What did you do today (2015)

[Ralph HParticipant @ralphh]

Posted by Nicholas Farr on 25/03/2015 10:42:52:

Posted by IanT on 24/03/2015 19:06:12:

Interested in the label on your Drummond lathe Michael (nice find by the way – even in it's 'rustic' finish) – as it gives the address as being "Rydes Hill, n. Guildford"

I mostly grew up in Guildford (latterly in Rydes Hill in fact) and I know where the old Drummond factory used to be. What has always puzzled me is that all the adverts I've ever seen for Drummonds (old pre-war MEs etc. ) always gave their address as being "Rise Hill, Guildford".

And yet on your lathe it's spelt the way I would expect…?

Anyway – I'm sure it will clean up very nicely with some elbow grease…

Regards,

IanT

Hi, I've looked through quite a few of my early ME's starting at 1921 and yes! they all say Rise Hill, however, I have a volume from 1909 and the ads in those say Rydes Hill and one of the Special Attachments catalogues from Drummond's that I have, say Ryde's Hill. See picture below, interesting to see an ad for "The Model Engineer" exhibition for 1909 also.

Regards Nick.

Edited By Nicholas Farr on 25/03/2015 10:46:44

Both of my lathes (1906 and 1916) say Ryde's Hill. Drummond changed their factory addresses several times and from all I've seen, the reasons are lost to history. On this site **LINK** you can see nearly a dozen names they used. Seemed to change mostly before and during the great war with rise hill being almost universal afterwards. Might have been to prevent espionage or the likes during the conflict as their lathes were very heavily employed by the services.

[Ian S CParticipant @iansc]

Not too many years ago there were some stories in ME about pressurizing various vessels with steam until they failed. Also about drying a leaking ball cock ball(copper), by sitting it on an electric hot plate, half got pushed into the element and the other half into the ceiling.

I remember a story my boss told us a smoko one day, he was flatting with a mate in Timaru , and usually did the cooking, one day he was doing overtime, so his mate thought he'd help(he had sort of seen what to do), so he took a tin of spaghetti(unopened), put it in a pot(dry), put it on the stove, and after turning the hot plate on, left the room. Soon after there was a large explosion, he went back into the kitchen, there was spaghetti on just about every thing, and the sides of the pot were flattened out, and bits of tin were embedded in the walls, the moral here is put a little water in the pot. It took weeks to get all the spaghetti out of the cupboards, draws, etc.

Ian S C

[OuBallieParticipant @ouballie]

Bunked out of high school with a mate one day, and we then tried our best to demolish a wall in a derelict house (bungalow), using various mixtures of fertiliser, tamped down off course.

We made a few dull thumps, bits of brick blown out, but wall remained in place.

Ran out of money so had to give up.

Oh, engrediants got from the local chemist!

We also had a long 'foofy slide', from the side of a hill downwards, the wire rope passed through a piece of conduit to act as a handhold.

Tried DIY Molotovs out of sheer curiosity, but in the open veld of course, but failed miserably as we didn't understand their workings.

Can just imagine the uproar those antics would cause today.

Innocent days they where.

Geoff – LED Angel Eyes fitted to two machines.

[Jesse Hancock 1Participant @jessehancock1]

Being left to our own devices in the wilds of Australia there was no end of nonsensicle things we did as kids it really does amaze me that I am still alive today. One thing which we did try was shoving a live 303 bullet into the hole for stringing wire in a concrete fence post and then trying to get it to go off using anything our imaginations dredged up. Sticks, stones, iron bars, bricks.

We were lucky I guess but we couldn't get that thing to blow not no how.

A whole gang of us kids ran around in an eight foot diameter rusty bottomed water butt for weeks. We took that thing everywhere like good little hamsters which goes show you don't always learn anything useful from your peers and elders aye?

Another time we made big a corregated iron sheet into a boat. It took the best part of a day and bucket load of sweat beating that thing into shape and folding the ends tightly so as to be water tight. Then we dragged it for about two miles to the nearest beach where …well it didn't sink exactly because it never floated. Even standing in it bailing with empty paint tins like possed maniacs didn't get us sailing.

Ah to be a kid again with all that boundless energy.

[Clive HartlandParticipant @clivehartland94829]

The boat, near where I lived was a bit of a rough estate and I watched as they made a boat from Hardboard, at the time I thought, ' Stupid' Anyway they get to the river Medway and they launched and it was so light it almost skittered on the water. These young lads piled in and off they went but a little while later they swam back as the boat had started to buckle and spring all the joints as the hardboard became softboard.

Clive

[KWILParticipant @kwil]

A local hill had a 6 ft cube of launch pad, oops I mean concrete which found many uses.

[Phil WhitleyParticipant @philwhitley94135]

Me and My Mate would go to his dads Smallholding(somewhere in west Yorks) and lark about. One day we got some apples and decided to cook them in an old baby belling cooker we found. Having no electrickery, we quite logically decided to build a fire, put the apples in the cooker, and place it carefully on the fire. We did this, and after about thirty minutes decided they would be ready, but how to get them? My mate solved this problem by kicking the cooker off the fire, unfortunately, a large part of the fire went with it, caught some dry grass, which caught onto a steep hilside covered with bone dry rosebay willowherb, and we watched in horror as the fire rushed up the hillside and became a roaring inferno………………we did what all ten year olds were really good at, we legged it! The fire brigade declared the fire out……….4 days later, it having burned out many acres of wasteground and green belt around the nameless place where I then lived, we never got found out. it was the late 50's. I still shudder when I think about the roar it made.

