What did you do Today 2024

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Gauge plate works with the drilled hole of filed profile

Dremel or small angle grinder will also shape HSS blanks

[Sonic EscapeParticipant @sonicescape38234]

Today I made an interesting discovery. At least for me. At low temperatures HSS has lower hardness than carbon steel! I always thought that HSS is a wonder material that is always better.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Thank you for that tip, Jason.

Could have done with it yesterday, radiusing the edge of a 200mm diameter steel plate. The radius size and shape are not critical, as it will simply form a flange root in thin sheet brass, but I “generated” it by handle-twiddling reminiscent of rubbing your head while patting your tummy, or my attempts to learn to play the drums.

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Interesting, that graph.

HSS might not necessarily “always” be better but it a lot more tolerant of harsh working conditions and heavy re-grinding.

That graph also bears out something I’d heard a long time ago but was wary about, that high carbon tool steel tool keep their edges longer than HSS equivalents, at least at low temperatures. The context then was taps and dies, and other things being equal it looks as if the cheaper high-carbon ones would be the better buy for hand-tools.

It would also suggest being the better bet for some machine-tool cutters, provided you don’t expect industrial feeds and speeds for which HSS was designed, or revel in making heaps of purple swarf!

[Nigel Graham 2]

On Nigel Graham 2 Said:

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Interesting, that graph.

HSS might not necessarily “always” be better but it a lot more tolerant of harsh working conditions and heavy re-grinding.

That graph also bears out something I’d heard a long time ago but was wary about, that high carbon tool steel tool keep their edges longer than HSS equivalents, at least at low temperatures. The context then was taps and dies, and other things being equal it looks as if the cheaper high-carbon ones would be the better buy for hand-tools.

…

I have much the same recollection, probably picked up from reading an ancient copy of ME.  I think it also said that carbon tool steel  takes a sharper edge than HSS, making it particularly good for Brass.

Hardness is only part of the story though.   Although HSS glories in staying hard when the action gets hot, it’s also tougher and considerably less brittle than carbon steel.   Carbon-steel taps are wonderful until one snaps on the job; then it becomes a hissing abomination.

It’s the extra toughness that makes HSS more attractive than carbon steel for hand-tools rather than it’s hardness or heat resistance.  Doesn’t mean carbon-steel tools are rubbish, just not quite as good as the opposition.   On a machine tool,  carbon-steel is at a serious disadvantage because it breaks relatively easily and loses hardness if the temperature rises.  Low productivity!

Dave

 

[MikeKParticipant @mikek40713]

Modified my 1 ton arbor press.  Removed space below the ram’s last tooth to allow the handle to reset position when wound fully up.  Drilled 3/8″, tapped the side for a retention screw, and made one (so far) ram tool.

Mike

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

That looks like a useful modification, MikeK

MichaelG.

[MikeKParticipant @mikek40713]

Another arbor press tool.  I applied blue painter’s tape to protect my nicely machined curve while welding.  Which, then, promptly caught on fire.  Hehe.  It stayed spatter-free though.  The alu jig block is for aligning base and shaft while welding.

Mike

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi, today I went to Weeting Steam Rally, whereupon I bought a 19″ piece of 3/4″ x 3/4″ x 1/8″ brass channel, a small coil of 7/16″ x 0.022″ brass strip, and a welders locking clamp. Both the brass pieces cost £10.00, and the grips £3.00.

Plus I got a pack of each of 2, 2.5 and 3mm long HSS twist drills, which were £2.00 a pack.

Of course there were plenty of traction engines to see.

A fair number of stationary engines.

Plus this one, which was working, and thought was quite impressive, which I did a short video of as well as this photo below.

There were a collection of classic cars and motor bikes, of over many years. Some old time farm machinery driven by traction engines, and some old time fun fare rides.

I can remember seeing a ride like the one above, at our annual local traveling fun fare, when I was about 6 years old, which was a steam engine driven one, but I never got to go on it, because by the time I was old enough, it no longer came to the fare.

Regards Nick.

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

Nice array of stationary engines. It strikes me they are a long way from the fence – just how long do think peoples arms are as I assume it is safety related?

