Hi!

[Alex BrownParticipant @alexbrown78795]

New member here,

mid 20s and mid PhD I have finally realised my goal of having a garage and space to start amassing machinery!

I've got a early 20th century drummond lathe which I love and a pollard pillar drill, both of which are in regular use making bits and bobs, some for my cg125 cafe racer project.

The ability of some of you model engineers astounds me, and while I must admit to not having any scale model projects of my own, the engineering is hugely interesting!

[Alex BrownParticipant @alexbrown78795]

[Brian HParticipant @brianh50089]

Hello Alex and welcome to the Forum. It sounds as though you are well into vintage machinery. If you need any information about your existing machines or any that you may be thinking of buying, then this is an excellent site;

http://www.lathes.co.uk/

Brian

[Alex BrownParticipant @alexbrown78795]

Thanks for the welcome Brian, that lathes website really is fantastic! I've already used it extensively before buying my pollard and I'm sure to use it many times again in the future.

[Howard LewisParticipant @howardlewis46836]

Welcome!

There are Drummond owners and users on here, and they do good work, so although a lathe being 100 years old may require different techniques from one "new out of the box", but the basic principles are the same.

A former working colleague has a Drummond from the early 1900s and turns out far better work that I can, so it's not the machine that's the limitation.

Many a good tune and all that!

An almost limitless range of skills and experience on here, so ask away.

Where abouts are you located, nearest town?

When conditions allow, find a local M E club and join. In that way you will meet fellow enthusiasts, who can give advice and help, maybe guidance / demonstrations, face to face.

Howard

[Alex BrownParticipant @alexbrown78795]

Hi Howard!

I'm sure the experience here will prove invaluable and I'm very grateful sites like this exist for us newbies, as there's a lot to learn!

I'm in the Midlands, nearest cities are Nottingham and Leicester, and I might be interested in joining a club perhaps when things do settle down. My interest lies mostly in learning machine techniques at the moment and less so in scale models but I can certainly see how learning face to face would be very useful!

Again, thanks for the welcome!

[Howard LewisParticipant @howardlewis46836]

Certainly there are clubs in Leicester and Nottingham, and probably others closer to home.

Anticipating the day when they can all come out hibernation!

Howard

[noel shelleyParticipant @noelshelley55608]

Welcome to the house of fun ! Noel.

[Harry WilkesParticipant @harrywilkes58467]

Welcome to forum

H

[Anonymous]

Welcome to the forum.

Bit unwise to mention a Ph.D. though; the ignorati will now (wrongly) assume that you're practically incompetent.

Andrew

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

Midlands is a good place for picking up more machinery but of course as a student you will be financially compromised for the moment. When mentioning Drummonds it is usual to mention which type – on here we like to know such things.

[Alex BrownParticipant @alexbrown78795]

Hi Bazyle,

The drummond is a 3.5" 1908 M -type I think.

Aside from general maintenance I haven't restored it because I have a suspicion the paint (what's left of it) could be original. My Pollard drill is a 30s cast iron beast made in Leicester, very similar to the 12FX seen here http://www.lathes.co.uk/pollard/

I am looking for a benchtop mill to add to the list but they seem very difficult to get hold of! I'm of a mind that I should wait and just get a bridgeport when I get a real job and I move to a larger garage/warehouse/aircraft hanger.

Andrew – you would be surprised the amount of practicality one needs to have when studying biochemistry these days! I have thought before that my education if nothing else has taught me how to learn – which sounds funny but there are a lot of skills that you can pick up if you're willing to have a go and read some dusty manuals!

[Anonymous]

Posted by Alex Brown on 23/12/2020 20:43:35:

Andrew – you would be surprised the amount of practicality one needs to have when studying biochemistry these days!

Actually I wouldn't be surprised. When I was in college I had a long talk over lunch with one of the Fellows. Turns out he was a biochemist and a pretty good experimentalist. You may have heard of him – Frederick Sanger.

My neighbours are biochemists, he works for Astra Zeneca and has been helping to organise the vaccine trials. So I'm picking up some knowledge from the horse's mouth so to speak.

School is primarily about imparting basic knowledge but university is, or should be, more about how to learn on one's own. For a higher degree it's more about learning to question and how to put facts and ideas together in new ways, or developing completely new ideas.

Andrew

[Alex BrownParticipant @alexbrown78795]

That's incredible you met and got to talk with frederick sanger! His work applies closely to my work, he really forged the idea of ordered protein structures and I use both x-ray crystallography and cryo electron microscopy to study protein structure. I've also used sanger sequencing, which is one of those great ideas that are brilliant in their simplicity.

I regularly work with people from the institute in the UK under his name, how coincidental to find this on a model engineering forum!

[Anonymous]

Posted by Alex Brown on 24/12/2020 11:47:54:

…..he really forged the idea of ordered protein structures and I use both x-ray crystallography and cryo electron microscopy to study protein structure.

You've lost me already! Although I do know a little bit about scanning electron microscopes. When I was doing my Ph.D, some research groups met for coffee each morning on the 3rd floor of the engineering laboratories rather than use the main cafeteria. The two main groups were signal processing and electron microscopes. Although retired one of the regular attendees was Sir Charles Oatley who had been instrumental in turning the scanning electron microscope from a laboratory curiosity to a commercial instrument in the 1950s and 60s.

At which institution are you studying?

Andrew

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