What did you do Today 2024

[bernard towersParticipant @bernardtowers37738]

On the subject of the float bowl retaining nut it might be possible to drill the hole slightly smaller giving you a better core strength.

[Craig BrownParticipant @craigbrown60096]

My thinking also Bernard, the hole in the original is 5mm. If required I will probably start with 4mm and see how that goes

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

I am beginning to think I don’t explain myself very well! Like most computer users I do not know every common programme or website to its last and leats-used function; but I am not naive to them.

I was introduced to the Electronic Confuser at work at the end of MS-DOS, then taught the basics of WINDOWS-3.1 (Hooray – still only 8chr$ file-names but no long command lines just to copy or move them), WIN-5 (Hooray – room to name files sensibly); taught the basics of MS ‘Excel’ and ‘Word’…. and so via WIN-NT, WIN-XP and WIN-7 up to the WIN-11 MS foisted onto the computer I am using now, which was perfectly happy with WIN-10. So was I: W11 being a pretty poor copy of 10. That enforced conversion also wrecked my carefully-built photo archive and otherwise behaved in some suspicious ways; and without the licensed W10 source I could not revert it.

Oh, and via teaching myself basic BASIC on an Amstrad PCW9512, my first own PC, on which I also wrote a book manuscript.

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I don’t expect software to work as I want, necessarily, at least not easily. I expect it to act as it often leads you to think it will; and a lot of web-sites are not designed to help you.

The best I have found for straightforward use and clarity are the gov.uk “departments”, though I realise some are for services that are themselves extremely complicated, so making the relevant site appear complicated.

The best intranet software I have seen was that used by my bank: having paid the compliment the cashier said the site’s writers were made to publish it in review form around the company so the “ordinary” staff could try it, suggest improvements, and gain some experience with it before live use. It was clear, simple, correctly ENTER / TAB-set, and so on. It looked as if based on the MS “Access” style, whose default settings let you create simple but very, clear, easy-to-use, direct entry forms and reports. Or did then, anyway.

The worst, were not web-sites but internal, Intranet-based forms at work. Some were in ‘Word’, others in ‘Excel’; some should have been in the other; cell-locking and editing controls were sloppy, TAB-ordering poor or non-existent, etc., making them needlessly difficult to use.

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The problem I had with Amazon partly stemmed from a common weakness: the designer not telling you what you need supply, in this case not warning you to form an account before creating the order, as would seem the logical process.

The primary problem though was it thinking I have an “account” – I don’t – but obstructing all my efforts to clear it.

It wanted an “area code” – not national code: an “area code” in UK telephony is the 5 (usually) digits prefacing a land-line number. Portable ‘phones use a different system, and I was ordering within Britain, items from Amazon’s British branch. So did not expect that question!

The alternative, my e-post address, raised the allegation of an existing account already exists, as I knew is wrong.

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Amazon’s web-site will not help you unless you have an “account” so I was trapped. It gives no open Customer Services or Help route, no other e-address or ‘phone number, no postal address (any or all, being LE 4).

I tried a couple of times using the “Forgotten password” way but this too, failed. Eventually a bureaucratic message expected me to telephone some call-centre in Canada. Not [expletive deleted] likely!

Consequently, unable to sort the problem out as I might be led to expect (LE5) , I have written to its UK head office in London, giving my real and e-addresses, to explain and ask it remove all of any details it may hold on me.

I found the address from Companies House: the UK’s civil-service web-sites are properly designed to intend straightforward use (LE 6, and this time, met).

 

I know umpteen people use Amazon, but I had met a problem created by it, and was blocked at every turn from correcting it in any sensible way.

If Amazon has never heard of you, it might be easy to create an account. It does not though, allow you to seek help or to solve a problem including in creating an “account”, unless you have that “account” first. I wonder if it does even then, or if it hides behind “FAQs” that show a refusal to publish proper instructions.

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It is salient here that much of the computer-using I did at work involved very sophisticated electronic test-instruments, and they all came with proper operating and servicing manuals. Yes, you needed understand the work but the books were real manuals, not “FAQs”. The software was written by my superiors too, so specific. No popping into WH Smiths to buy a Dummies Guide To xxxxx.

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I did not invent the terms “portable phone” – it was on a security notice in my work’s reception.

