Just cooked a stack of thick streaky bacon, on a bun with HP sauce and a mug of strong tea.

Bugger the cholesterol!

Happy New Year!

Steve

Edited By Steve Withnell on 01/01/2014 10:49:18

Hi Steve

Ther's only one Sauce for Bacon so no need to advertise.

MMMMMMMMMM! BACON

Great Joy for the year ahead

Barry

Looks like the pig population's going to take a hit this year

Martin.

Not today, but yesterday, I finished (after several years of "planning"….) my QCTP! It is very simple to operate – just one handle to lock it.

Here is the first toolholder I made for a DTI:

I only need to add a screw for height-adjustment. By the way, I have an old Blomquist lathe, which is a South Bend clone produced in Sweden in 1960.

Sverre

Nothing to complicated today (or yesterday). Had a go at starting to convert some end pieces from a pair of hand exercise weights into crank webs for the twin throw crankshaft for my latest build.

Before I started machining I fully expected to find cast iron but was most surprised to find they were made from what seems to me to be a very high quality nickel steel which incidentally had been plated with copper roughly .005" thick before being chromed. I call that a high standard of manufacture. Almost seems a shame to chop'em up…….almost

Using my homemade indexable lathe tool ( I refuse to cough up £30-40 when I can easily make one myself) I am getting lovely finishes on this material particularly on the OD which with a finishing .020" deep cut leaves it with a mirror like finish. This pleases me no end considering the set of weights only cost me two quid from my normal Sunday morning "supplier".

Three shown here in various stages of manufacture, the fourth is in the lathe chuck:

A relation works with high quality makrolon 6mm polycarbonate and he is allowed the off cuts – some "off cuts" are very large indeed! He gives me whatever I need. As you can probably see, the WARCO guard will not fit with my tool shelf over the lathe as it is, so I used a piece of this stuff to make a hinged splash guard. With it fitted I carried on machining the crank webs but found that my coolant oil was still splashing out underneath the lower edge. The solution was to hinge fit a thin sheet of ally to the bottom – problem solved…….

……..and when not needed it lives up there.

Also, as the next job is a cast iron flywheel I cut and fitted a piece of hardboard as shown to keep the dust away from the bed and lead screw. A simple life I know – maybe I should have been a monk.

May you all have a peaceful New Year and be blessed by great wealth (I could easily get into this habit)

Rik

PS Pushing seventy neither of us like noise so have booked our summer hols in Bulgaria this year – I bet we'll be able to hear a pin drop over there by then.

Edited By Rik Shaw on 01/01/2014 17:15:29

Hi Derek,

I'm with you there, so miserable out there that I decided to hibernate, again. Shame I can't stay here till spring but every hour is one less till the spring warmth!

chriStephens

Edited By chris stephens on 01/01/2014 17:25:15

Hi Muzzer, I presume you mean the Dalo Mark 33 which came with a spare tip, which was stored in the top end of the pen. See photo below.

I do believe that I have two unused pens somrwhere. Haven't done any PCB's for some time now, but I never found these to be the easyest things to use and very difficult if you needed fine tracks beside each other.

Allthough they have not been used for several years, I've tried one out on a small piece of blank PCB board and it still works but would need to use the new tip if I were to use it for real. Below is a photo Dalo Mark 33 compared to a Staedtler Lumocolor 318. I have never tried using the Lumocolor 318 for ecthing though.

As Luke says, the Lumocolor 318 seems to be recommended these days and thats what you'll find at Maplins if you search for etch resistant pen.

Regards Nick.

P.S. Happy New Year everyone.

Edited By Nicholas Farr on 01/01/2014 19:31:26

Hi Neil,
How about these ? You will find many more if you search for "3.5 mm electrical screws" on ebay.

Les.

This is the same make as the one I bought during a visit to Shenzhen, China recently. Like you, I've found it to be fine and not bad value for money at all. The instruction manual is worth the cost alone – makes Xmas cracker jokes look lame! I ended up downloading manuals from other manufacturers – they are mostly very similar in operation.

There are some pictures in my albums under "DRO fitting".

I now have 2 Z scales – one on the quill and one on the knee. I actually find the quill one to be more useful.

Muzzer

Edited By Muzzer on 02/01/2014 04:17:18

Edited By Muzzer on 02/01/2014 04:20:26

Today I spent time in the workshop machining some bodies for cylinder drain cocks for my 71/4" Collett.

The best Christmas I ever had was a couple of years ago ~~~ I'd borrowed my eldest son's classic Mini Cooper on Christmas eve to0 go to wok and on the way home broke it ~~~ had to be recovered by the RAC. Spent most of Christmas removing large lumps from the engine and fixing it ~~~ Ace!

Happy new year Gentlemen,

I took one of my Lister engines one hundred miles yesterday for an open day crank up at the Twyford Waterworks to find I was the only one daft enough to attend, lashed it down all day but got to look at the stripped boilers that are being brought back to working order to power the large Triple expansion pump engine in the next room. **LINK**

Martin P