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi Bazyle, yes I guess it’s about safety and maybe security, however, they didn’t appear to be a long way off, and could be photographed without having to stand back to get them framed well. The Rally is held on an awful lot of ground though. The photo below is the display area, where they parade the mobile exhibits with a commentary on each of the things as they pass through, and this photo is where as many as those that wish too, to line up in the middle with their traction engines, after the parade, and is less than half full when I took this photo. Normally after the parade, when all those that whish to do the final line up, and after the commentator has got them all to blow their engine whistles all at the same time, for a couple of minutes, the public are allowed into this area, to talk to the owners about their engines.

Regards Nick.

[bernard towersParticipant @bernardtowers37738]

Sorry I missed the deadline for yesterday but too hot and bothered so here’s the sum total of yesterdays efforts, prettier to look at than my workshop!

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

The culmination of Rather A Lot of Todays, actually…..

Completing (apart from painting) the top cover-plate for my steam-wagon’s boiler cladding. The material is thin steel sheet, ex central-heating boiler panel.

Making it involved a goodly amount of tool-making, producing a drilling/ flanging jig/former from a pair of old pipeline flanges, plus a spare chuck backplate, a lump of large-diameter bar and a piece of shuttering-ply and some small wood-screws!

It also meant a fair bit of careful planning, trying to think ahead as far as possible, which is not one of my strengths. With no drawing for the boiler, I measured it as best I could, printed a drawing in TurboCAD first, cut the holes out and laid this paper doily on the boiler to establish accuracy. Re-measured, made a new drawing, tried that second doily. It worked and I could start cutting metal, using a rotary table on the mill for setting out the holes.

 

Size? Eight inches Diameter, 3/8″ deep flange. I would have preferred it a bit deeper but did not want to chance it. I did though realise my chance of success would be much greater if I turned the periphery first so the development width is constant all round it.

 

So let the piccies tell the tale…

Flanging done – phew! I know using a conventional lathe for spinning is not good so I don’t intend to make too much of a habit of it. This was another reason for using the thinnest steel I had, and a shallow flange. The spinning tool is a length of copper bar. Low speed in back-gear (or the L5’s internal equivalent), lots of lubricating oil, take it nice and gently.  The disc is sandwiched between the former plates by M6 screws through the pilot holes for the bush holes in the finished item.

I have a jenny but not the skill to use it for flanging: I’ve tried it but merely made a mess of the blanks, and I don’t know what I was doing wrong.

That collet-chuck on the shelf came from one of the private-sales ads on this forum: thank you Michelle Walker!

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I cut the larger holes by a mixture of drills, hole-saws or step-drill and boring. The two small holes were just step-drilled. This one under way is for the steam outlet bush. Yes I know I should not have left those spanners on the sloping headstock…

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Finished and it even fits with just a little bit of filing in that rectangular hole, which I’d milled out with the plate still on the jig, using a central peg on the rotary-table. That hole accommodates a small block whose purpose is unknown to me. It might be somewhere to stamp the Boiler Number if that will fit. The number is almost inaccessible and unreadable, in tiny letters on the foundation ring.

 

The tooling, with the jig in its two parts and backplate, and the plywood faceplate extension.. The extra 6mm holes in the jig arose from at least one in the first two attempts hitting a backplate mounting screw!

The holes in order from the large front one at “12 o’clock” : turret, pressure-gauge, steam outlet, injector steam, curious block, blower – or “steam jet” in traction-engine parlance. “Stoking shoot” as Hindleys called it, in the centre.

The shiny control-rod towards us is on the injector water-cock. The wriggly upright bar, bent clear of the clack behind it, is the damper control.

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And afterwards? I’d actually completed most of it yesterday so hied hence unto my local for a late-evening celebration pint. The Rooster Brewing Co’s Buckeye is a pleasant session ale at 3.8%. Timothy Taylor’s Dark Mild a stronger-flavoured dark bitter with slightly caramel taste. I think I preferred the Buckeye. Oh, all right, two celebration pints…

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi, reading Neil Wyatt’s beginners project of a turntable weight in MEW 342, which I’ve never heard of before, I thought I’d make one, not that I play records much these days, but I do copy them to a music CD now and then, which I can then load onto my MP3 player. However, I thought I’d make mine out of brass, so looking though my scrap box, I came across a suitable size piece, which came out of a scrap valve of some sort, but I can’t remember exactly what sort, as I’ve had it about 20 years or more.

The only thing though, was the other end has a recess in it about 7mm deep, and is a little shy on its diameter, it also had a few dings in it, which I tidied up and took a light skim on the inside diameter and the bottom of the recess, with to view of putting a blank into it, as I didn’t want to trim it down and lose some of the weight.

