What did you do today (2015)

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

There are quite a few sources for the Model Technics D1000 fuel on the net, some will post others won't. If you have a Model Technics stockest locally they should also be able to add it to their next order if it is not a stock item.

J

[Oompa LumpaParticipant @oompalumpa34302]

Well, not today but Wednesday. My improvised method of toolhoder storage was a piece of 40mm x 40mm mesh on the wall:

Don't be tempted to do this. After the umpteenth time of a toolholder not being placed exactly and then subsequently crashing down onto the lathe tray I set to and made a new toolholder-toolholder. It is much better, gave it to Roy for a bit of Powder Coat and now not only do I have a "system" that satisfies my OCD but the tools are securely held:

works for me and my most oft used twenty or so tools are within easy reach.

graham.

Edited By Oompa Lumpa on 27/03/2015 10:22:38

[pgk pgkParticipant @pgkpgk17461]

My part-time scrappy mate gave me a call.. he'd just picked up a load from one of the steel barn fabricators.

I picked out several hot rolled flats.. mostly 8-10" long and widths from an inch and a half to about 6 in. And soem as thick as 3/4 in. Not much round or square but I snaffled what there was.. shortish bits mostly 6in long. I ended up with a pile i physically couldn't shift and had to break down into 3 smaller piles to comfortably lug them to my car – so call it 50kg total. He would have been happy with £15 but the 20 I gave him should keep him sweet for next time.- he threw in a couple of nice sized thick fire boards and a couple of unused scotchbrite grinder sander discs and a short bit of ally scaffold pole and a 2-3 foot long 3/4 inch eyebolt from a tractors linkage.

[MuzzerParticipant @muzzer]

EdH, Bob – thanks for posting about the E.D. Bee MkII. This was almost certainly the same model I played around with back in 1970 or so when I was in primary school. I distinctly recall the yellow plastic fuel tank, compression adjuster and throttle twig thing.

A friend and I mounted it on a short mast on top of a wheeled trolley which I tethered to a nail in the playground. It fairly whizzed around. Miraculously, nobody got hurt by the unguarded propeller. That sort of activity wouldn't be allowed these days but my teacher responded very constructively by bringing in a couple of A series engines for me to dismantle. These were all contributors to the happy state I find myself in today.

Murray

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

I can't possibly compete with pgk's haul, but I was pleased to find some useful Aluminium tube … at the Garden Centre.

mainframe is a modular framing system for fruit cages, etc. The tubes are 16mm diameter, but have a generous 1.6mm wall thickness, and are available in 2, 4, 6, and 8 foot lengths [their mix of units not mine] at <£1 per foot.

Seems very good value [except, of course, we also came back with a load of shrubs]

MichaelG.

.

Edit: here is the direct link to mainframe.

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 27/03/2015 14:07:57

[MuzzerParticipant @muzzer]

Clive – intermittent contacts may be a possibility. If you acquire some of this contact cleaner, it can be handy for brushes, pots, switches and relays that getting a bit gummed up. Sounds like a bit of a bodge but can be quite effective.

[Clive HartlandParticipant @clivehartland94829]

Hi Murray, Yes, I can borrow abit from work to just ensure I have cleaned it all off. Then I will blow it all over with a can of air.

Clive, busy drooling over my new car, a Passat Est.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

… Received this wonderful image of today's very active Sun, from Tony Cross of Manchester Astronomical Society:

MichaelG.

 

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 27/03/2015 16:02:21

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Aerial support tubes are another remarkably inexpensive source

This would seem to be the secret to solar photos without an eclipse: http://www.solarscope.co.uk/products.html

Neil

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Posted by Neil Wyatt on 27/03/2015 18:16:04:

This would seem to be the secret to solar photos without an eclipse: http://www.solarscope.co.uk/products.html

.

Neil,

Tony's picture is taken in Hydrogen alpha, but he adds the occulting disc in Photoshop. … The enormous dynamic range in solar images means that you can only really process for the solar disc or the flares & prominences [if you try to get both, then both are compromised].

MichaelG.

