help needed in exeter

[john bennett 1Participant @johnbennett1]

Hello gents,i recently bought a new loco,it needs some work,namely a handpump fitted in the bunker,an axle pump fitted to the frame and the feeds from these spliced into the existing two injector lines,i have the handpump,axle pump and stretcher materiali have a decently equipped workshop but not the experience to do this.the loco also needs a couple of other little jobs doing to it,i will of course supply any more materials we will need andpay you for your time but no ridiculous hourly rates please.

[john bennett 1Participant @johnbennett1]

[Jeff DaymanParticipant @jeffdayman43397]

What is your definition of a ridiculous rate? Could save a lot of time to state a target max rate you had in mind.

[john bennett 1Participant @johnbennett1]

well i have been told £30 an hour by one person,lowest so far is £15.

[pgk pgkParticipant @pgkpgk17461]

..it's never that simple.

Back in my prof career and in the '90s a referral case to the senior cost £200/hr or £100/hr to the houseman. It was still cheaper in most cases to get the top bloke slicing and dicing and easier on the patient….

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

£15 is barely twice the minimum wage, it seems cheap for skilled labour and all the overheads of running a jobbing engineering business. Your local garage would charge £50 or more an hour to work on your car (over £90 in London), which is more than small chartered accountants will charge (say £20 an hour), some of this may be because they can, but also accountants don't need to equip a workshop.

Different if someone does it as a favour and just wants to recoup some of their workshop running costs.

Neil

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Its also worth getting an idea of how long the person expects a job to take, its alright paying a lower hourly rate but if they take a long time over the work you may be more out of pocket than going for the higher hourly rate.

Its a bit of a hard one as if doing it for a living you would have to charge a lot more than somebody doing it for a bit of pocket money

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

The OP is looking for a hobbyist with a bit of time, probably retired, who can probably do the job while showing the OP how to do it himself. Notice the words 'we will need' in the posting. Given that it is likely that such a person is not earning enough to cross the tax threshold minimum wage or less should be adequate. Several impromptu arrangements often occur in my own club so I think it worth getting along to the Tiverton club as you will want to join for your boiler inspections and access to a track anyway.

This shows the need for ME evening classes or something equivalent. There seems to be an increasing number of people on the forum in north Devon, far enough away from Tiverton or Newton Abbot clubs to consider some informal meetings in a pub perhaps……….

[john bennett 1Participant @johnbennett1]

the only reason i asked on here was,no one at my club will help me do this,im a rookie and although i can do basic stuff this is beyond me,i just paid £30 for a lump of brass to be water jetted because i cant get the castings anymore,i really dont want to mess this up,which is why i asked on here,and just to put things in perspective,i have what is considered a skilled job,im a coach driver.i have 57 peoples lives in my hands and i get paid £8.20 an hour,all i wanted was someone local to help me with this.someone who like me is a model engineer,not a profesional,im sorry to have asked now,it seems ive stirred up a bit of a hornets nest.

[john bennett 1Participant @johnbennett1]

and thank you to bazyle for getting my drift.

[mick70Participant @mick70]

Why wont club help?

At my club people are . More than happy to help out..

There are times i have been to members homes as gear needed was there and had people come to mine.

t

[john bennett 1Participant @johnbennett1]

your guess is as good as mine,ive even offered to pay them,they all sit around complaining of the fact that no one is coming into the hobby,but wont show anyone how to do it,the last time i used a lathe was when i was in school,so i joined a club,(thinking that help would be forthcoming)spent thousands on a workshop and machines and tools,and its sitting there,i might as well sell the lot up and buy a new bike.

[nigel jones 5Participant @nigeljones5]

Alas yours is not the only club by a long way which is like this. With two exceptions every time I visit my club track someone stops me and asks me 2are you a member of this club", to which I now answer, Yes, are you? Ive only been a member for 6 years. If you were oop north I would go out of my way to help you.

[john bennett 1Participant @johnbennett1]

Thank you,when i was a child there was a track not far from where i lived in cardiff,it was the st mellons track,long gone now but i spent many hours up there,asking the members questions and they all were willing to help and answer me(even the most ridiculous questions)and i always felt welcome,now it seems everyone is out for their own ends,there are four of us in my club who are in the same position,all getting extremely frustrated at the apathy that pervades there,when i asked on the forums that i visit for someone to make me a part (a 91/6 axle pump)someone wrote to me and asked for the drawings,i duly sent them and a few days later recieved a quote for £654,yep that right £654,now to me thats nearly 2 and a half weeks wages,and that was only after i refused the first quote of £791, now i know that these castings are not available anymore but all the same it seemed a bit excesive to me,i eventually bought a ready made pump for £49,its only 11/2 inch but i think it will do. i will get this loco done,i had 3 and a half inch gauge for a few years but always wanted a 5 inch,now ive got it i do not intend to let it go easily.

[Steve PapworthParticipant @stevepapworth83993]

John,

Returning to your original post, who told you that you need to add a hand pump and axle pump to the engine, if it is already fitted with two injectors?

Boiler inspectors normally require a minimum of 2 methods of feeding water, and if your injectors are working, you satisfy that requirement.

Admittedly, a hand pump is useful, but you should maybe consider whether you need it. Certainly, adding an axle pump could be quite a major job, requiring stripping down the chassis.

P.S. If you want to meet a bunch of friendly model engineers, you should maybe consider visiting the Tiverton club. See the web site at **LINK**

[john bennett 1Participant @johnbennett1]

no one told me i needed a handpump,the loco has both current hydraulic and steam tests but i want an axle pump,once youve been around the track a few times and made minor adjustments the loco fills itself,and a handpump is always a good idea,the hard work has already been done,the loco is stripped down and there is an eccentric already on the axle,just needs the strap and pump stretcher fitting.

