes I like a bit of planetary imaging, although they've been rather low in the sky of late. Here are a few from 2018.

Neil

Cracking Neil! Very nice

[Ian Johnson 1Participant @ianjohnson1]

Posted by John Haine on 12/12/2019 15:05:38:

Don't you get corrosion mixing Whitworth and Metric in a marine environment?

And for giggles those grease nipples on the end of the M16 bolts are 1/8" BSP All good fun!

The boat is kept alive by the hard work of the volunteers. If I can help out with my small workshop equipment I will do my best.

The boat is the 'Daniel Adamson' moored not far from me on the River Weaver. I don't think they'll mind if I give it some publicity.

Ian

[Anonymous]

At last! I've finally finished making the wheels for my traction engines. Having completed the last rear wheel I was able to measure the real axle length and machine to the scribed line:

The drawing says the rear axle is 30" but check on the work. The real axle is a tad over 28", so gawd knows where 30" came from. I also fitted the key for the final drive gear, made from 5/16" keysteel:

Fitting was handraulic, using files and wet 'n' dry. The slot in the axle is pretty much bang on size. The slot in final drive gear needed some filing as I ground the slotting tool a couple of thou undersize. Here's the engine assembly with the straked rear wheels:

Note the other set of wheels under the table, ready to go off to have rubber tyres fitted. Paper chimney fitted too! That was to check the pattern. Seems to be a fairly good fit; but it's bound to need some fettling on the job. I've got the sheet steel for the chimney and the job for this afternoon is to cut to rough sizes the four 2m x 1m sheets of steel (3mm, 2mm and two times 1mm thick) that are stacked up down the side of the bungalow. I think Burrell often used cast chimneys, but I have a picture of a full size engine with two rows of rivets on the chimney. So obviously using an internal strap. That's what I plan to do; saves making a fixture to form a joggle in the chimney before rolling.

Andrew

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Happy to see you have removed the frost spikes since I last saw your rear wheel! You will have to invest in a couple of those car skates to make sure the strakes don't damage the floor when you need to move the engines about.

[Frances IoMParticipant @francesiom58905]

Will it actually fit through the door from its present home?

[Jeff DaymanParticipant @jeffdayman43397]

Probably will have enough power to "adjust" the door width to get through, if need be…….

Non-precision reverse masonry construction you might say.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

I shaved the scale of my steam-wagon down a tad so it would fit the front door of my first home! No-one would notice. No drawings exist of the originals of which no two seemed alike anyway!

[Anonymous]

I'm not worried about the floor. It's B&Q plastic "wood", so the odd dent doesn't matter. It's got plenty of them already!

It will fit through the front door. When I had the door replaced a few years ago I calculated the width of the engine. Unfortunately the drawings, and my CAD model, gave several different values. In the end I went with my CAD model and chose to make the door 32" wide. The real engine is a bit over 29" wide, so it should go through the door with no probem.

Andrew

[Ron LadenParticipant @ronladen17547]

Posted by Andrew Johnston on 13/12/2019 12:34:11:

Andrew

Wow that is looking impressive Andrew, well done you.

Out of interest what do you estimate the finished a.u.w. of the engines to be, no lightweights thats for sure.

Ron

[Anonymous]

Posted by Ron Laden on 14/12/2019 09:14:00:

Out of interest what do you estimate the finished a.u.w. of the engines to be, no lightweights thats for sure.

Based on the supplier specification I expect the finished engine to weigh about 500kg. The boiler alone is 90kg, so that's a good start.

Andrew

[John HaineParticipant @johnhaine32865]

Fired up this little belt sander that arrived Friday (inspired by another post somewhere here). Shade under £28 delivered off ebay – saved a few quid by not including (yet another) power supply, it runs fine off my bench PSU, less than 2A at 12V. Slight problem in assembly, motor pulley jammed against the mounting plate, 30s to fix with the Allen key (supplied). Runs fine, looks a useful little tool, I couldn't have got the components for the price!

[Martin King 2Participant @martinking2]

Hi All,

Found another brass "cup" in the scrap bin at a local scrappy when taking my old iron in.

Got home and played with it by soldering in a close threaded top nd made another oil dribbler.

I've got the hang of these now after about 6 of them!

Cheers, Martin

[Anonymous]

This morning I took a car load of stuff to the council tip; mostly metal for recycling and loads of non-working and obsolete light bulbs. Got rid of all the lights I've recently replaced with LED ones. Plus two big bags of aluminium swarf, two buckets of steel swarf and two bowls of brass/bronze swarf. There was a separate container for brass (didn't ask if I could put bronze in it as well!) but aluminium is now dumped along with steel. Seems a bit daft to me.