So I had found a piece of brass which was about 4″ in diameter, which had a turned down projection of about 55mm diameter and roughly 10mm high, and the total thickness was about 20mm, but this had been used as a buffer to knock something onto a shaft, I guess, as it was dished a little, and had hammer marks on the other side, so yesterday I annealed it, and flattened it out the best I could with my fly press, and then gave it another heat up while it was still fairly hot, and today roughed the projection and part of the face of the 4″ section.

I then used my Warco lathe to hold it on the projection, so that I could face off the other side, and then put it back on my Boxford lathe to turn part of the projection for a press fit into the recess of the other piece of brass, and the rest of the projection was turned to a diameter of about 54mm.

The projection was then cut out using a trpanning tool.

Regards Nick.

P.S. Just to say that I don’t expect a beginner to try this method, but to stay with Neil’s notes.

[MikeKParticipant @mikek40713]

Fixture plate for my arbor press.  A pin and two tabs locate it in the press.  Also two supports that will get welded, or probably just fastened, to the plate.  I used the “GT” carbide insert to bore the hole in the welded-together supports.  I really like that insert.

Mike

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi, continuing with my turntable weight, yesterday I reduce the height of the recess on the main block, I successfully pressed the piece that I made with the 4″ piece, and then parted off the extra thickness, which was the thinner part of the 4″ piece.

This was then faced off, and a shallow recess was cut in the centre portion, about 36mm in diameter and the hole for the turntable pin was drilled, and the hole had a small countersink cut.

About 5mm was then faced off the top, to reduce the weight to about 400 grams, and the hole that was already there, was enlarged to take a plastic plug, which finishes the look and keeps dirt and dust out. Today a small portion at the top of the block was knurled, which allows a better grip for lifting it on and off the record.

A piece of thin self adhesive cork, was cut out a attached to the bottom, where the weight will be in contact with the record, which will help to stop the label getting scratched, and will probably prevent any vibrations between the two.

I don’t have any Nazareth albums to try it out, but “Princess Leia’s Theme” from The Music of Manuel album sounded very good, even though it’s 46 years old.

I do have three singles and one EP, of Nazareth, which includes their highest UK chart hit at number 9, which was their first one on the Mooncrest MOON 1 label, (MOON 1A) “Broken Down Angel”

Regards Nick.

[Ian PParticipant @ianp]

Does adding 0.4Kg have any effect on the turntable mounting suspension or the main thrust bearing?

I doubt it is of serious concern though.

Ian P

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi Ian P, well my turntable didn’t loose any speed with the weight on it, but it is a direct drive one.

Regards Nick.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Woefully little I am afraid, but I did stir myself to carry out one small but important task.

My wagon’s boiler number is stamped in itsy-bitsy teensee-weensy little characters around the foundation-ring so you can’t read it when installed, and it’s barely legible with the boiler on the bench.

So I carefully copied the number from the CE documents and stamped it on three non-critical areas to be visible to the club Boiler Admirers in due course.

One location is a small pad that might be intended for an identity mark of one’s own.

[MikeKParticipant @mikek40713]

I needed some washer/plugs, cut from 1/8″ flat bar.  My intent was to mark out, drill the holes, bandsaw or angle grinder the plug to rough size, and then cleanup on a lathe mandrel.  But I thought I’d try trepanning one since it was only 1/8″ material.  None of my HSS tooling like doing it (7″ mini-lathe here), but a 10mm boring bar with CCGT insert didn’t complain at all.  Just moved back and forth to create most of the depth from one side and then flipped the bar to finish the trepanning.  This was quicker than a saw or angle grinder could have been.  And I didn’t wind up with an interrupted cut.

Mike

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi, one job I got out of the way today, was cleaning and polishing my heavy duty 12″ overall length scissors.

This wasn’t my initial intension, as what I originally wanted to do was to adjust them, as when cutting thin stuff, it would fold over, unless I kind of forced the two blades together while cutting, but even thicker stuff would tend to fold, and then jam itself between the blades, however, trying to turn the screw, just didn’t want to happen, no matter how much I tried, and wrecking the screwdriver slot was at a big risk. I had tried penetrating oil two or three times, but to no avail, so the only thing left was to try a bit of heat, but of course, I didn’t want to get the blades hot enough to take out any hardness out of them, and so, my solution was to use my spot welder by carefully gripping the screw and allowing it to just get a dull red, and then letting it cool, I repeated this about three times and then the screw finally gave up, and I got the two apart, and so it was today that I decided to clean and polish them. Polishing was done with a mop using my battery drill.