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Deeply grieved by my recent lack of workshop time, just grabbed a Skywatcher 150PL off Ebay. for the starting price.

This is the long focal length version, ideal for planetary photography & deep sky if I can get the right webcam.

Neil

[Bob RodgersonParticipant @bobrodgerson97362]

Muzzer,

I remember doing similar things when I was at school, strapping an Oliver tiger to the back of my bike as one of the dafter things I did back then. How I didn't slice any fingers off then I don't know. The weed killer bombs were also a great source of entertainment for us, we used to let them off in the caves on the coast and watch for the lifeboat crews legging it down to the boathouse, assuming a maroon had gone off indicating somebody in distress. They were lethal things and a couple of kids in our area suffered severe injuries and there was also a death attributed to one of them.

I came close to loosing my thumb in the propellor of my 200 cc flat twin aero engine while playing with it about 10 years ago. It pays to tether the test stand when starting it up. I've also got some scars(propellor rash) from a few model planes that I've had more recently.

[Jesse Hancock 1Participant @jessehancock1]

Swarf Mainly,

I had my tongue in my cheek when I wrote that… The Pilot boat has a recommended engine size of 1 to 5cc or a suitable electric motor. Sealion is 30cc. I suppose I could shoe horn the sealion in but I wouldn't want to risk drowning it in such a small hull. My main dilemma is finish the boat or keep plodding on with the sealion. I think it's sealion.

[Speedy Builder5Participant @speedybuilder5]

Muzzer and Bob Rodgerson, You must have gone to the same school as me. We used to pinch the plywood out of the bottom of an empty drawer, saw it up a bit, 4 x Mecano wheels/axle, central pillar to mount engine. ED Bee, Racer, etc.screwed onto it. Several times they would take off and flip over, string snap etc. Such fun! Then one day we had a Jetex 500, just ignited it and kicked it around a bit on the school yard – then woosh, it took off, cleared the 3 story boarding house never to be seen again. And why did we experiment mixing various fertilisers in old glass ink bottles – but we survived!

BobH

[MuzzerParticipant @muzzer]

I survived the obligatory firework / bang making activity. A couple of years later, after I'd finished messing with chemicals and I was in the 5th year at school, a failed device was found on waste ground and I found myself one of the suspects. I had an amusing episode with the local Special Branch and the bomb squad. They "knew" it was me and said my friend had confessed everything so I should just help to clear up the details. I told them if I'd made it, it would have gone off. We even had the Mr Nasty and Mr Nice clown show. Hilarious cliche stuff. In the end my dad told them to f off and not come back. Never got back all the stuff they took away.

The biggest bang I ever made was the simplest. 50 gallon oil drum with a couple of pints of water. Bung screwed back in, light fire underneath (old arm chair). The ends bowed out like balloons so we retreated to what we thought was a safe distance. Never found the lid and the drum landed about 100m away. It could have killed somebody and the noise was something I will never forget. I was living in Northern Ireland at the time, so we beat a hasty retreat before the rozzers / army turned up.

Merry

[Bob Brown 1Participant @bobbrown1]

I recall making a match gun,

Bang, never did find a ball but did fire it at a 45 gallon drum, hole right through it.

Fizzy drinks bottle with a drop of water in it in the days of metal caps tossed in a bonfire, highly dangerous!

Bob

Who remembers pug sticks? bit of clay on the end of a long flexible stick (hazel) 

Edited By Bob Brown 1 on 28/03/2015 13:42:02

Edited By Neil Wyatt on 28/03/2015 14:42:22

[martin perman 1Participant @martinperman1]

Gentlemen,

The secrets are coming out aren't they as a member of 301 Squadron ATC we used to have a Bonfire night with fireworks but because we had a Vampire Jet in our grounds there were strategically placed 45 gal drums about the place just in case, it soon became obvious that if you dropped a lit banger into a drum you could create a heavy down pour leaving the barrel empty and our officers running around trying to refill the drum

Martin P

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

True story.