[nigel jones 5Participant @nigeljones5]

hi john, what size pump do you need, your post is unclear? you can get small ones on ebay for a cheap fee and a small one will at least put something into the boiler, or use two fed from one eccentric? hope this helps. If not then pm me the drawing and I will see what I can do.

[john bennett 1Participant @johnbennett1]

thank you to all that made sugestions,have now sorted a pump, regards john

[richard 2Participant @richard2]

Hi All

John is certainly not alone in the club attitude to him.

A couple of years ago I bought a loco and joined a local club.

One of the members informed me that they did not approve of

members who showed up only to run their locos.

One Saturday morning I visited the club to find a senior member there.

When I told him I had at last acquired a Myford lathe he said he was not

interested in Myfords, went into the clubhouse and slammed the door in

my face.

I have not been back there since.

Unfortunately as I am elderly and a carer my spare time is limited to a

couple of hours in the afternoons so I could not now attend a club.

Gone are the days when I was young with a worn out "Maisie" and

the Malden club members could not help enough.

I, too, would like a fellow enthusiast to come round occasionally and

chat and, perhaps show me what I am doing wrong but retired people

are too busy nowadays with families and TV, etc..

So I potter along -I've just made Brian Wood's adaptation so my

Myford Super 7B now cuts metric and BA threads with no problem.

My grateful thanks to Brian for he has spent a great deal of his time

giving me info via email and telephone.

Oh well, off to the workshop to continue making a hot air engine.

Best wishes to everyone.

Richard.

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

It is perhaps in the nature of engineers that some of them have poor people skills. Then by sods law the one person you approach because they are not deep in conversation is not talking to anyone because he doesn't like to, or nobody likes to talk to him because of his attitude.
The best approach is to start with a simple question like 'can you point me towards a committee member'. The responder can then easily either do that and escape, or if they are the chatty type will engage with you about what you want to see the committee member for. The committee member will likely know who to avoid and can introduce you to someone who will be able to help you out but don't expect them to be the one who solves your problem as they are probably already overloaded with club responsibilities.

Then you may need to persevere and ask more than one person. See if they have time and are not rushed off their feet with work and family, or conversely would like an escape from those commitments. Rather than waiting for them to invite you to their workshop (often a very private place) invite them round to yours, or just to meet in a pub for a chat as a starting point. There are lots of small sub groups in our club who meet privately because they live near one another or have a common interest.

[martyn nutlandParticipant @martynnutland79495]

John

Don't buy a bike (too dangerous). And don't, in despair, sell all that expensive kit.

I know how you feel.

I live in France and I did when I started at this game, and all I could get my lathe to produce was steel dust. And as you'd expect, I couldn't find a soul to help and really did want to ditch all the seemingly useless stuff I'd bought and had wanted all my life.

But two super engineers, one from New Zealand and one from the UK, who were passing through the country, stopped by for a weekend and put me on the right track. I will be eternally grateful to them.

However, to me, a beginner myself, what you want to do sounds tricky by any standards. Would it be easier to make something very simple for starters? I made brake camshafts, road spring anchor pins, oil filler caps, oil pipe blanking caps, all for my Austin Sevens. They gave me huge satisfaction to produce, but even then I found these 'simple' parts harder to execute than I supposed.

And I also wonder, if you're 'into' bikes – I'm not – if there might be someone in that fraternity, possibly of the 'old school', who might show you? For heaven's sake, we're talking human kindness here not turning a quid. Finally, and as I see it, these model locomotives/traction engines etcetera, that we see pictured all the time, really are master-class stuff. I've never met anyone who has built one, and in a fairly long life have met very, very few who could, so I guess you are asking for help from a rather elitist band.

Hope that gives encouragement.

Martyn

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

John and Richard. You should update your profile with a general location so that anyone local to you can get in touch

(North Edinburgh kinda thing)

There are a lot of lurkers in places like this who don't post much but may appreciate a kindred local spirit

Its the "settings" tab around the top left of the page when logged in

The "county/state" box is where your profile gets updated

Edited By Ady1 on 12/11/2015 15:07:14

[egaParticipant @ega]

Ady1:

I agree and think it would be helpful if the "county/state" box were a required field (it would still be possible for members to decline having a public profile).

Thank you for indirectly answering a question I asked elsewhere on the forum.

[Nigel McBurney 1Participant @nigelmcburney1]

People can be strange,they will pay over £100 per hour for architects,solicitors,car servicing at main dealer,vets,and other so called professionals,yet they moan if a really skilled local chap working from his back shed wants £15 an hour to do a job that very few people can do nowadays. They expect the man in a shed to do it for peanuts thats why man in shed gets fed up and makes more money gardening and easily gets £20 an hour. The customer forgets that for most one off jobs there is a lot of setting up to do and sometimes only a short time machining,and they forget about the electric bill plus other running costs.Now retired I am restoring a really rough early Blackstone oil engine,which has been a pig to restore and get running,If it had been a commercial job it would cost a fortune,There can be a living in making batch runs of components for models , but to take say a model and improve it or add features can be nightmare especially if the original builder was not very good and that is where the time goes,putting existing parts right not making new parts.

[John ThorneParticipant @johnthorne49048]

I agree with Nigel on this. I make a lot of parts for other people mostly for free but always charge for the material I use. If it is a big job I do make a small charge for my time but people that really anoy me are those who come to me with a bit of rusty old metal they have pulled out of the hedge some where or found at the bottom of the garden and expect it to be turned into a work of art. Also the " it will only take you five minutes to make this" ones as if they know that why can't they make it for their selves. My moan for today.

John

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