Regards Nick.

 

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

A First-Aid Course, today.

For six of we members of our model-engineering society.

The club-room and tracks are inside a school grounds, and its owning “academy trust” requires all voluntary groups using its grounds to have at least one first-aider present. The other groups are mainly football and netball teams.

The instructor is the trust’s site HSE manager.

 

First-aid courses seem to change all the time. We could all remember ones, often in our work-places, teaching fancy knotwork with triangular bandages for more or less anywhere that might be damaged, or to create the neatest of slings. No more – the aim for quite some years now has been to stop the bleeding or cover the burn as efficiently and safely as you can, not show off your origami skills; and if you want a sling it is easy to improvise.

What was new to most of us though, was using a defibrillator. The instructor had a teaching version for us to have a go with, and I think the most re-assuring part for us is that the machines tell you what to do, based on their own analysis of the casualty’s heart rhythm.

Naturally we all had a go with the resuscitation dummies, in which we were surprised to learn you can’t call the “Heimlich Manoeuvre” to dislodge a choking object, by that name any more, because the Heimlich family descendants of the inventor have withdrawn permission to use their name! We don’t know why.

All in all it was an interesting and of course worthwhile day learning, or really for some of us refreshing skills we hope we never need use.

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A few other members were on site in the sunshine. One was there with his young lad, who is a capable driver of a battery-electric loco round the main track. Another, I think, was testing his 16mm-scale loco after a repair.

Back home, after tea, I put in a couple of hour’s work on my steam-wagon.

 

 

[DiogenesParticipant @diogenes]

Thought I’d ‘do’ a simple project that would fit the smaller amounts of free-time I have in the summer, it’s actually been more challenging than I expected and great fun..

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Fine work Diogenes!

…..

First task for me – try to install “up-dates” in my TomTom “sat-nag”. Oh what a rigmarole. First things first was that my PC told me the supporting software was already installed on it, but I could not find it. It’s not helped by MS WIN-11’s filing system being very poor compared to all its versions since W5.

Eventually I re-installed it – and it is still not listed among all the other programmes, where it should be! Then I had to obtain a new password. Finally I tried to put the up-dates on the instrument, but the MyTomTom site is confusing and the promised up-date function failed to materialise.

“Did this page help” the site plaintively asked.

“NO” I pressed.

A sort of text-message advice feature appeared, but I had a strange feeling I was conversing with a machine not an ‘ooman, so I said, “Oh to hell with it!”, gave up and closed the entire web-site! I can’t be doing with web-sites that promise to make things simple but do the opposite then don’t help you when you run into problems.

……

So, briefly helpd my neighbour repair my fence then turned to the wagon project. As a rest from my own “Battle of the Boiler” (its mountings and cladding) I turned to removing the rear axle as I have to modify it slightly, fit a new sprocket and carry out some other finishing tasks. I needed drop the water-tank off, and that also has some finishing work awaiting.

Yer ‘tiz, ready for assessing first as I need make some measurements:

And its differential, a former Austin car unit with the crown-wheel replaced by the sprocket, the main differential wheels annealed and bored out, to fit the traction-engine pattern, cannon-shaft axle with journals made. I will make a sheet-metal case for the differential, which on its original car lived inside the gear-box. The axle does present another problem as the chain line is not in the best place for trying to squeeze the transmission-gears around the primary sprocket and the end of the engine, but I can’t do anything about that.

 

{EDIT – Just occurred to me, having pressed [Submit] I may be able to move the new sprocket to the left-hand (offside) end of the unit on a combined carrier / shroud. It won’t look right, that’s the only problem. The prototypes had the chain very close to the wheel and the gears were on the back of that, but I found that out long after making the axle. Measuring proved that moving it outwards would look slightly more correct but worsen the problems at the engine and gears end. }

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Nice to see it for-real, Nigel

MichaelG.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Thankyou Michael.

Oh, it’s far too long in the building. There was a once joke in my club that it could tow me in my bath-chair (what, with remote-control?).

Since then though, three people I would have liked to have seen it running – apart from me – are no longer alive and I am aware I might not have many years in which to drive it around.

 

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