 

Sat in the canteen one day at a haulage company I worked at, chewing about past times and one driver said "We used to pump old lorry inner tubes up to 30 psi and go sailing on the local gravel pits "

 

So I said you can't pump an inner tube up to 30 psi without a tyre round it to hold it all in, then the arguments started.

 

So to prove it we got a 10.00 x 20 truck inner tube and started to blow it up, got it 'quite large' and still noting on the tyre gauge but some still were not convinced, so we joined all the air lines up, 'O' ring on the tyre gauge trigger and stuck it outside on the lorry park and retreated inside with the doors nearly closed and 12 sets of eyeballs stacked vertically in the gap.

 

It got bigger, and bigger, and bigger still.

It got that big the hole in the middle disappeared.

Then it got translucent.

Then it got very translucent.

 

Then it went BANG !!

 

And I mean bang, all the fire and burglar alarms in the surrounding premises went off. Our boss came flying downstairs wanting to know what happened but we didn't know [ did we ? ]

 

For the nest 2 hours Plod and the fire brigade were driving round like mad men looking for what it was.

 

And other than a few scrats of rubber about the size of a mobile phone there was nothing to show for it.

 

BTW 1.234 seconds [ approx ] before the bang, still nothing on the gauge.

Edited By John Stevenson on 28/03/2015 14:35:39

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Can we be a little less specific on the details of the explosives please.

Like all teenagers me and my mates blew up plenty of inanimate objects, mostly in a deserted quarry, despite the dire warnings from my dad''s mate who only had half a thumb thanks to a brass cannon…

Sadly the youngsters of today probably risk more than a ticking off if they get involved in such things.

Happy to hear the tales, just not detail recipes…

Neil

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

But Neil, if I take the air out of my recipe it doesn't work ?

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

I let you get away with that one – a typical stoopid deed as it is!, It's the explosive ones we have to be careful with.

Neil

[KWILParticipant @kwil]

I am not telling then!

[Clive HartlandParticipant @clivehartland94829]

Brought up in the fruit orchards of Kent I knew that the farmers would put out bird scare strings as soon as the cherries started to ripen. We would wait until he had lit the string and he had gone and then take out every other one. We then tested them on holes in fence posts and in the mud of the river, not that powerful. Also I went through the war, when the German bombers came over and dropped incendiary bombs that stuck in the soft tilled earth. These we collected and the older lads would open them by unscrewing the end and tip out the magnesium powder into a pile and lay a trail and then let it off! An enormous flash! Wow. everything around covered in white powder. We had one come down our chimney and it was scooped up and thrown outside, we had 'cross slit' goggles and a sort of metal scoop and a raking rod. The German incendiary bombs were round but when i was in Germany we often uncovered our bombs and they were hexagonal, still dangerous though. They would go down into the soil about their own length.

Clive

[pgk pgkParticipant @pgkpgk17461]

Ah, the nostalgic stories..

Now when i was a wee lad working int' factory making black powder for Lord Nelson we used to have 't' wait for London barge to come up estuary with load of barrels from toff's London Privvies. Stinking rich meant sommat back then!

As you lad t'was my job to skim crystals off the barrels rotting urine being good source ammonium nitrate. But since gov'nr 'ere won't let me give't full recipe lets just say that the final mix needed grinding fine.

Safety shoess didnt exist back then but then w couldnt afford clogs either. Factory was by t'river so powered waterwheel. Clever folks built them of threes tone sides with timber river front. that way if a disaster happened then only lads ont' shift and front of factory got blowed to mist. We used to keep a spare factry front round ack so could get going again fast.

When we made our own hooch – it being legal if landowner didn't find still and want his wedge we used to dilute and mix with black powder and fire a sample. 100 proff was when sample burnt clean, didn't go out or blow..

The finer grind gave a faster burn but a lot of lads lost hands doing specials for t' toffs.

[Oompa LumpaParticipant @oompalumpa34302]

Here you go Clive, this is what happens when you are not paying attention to centralising the moderator on your rifle/not checking it is still screwed on tight:

took some getting off too it had jammed tight. I don't think a bit of chemical metal is going to work on this one!

graham.

[Author]

Posts