Nor “e-post” – someone on the radio had pointed out we usually call our physical post, “post” not “mail” as the Americans are more wont to do. This despite being delivered by Royal Mail.

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What Am I Doing Today?

Not much. I am somewhat under the weather and walking round to vote was about enough. I might manage a bit of pottering about in the shed, but no serious metal-working. I’m meant to be helping run a portable* miniature railway on Sunday, but I don’t think I’ll be fit enough for that.

*The locomotive is portable and mobile; the track is only portable!

 

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

Started to fit drive chains to my battery loco. Fitting the connector link, ping, gone. Ordered 2 more just to be safe. When they arrive I’ve no doubt I’ll find the runaway.

[DalboyParticipant @dalboy]

I thought things were improving in the workshop as I had clocking in a flywheel on the faceplate down to 15-20minutes until today when it took me nearly an hour only to discover that I had left the screws looser than normal, so a very gentle tap in one direction did improve the setting only to find that at 90deg it got worst as the weight of the flywheel made it drop a little. Once I realised what was going on back to 15 minutes and even got it down to within 0.0005″ which at that point I was not going to get it any better.

And ll this for a 5-minute operation at least I know it will be correct once I buy a new battery for the calipers which went down at the wrong time. So closed the workshop and came in for a much-needed cup of coffee.

Try again tomorrow when I get a new battery hopefully be able to finish one flywheel and also get the second up to the same standard

[duncan webster 1]

On duncan webster 1 Said:

Started to fit drive chains to my battery loco. Fitting the connector link, ping, gone. Ordered 2 more just to be safe. When they arrive I’ve no doubt I’ll find the runaway.

So as a break from election coverage I went into the workshop at about 1:30 am (sad I know) and there was the link looking at me. The replacements arrived this morning, so I now have 2 spares, and a working chain drive.

[duncan webster 1]

On duncan webster 1 Said:

On duncan webster 1 Said:

Started to fit drive chains to my battery loco. Fitting the connector link, ping, gone. Ordered 2 more just to be safe. When they arrive I’ve no doubt I’ll find the runaway.

So as a break from election coverage I went into the workshop at about 1:30 am (sad I know) and there was the link looking at me. The replacements arrived this morning, so I now have 2 spares, and a working chain drive.

As is the norm, but if you had not ordered the spares you would not have found it. Sods Law

[Nigel Graham 2]

On Nigel Graham 2 Said:

I am beginning to think I don’t explain myself very well!…

On the contrary Nigel’s word-skills are excellent!  Trouble is he often articulates misunderstandings that go uncorrected, and the forum gets to watch quite small early slips snowball into major confusion.

The telephone details Amazon want to set up an account is an example.  Nigel’s misunderstanding is a simple one, assuming that Amazon are using UK dial-up network terminology, rather than the international convention.   Yes Amazon could be more clear.   Faced with this obstacle, quite likely anyone under 60 with a mobile phone would quickly solve Amazon’s question by thinking international, and most other people would get there after considering possible alternatives.

A major issue revealed in Nigel’s clearly expressed posts is his strong tendency to press on regardless of an ever growing list of malfunctions.  I find that approach generates massive confusion, because the sheer number of problems in play thoroughly confuses cause and effect.

Another example: ‘I don’t expect software to work as I want, necessarily, at least not easily. I expect it to act as it often leads you to think it will‘.   Ooops!   Surely expecting the software to act as it often leads you to think it will, is exactly the same as expecting ‘software to work as I want’.   Believing the two to be different doesn’t help, because they both stop the learner from challenging faulty assumptions.   What humans expect matters not one jot to software – mere flesh has to follow whatever rules the software implements.   Most important for Nigel to understand that because the software can’t change, the learner must.

Nigel also chronicles a bunch of other misunderstandings about Amazon.  His belief it’s necessary to set up an account has led to a complicated flap, when I don’t think Amazon insist on an account at all!  I think customers can add items to a cart, and when they go to Check Out, there’s a Guest Option, that wants minimal details.  Be interesting to see how Amazon UK’s Business HQ respond to Nigel’s letter.   They’re not one of the options listed here, which include a UK call-centre, making it unnecessary to phone Canada!