This afternoon I've been chomping up sheet metal on the guillotine. I used paper patterns to nibble out the chimney and final drive gear cover blanks from 1mm sheet. Blanks have been cut for the tender bottom from 2mm sheet as well as blanks for the tender sides and the spectacle and front plates from 3mm sheet. Here's a selection, with a 24" rule at the bottom for scale:

Should really be fitting the mirror in the bathroom this evening, but I also need to go to the supermarket. I suspect that some beer will be purchased.

Andrew

Edited By Andrew Johnston on 18/12/2019 17:16:07

[Ian Johnson 1Participant @ianjohnson1]

Posted by Andrew Johnston on 18/12/2019 17:15:23:

This morning I took a car load of stuff to the council tip; mostly metal for recycling and loads of non-working and obsolete light bulbs. Got rid of all the lights I've recently replaced with LED ones. Plus two big bags of aluminium swarf, two buckets of steel swarf and two bowls of brass/bronze swarf. There was a separate container for brass (didn't ask if I could put bronze in it as well!) but aluminium is now dumped along with steel. Seems a bit daft to me.

This afternoon I've been chomping up sheet metal on the guillotine. I used paper patterns to nibble out the chimney and final drive gear cover blanks from 1mm sheet. Blanks have been cut for the tender bottom from 2mm sheet as well as blanks for the tender sides and the spectacle and front plates from 3mm sheet. Here's a selection, with a 24" rule at the bottom for scale:

Should really be fitting the mirror in the bathroom this evening, but I also need to go to the supermarket. I suspect that some beer will be purchased.

Andrew

Edited By Andrew Johnston on 18/12/2019 17:16:07

Crikey! how much brass did you take? I have just machined a load of brass bushes and ended up with two margarine tubs of swarf, never thought of dumping it though. I have got a few tubs of brass swarf waiting for the day when I need it. I was going to use it in a tray for blueing small parts or something, then I ran out of ideas!

Ian

[Nick Clarke 3Participant @nickclarke3]

Your tip sounds like a dream for anyone who cares about the environment – here (not naming town as it is unfair ) the council tip has only a single skip for 'metal'.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Our Dorset Council tips use a single skip for all metals: I assume the refiners have some method for separating it all. To be fair, it is easier to do that: we know one metal from another but I doubt many householders have that knowledge. It's all just "metal" to them.

There used to be a big scrap-yard near Weymouth, taking at least as much industrial and trade scrap as vehicles, if not more (it tended to leave vehicles to the more specialised breakers in the area). It had a very simple, gas-fired, open furnace for producing aluminium ingots for selling on as a mixed aluminium-alloy, but free of non-aluminium screws, bushes etc. It also compacted the metal into much more convenient forms for transport and refining.

A while back I took some scrap electrical cable and equipment to another yard, where they were pleased to see I had burnt the insulation off. Pollution apart, that oxidises and dirties the copper, devaluing it. The scrap-dealers have cable-stripping machines to split the sheath from the metal.

;;;

What Did I Do Today?

Started making a very tongue-in-cheek Christmas present for a dear friend, Alison, who has a curious habit of cutting any slice of cake into very small cubes.

So having gently teased her a few times about that, I set out to make a "Little Wonder Cake Square", as I called it on the "Congratulations! You are now the proud owner of…." waffle-cum- Instruction-sheet to be packaged with it.

It will be a simple T-square with a scale along the blade, for marking out rectangular cakes, flapjacks etc; and inverted, two cylindrical buttons to give it a centre- and diameter- marking feature for cylindrical bakes. It will work: I took a lot of trouble to set out the blade and its scale accurately, using the milling-machine's DRO; but the utensil is intended humorously and I doubt very much that Ali will actually use it!

Having pondered how to engrave the lines, and considered a V-tool in the Drummond manual shaper to join the dots made by a centre-drill, eventually I used an old centre-drill – one end broken, the other past its best – as a makeshift engraving-cutter, making grooves <0.01" deep by very cautious cross-feeding on the mill, between the said drill-pops.

Blade: stainless-steel sheet, a shelf support from a scrapped chilled-food cabinet. Stock: an off cut of hardwood. Buttons: Nylon rod. Plus a couple of stainless-steel, M5 screws.