My advice, based on most of the trouble in my workshop being caused by me:

• In so far as possible solve problems one at a time and never create a quagmire of unresolved issues.  When in a hole, stop digging!
• Reduce confusion and assumptions by doing research.
• Keep an open mind.   If results suggest something isn’t as expected, believe the evidence, not yourself.
• Be fully prepared to backtrack.

Dave

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

No: there is a big difference between thinking how a system leads you to think (wrongly) what it wants, and expecting to influence how it works.

I expect the designer to give a logical sequence to follow; and if you go wrong or it won’t accept some input that looks perfectly legal, has given some means to help you correct it.

Now, with computer applications it is sometimes possible to do something wrong, or to miss some important detail,  but the programme accepts it without question until all goes haywire later, so you have no idea what you did wrong where or how to correct it.

You can with bitter experience half-expect this with a very complex, specialist programme like a database-creator or CAD application. It has too many traps for the unwary.

With a public web-site like a big retailer’s you have no reason to suppose it can trap you, and when that happens it can leave you totally without any escape route.

 

That’s what happened with Amazon: I was contacting its UK from within the UK so was not prepared for a misleading reason for it rejecting a simple ‘phone-number that works everywhere else. I was not prepared for some supposed existing account as I had never used the firm previously. Nor will I in future. Most importantly I expected to be able to ask its Customer Services for help.

I could not do that.

It wanted me to form an account first – which it could not let me do – and it gave no alternative contact method except finding the UK HQ address and writing. All other avenues I explored were dead-ends.

The external number for it I found, it is out of use.

Whether they reply I have no idea: large companies rarely have the courage or courtesy to do so, so if it happens I will be pleasantly surprised! I gave it the option of replying electronically, but not by telephone as I would probably miss any calls.

….

– I do try to solve one problem at a time but cannot if the problems overlap or are related, or each attempt to solve it fails.

– I do try to “do some research” – it does not always give the right answers, if any at all, especially if you cannot know the real problem, only its effects. I shouldn’t have to spend hours on research for something that should be easy.

– I believe genuine evidence. If a system says “no because….” then I cannot call it a liar – I have made some mistake but identifying that might be impossible. The Amazon web-site gave me no “evidence” to help solve the problem, and it was an Amazon message that told me to telephone Canada.

– Backtracking is only possible if the system lets you do so. Sometimes you can only throw away everything so far and start all over again, but a system like Amazon’s will not allow that either. It wanted me to do something using information it refused to accept, but could not help me solve the problem. In such situations you can only write it off as impossible and try to achieve your original aim in a different way. As with that intended book purchase, by finding it elsewhere, although without its companion volume that Amazon were selling with it.

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I am not going to try to telephone Amazon unless I really need to. I hope only it will do as I ask in writing, to delete any details it has about me including spurious “accounts”. I have asked my credit-card company if there were any payments to Amazon in the last year, but they found none – and I replaced my cards only a few months ago after a scam attempt.

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Once I know something is impossible for me, it stays impossible. I cannot do anything about that but try to accept it = and to admit honestly finding it impossible.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Started making two dozen M5 rivet-bolts (or Slotless Round-head Bolts.)

They are 3/4″ snap-head rivets gripped in a special chuck I made for the purpose, held in an ER collet. The whole thing is not ever so concentric but turning a root-diameter spigot helps start threading the shank, using a die aligned by gently feeding a tube in the tailstock chuck, against the back of the die. So the results are acceptable.

These are to allow the door ring of my steam-wagon’s smokebox to be removable, the only practical way to be able to install a superheater.

I made about eight but I am not very well at the moment, my legs started to ache from standing at the lathe and I was becoming too tired.

 

(The large tailstock die holder I have is awkward and inconvenient to use, and does not grip the tailstock taper reliably. It would give no advantage for this task, over a conventional hand die-holder. I might see if the one in the EW lathe’s tool-set, supplemented with a taper-sleeve, will do the task.)

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I had spent about an hour this morning trimming rampant shrubs, and that knackered me!

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Most of my club is participating in various ways at a traction-engine rally, and I was supposed to be helping tomorrow; but I am in no fit state for that and sent my Apologies For Absence a couple of days ago. Worried if it is the “plague” I tried using the Covid test-kit I still had. It returned negative, thankfully (fingers crossed).