Divisions. Well, since Ali's hobbies include riding, and she used to own two horses; the scale can only be in Hands. It is two Hands long, divided into Halves, Quarters and Eighths thereof. I will stamp the word "HAND" on the surface – if satisfactory in testing on an offcut – but I won't risk spoiling it by trying to stamp numbers it does not really need, on a very simple scale with lines of appropriately different lengths.

Accuracy? I calculated the dividing is within +/- 0.00125 Hand.

I finished the bulk of the blade's machining by tea-time. This evening? Considered the material for the stock: a block of wood already a suitable size, or cutting it from a broken hard-wood bread-board (kept as hard-wood stock!). Then composed – or concocted – the publicity/instruction-sheet for the Cake Square.

[Anonymous]

Posted by Ian Johnson 1 on 18/12/2019 19:10:09:

Crikey! how much brass did you take? I have just machined a load of brass bushes and ended up with two margarine tubs of swarf, never thought of dumping it though.

Not sure, but two washing up bowls three quarters full. say 15kg? I don't think refiners have an easy way to separate metals. I used to recycle at a proper scrap yard. Steel was just dumped and measured by weighing the vehicle on the way in and out. Copper alloys and aluminium were weighed separately as they're way more valuable. Last time I went 70kg of steel was worth £6 whereas 4kg of brass/bronze was worth £30. But it's a round trip of 60 miles and takes hours to go round. Plus it's a bonus coming out with inflated tyres given the amount of scrap lying on the ground. It's easier, but still a pain, to go to the council tip. The idiots that claim to run things, and business, bang on about recycling but they sure don't make it easy.

Today I've debunked another model engineering myth. Rolling a cone by tilting the third roll on a set of pinch rolls plain doesn't work. Of course if one thinks about it, it would be obvious why it doesn't work. Slanting the third roll changes the diameter being rolled along the length. But the pinch rolls feed both ends of the pattern at the same speed whereas the larger diameter end needs to be fed faster than the small diameter end. Looking online it's clear that the professionals use special cone rolls to form proper cones.

I've managed to get an approximation to a cone with BF, BI and a copper mallet. But to get the final shape I think I'm going to have to make a former. A 500mm length of 100mm diameter steel ain't cheap, but isn't completely out of order!

Andrew

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

I just watch out for a scrap man going past and wave them down, they are often up and down the road even though its a cul-de-sac.

Would you have more luck with pyramid rolls? I suppose ideally you would need the lower two to move horizontally to form a vee and the top to come down more on the narrower end. Would a wooden former be upto it?

[asimpleparsonParticipant @asimpleparson]

I put a small piece of square section steel bar in my newly fitted 4 jaw chuck of my 1st ever lathe, and faced the end. Previously I would have attempted to file this, and probably been slightly unsure of my results, maybe even scrapping the part and starting again, but now I am 'man with lathe' it's the job of a few seconds to get a great result.

Chuffed to NAAFI breaks with my new found capabilities!

P.S, I promise to continue practicing my filing!

SP.

[Nigel McBurney 1Participant @nigelmcburney1]

Jason Its not a good idea to identify to the scrapman where you live,he or his mates may come calling when you are out and get all your stock.

[martin perman 1Participant @martinperman1]

Posted by Nigel McBurney 1 on 19/12/2019 19:07:11:

Jason Its not a good idea to identify to the scrapman where you live,he or his mates may come calling when you are out and get all your stock.

Totally agree, I used to get regular un requested visits from caravan dwelling pick ups until it came to a head when a trilby hatted gent knocked on my front door asking if I wanted to sell the dolly tub he had seen, it was behind my garage at the bottom of my garden, the only access was past the front of my house, we had a six foot wooden fence with double gates and a single gate erected all locked from the inside and my car now sits against the gates at night, the pick ups stopped coming and stuff stopped disapearing.

Martin P

[Anonymous]

Posted by JasonB on 19/12/2019 17:09:17:

Would you have more luck with pyramid rolls? I suppose ideally you would need the lower two to move horizontally to form a vee and the top to come down more on the narrower end. Would a wooden former be upto it?

There was a video online showing a 4 roll in action; basically a pinch roll but with free rolls in front and behind the pinch pair. But that doesn't help me.

I'd considered wood, but I've no idea what to buy or where to get it. I just tried an online shop; for 100mm by 100mm by 500mm long of American Ash I was quoted £13852.

Think I'll stick to steel!

Andrew

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Got any hardwood worktop left over from your kitchen, if you had a wood top. just glue and screw a few bits together.

Beech or maple would be good, cheaper to buy 2" thick and glue it up as you pay a premium for any 4" hardwood.

[Author]

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