[Craig BrownParticipant @craigbrown60096]

I can report the old man’s mower worked perfectly well with the modified float bowl bolt.

Meanwhile I started making a spanner for an ER40 chuck I recently acquired, yeah I could buy one for £15, but wheres the fun in that.

[DiogenesParticipant @diogenes]

Hope you feel better soon, Nigel.

Traction Engine Rally, eh?

..that’ll be why it’s been raining all weekend, then..

Took an old shirt to use for rags into the workshop yesterday, and after about 5 minutes ended up wearing it again.. 12 degrees. Too much head scratching to be cold

 

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Thankyou Diogenes!

They may be lucky. It was raining a lot on Friday night but dry yesterday – more rain in the night but it’s now fine. The rally fields are on the clay in a valley floor so the slopes including car-park might be difficult, but the flat areas useable.

Not ventured out yet but will try a bit more engineering! Only another 16 or so rivets to modify…

Somewhere I have a small roller-box tool that could help this task.

Also among the come-in-handy stuff is a die-holder with a thin (about 1/4″ ) axial stem a couple of inches long. I think it might be from some form of die-head (a tapping head’s “other-half” ). Might this be? It might suit being given squares to fit the tapping-head I have.

[bernard towersParticipant @bernardtowers37738]

As you are not too well at the moment why not use 2BA no slot roundhead from Emkay at 18p each. I know your not then making them but you arte saving your energy for other things.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

I know the screws you mean! I have a bag of them, to be used on the bunkers where trying to close rivets tidily inside them would be difficult to say the least.

I did experiment with one, but I was not sure they would really suit for the smokebox work, and I’d still want to turn a small spigot on them to help start the nut in a very confined place. I am also envisaging stainless-steel nuts readily obtainable locally: I don’t want these things rusting solidly together.

Anyway, I was feeling vaguely more alive today and slowly completed the set: 24 plus 2 spares. I found a better die-holder, and used the lathe’s speed-controller and reverse to advantage; turning the little spigot then running the die along the rivet.

The second-operation was to hold them in a plate spilt-clamp and hand-die them to the last couple of turns.

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Oh – I was not making them to score Brownie Points. I’d be lucky if anything I make gains “Commended”, and no-one expects us to make standard fasteners we can buy! I was making them for a specific purpose and of the two options, this was marginally the better.

I still have the option and the rivets I’ve modified won’t be wasted – they’ll fit in the bunker platework.

Now then, who makes nuts that look like rivet-heads? (For the bunkers’ rivets.) I could, perhaps, but I’d be tempted to make enough only for the more visible places, not in the depths. Anyway that’s a last-phase task: all the cosmetic tidying of something already looking old and battered before it’s had a whiff of steam in it. The lorry that is. not its builder. Though….

[bernard towersParticipant @bernardtowers37738]

If you want rivet heds both sides you might try this but not for the faint hearted, its a fair bit of machining time but they look good

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

How do you tighten a screw/nut with no flats and no slots? Let alone undoing after a few years even light corrosion.

[bernard towersParticipant @bernardtowers37738]

Sorry just trying to be helpful

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

Bernard, please don’t think I was getting at your suggestion. I was expecting someone to explain a special rubber friction device or a screw slot on the inner end.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Steam Traction World do rounded nuts that they use on their kits to look like the head on the second side, not sure if they will sell them separately. There is a hint of a hex but once painted and standing a couple of feet away you can’t see it.

I expect the ones Bernard shows can be removed more easily than the rivits they are used to represent, as there is no expansion into the hole they should drill out without problem or could be drifted out after grinding off the head

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Jason –

I’ve followed your suggestion. Steam Traction World do sell what they call “Rivet Nuts, but M6 only. However they also sell M5 and M6 dome-nuts in brass and stainless-steel, and those may work for the smokebox “bolts” .

 

Bernard, Bazyle –

A good point. You do need some way to grip the fastenings but I found by experiment enough friction to tighten the nut sensibly.

If you use the hollow-stem design you suggest, those inside the structure could be given a screwdriver slot.

I used M3 round-head socket-screws on the ashpan: difficult to see without grovelling on the floor, and paint largely fills the sockets anyway.

I have even seen M8 versions on the buffer-beams of a 7.25″ g. petrol-hydraulic loco of narrow-gauge outline, and they are not too visually out of place once painted. They won’t win the locomotive an award but it was freelance and designed for hefty hauling so some poetic licence is forgivable.

I’ve two applications:

1) The smokebox door ring needs be removable, and here dome-nuts or blind hexagonal nuts with anti-size grease on the thread would seem the  ideal.

2) The bunkers are more obvious, but a “quick and dirty” way may be simply to cut a wide chamfer on ordinary nuts, leaving just enough of the flats, so if flush-finished with the slotless-screws then painted they won’t look too far from rivet-heads.

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

A technique I’ve seen in full size is to part form the head with a neck leaving a larger stub. Then you tighten using the stub till the neck shears, then dress off for visual satisfaction. To do it properly you need to make test pieces from the actual bar stock as quoted figures are minimal. All seems like a lot of fuss to me!

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

That reminds of the security screws holding the ignition-lock on a Vauxhall Chevette, back in the 1990s I think. These had a very narrow neck supposed to shear once tightened enough.

I and a pal from the same town were the last to leave our caving-club one Sunday evening, sixty miles from home. Could not find the car-keys anywhere!

I contacted a locally-resident member with access to the Lost Property cupboard. He brought out an impressive collection of keys, but none fitted. He owned a Vauxhall too, and tried a couple of his spare keys. No luck.

In desperation I removed the steering-column cowl…

 

Now, remember I have had a sheltered life. To me a “hot wire” is a length of silver-solder I am using, not a way to start a car!

 

The lock and the switch were held to the column by a clamp with two security screws – and someone had forgotten to snap them. Very gingerly I unscrewed them with pliers, then used a screwdriver as “key” directly on the switch.

Once home I emptied the car and draped a cloth “carelessly” over the dismantled switch until I could replace it.

Next weekend I found the keys. Whilst changing I had hung them by their lanyard where I’d forgotten, on a coat-hook, and someone had unwittingly hidden them with a towel or something.

……

Ummm, no I don’t think I’ll go and make oodles of snap-off nuts…….

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

If you are going to chamfer nuts then why not ditch the 45deg chamfer tool and use one with a concave cutting edge. It will do the nuts and you could also use it to round the hex off of bolts/screws which will be easier to hold than rivits when trying to thread them.

I have done it in the past to make specials, if you can’t grind the concave on the corner of your grinding wheel a small router bit held in the toolpost also works.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

I’ll bear that in mind, Jason. It’s not a priority, but a cosmetic detailing task for much later.

I probably could grind the curve but don’t really like wearing away the edge of the wheel.  The router-bit trick looks feasible. Another might be to grind a sort of tangent-tool from a worn-out or broken tap, to use a flute.

I wonder if it would be feasible to make a profile tool by drilling a hole near the corner of a piece of gauge-plate held in the vice at an angle to give some clearance, then cutting three-quarters of the hole away. Finish by hardening & tempering. The slightly elliptical shape the sloped drilling would give the hole, would not be significant or even noticeable.

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I’ve now a new problem… wildlife.

A young gull has fallen from its nest somewhere up on the house roof (the chimney probably), and is now on a small lean-to at the side of the house. Naturally its parents are trying to defend it while apparently unable to think how to look after it there.

(How the heck birds evolved from dinosaurs beats me – you’d think 65M years since the end-Cretaceous mass-extinction would have given the survivors of that event, time to evolve better brains!)

Consequently going between house and workshop, let alone doing anything else in the garden, now runs the gauntlet of two large, powerful birds with big beaks and the nerve-wracking ability to swoop at high speed while shrieking Very Loudly.

 

As I found this evening, when collecting something from the shed for painting. Back in the bird-proof fortress, I printed and cut out a paper template for the wagon-boiler’s top cladding plate. Making the cladding sheets is going to be something of a challenge thanks to the boiler’s unusual shape.

One point to remember is not to cover the boiler’s CE identity. Though how the club Boiler Admirer is supposed to verify it in the chassis, remains to be seen. It is stamped with very small characters round the cylindrical firebox’s foundation-ring, located now only about two inches or so behind the front axle and five inches above the ground! I can’t read it easily, and I know where it is.

 

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