Phil

[Nick_GParticipant @nick_g]

.

Finished my James Coombes engine from castings by Stuart models. …….. Hoooooooooo-raaaagh.!

Nick

[mechman48Participant @mechman48]

Yesterday… stripped my 4" mill vice down again, ( should have done it when I made the T slot locating bar last week..) as it had a .007" – .008" lift on the moveable jaw & there was no way of getting the clamp plates to tighten up any more.Should really have changed these for BMS or gauge plate ( but didn't have any ) levelled it out on the mill table & milled .005" off the underside of the slide, reassembled & fitted studs instead of bolts, Nylock nuts fitted to take up any remaining slack & provide locking facility… only .002" lift shown after reassembly/

George.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Today I looked at some photos and watched a video of a rather nice model of a porsche 911 engine

Edited By JasonB on 30/03/2015 17:08:20

[Oompa LumpaParticipant @oompalumpa34302]

Broke my thumb, and it really did smart a bit when i did. Left hand so as I am right handedit will only slow me down a bit.

Still smarts though

graham.

[Jesse Hancock 1Participant @jessehancock1]

Smarts now wait till you go to bed.

[Boiler BriParticipant @boilerbri]

After spending a lot of time thinking that the loco lift I have made for our club would not be mechanically correct by using chains and sprockets I broke my piggy bank and bought a hydraulic pump to replace the aforementioned. 😞

I am sure it's gonna be a lot better for it😁 in fact is given me a rise😳

Bri.

[Oompa LumpaParticipant @oompalumpa34302]

Posted by Jesse Hancock 1 on 30/03/2015 20:56:04:

Smarts now wait till you go to bed.

I am there now. No chance of sleep though, it's given me a headache fighting the pain!

Bu**er!

graham.

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Well I picked up a Skywatcher 150PL on Saturday. It's Chinese and interestingly you don't see any criticism of Chinese scopes on the astronomy sites….

The tripod & mount seems massive compared to a camera or even a video tripod (about 30kg), but apparently is still considered a bit flimsy for 'serious astrophotography'. There are some obvious places to add a few braces in tension as all the give is torsion as the tripod legs don't meet in the middle.

In fact, the whole thing is enormous!

I've carefully adjusted and teflon greased the drive gears, adjusted the mirrors according to the manual.

Now we have solid cloud forecast for the rest of the week…

Neil

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Have fun, Neil

… I just found this short video, which should set you some realistic expectations.

MichaelG.

[“Bill Hancox”Participant @billhancox]

Posted by Oompa Lumpa on 30/03/2015 20:38:36:

Broke my thumb, and it really did smart a bit when i did. Left hand so as I am right handedit will only slow me down a bit.

Still smarts though

graham.

Bad luck Graham. How in the world will you stir your tea now?

Regards to Ted

Bill

[Bruce EdneyParticipant @bruceedney59949]

I have been stripping server hard drives down for scrap. I can strip a drive in about 5 mins and get about 250gms of high quality aluminium per drive. I am ending up with heaps of torx head screws and rare earth magnets. Kinda fun

Bruce

[Clive HartlandParticipant @clivehartland94829]

At work we have an old chap comes around about once a fortnight and lifts all our scrap. sometimes a little and other times a couple of boxfuls. He was not seen for about a month and when he appeared again I asked where he had been and he said, 'Barbados for 2 weeks.' I am in the wrong job.

Graham, that will throb and throb for a while. maybe put some ice on it. I broke a finger on my right hand next to little finger, that was painful strapped to the other finger and I felt like I had a flipper! I can still feel the break in the bone now that it has set.

Clive

[Nigel McBurney 1Participant @nigelmcburney1]

My Super 7 motor started making clicking noises,then the clicking got worse within a few minutes,stopped the motor ,restarted all quiet,stopped and started again it was noisy again, of course the lathe is against the wall,so lot of effort to remove motor. Soon found the cause,the internal plastic cooling fan was no longer gripping the shaft it was not sloppy just a sliding fit and was sliding along the shaft by about 3mm, I tightened the socket grub screw and its now ok, The motor is 40 years old and and its taken all this time for the screw to loose its grip, probably due to creep in the plastic.

Years ago I worked on hard drives, torx screws replaced the use of skt hd screws as the hex drive bits produced minute particles of stainless which contaminated the reading heads, torx bits gripped the screwheads better,reducing the risk of contamination .At the time you could buy cheap all plastic verniers, one of the design engineers aquired one ,he used it for checking dims on rare earth magnets,simple!! in those days the magnets were massive and it was not wise to use steel measurment tools.

[martin perman 1Participant @martinperman1]

Neil,

Reading your musings regarding the Sky at Night I get the impression you may know what your talking about my wife and I have always had a passing interest regarding star watching and have so far got on with the MK1 eyeball and a decent pair of binoculars, because of health reasons I am begrudgingly likely to move away from my current hobby of humping stationary engines to Rally's.

I enjoy photography and would like to purchase a telescope and was wondering if you could point me in the direction of a reasonable scope and how its possible to take pictures through the scope with a Camera, my current camera is a Fuji Finepics 9500 bridge camera or would a webcam be an easier means of getting pictures.

Martin P

[pgk pgkParticipant @pgkpgk17461]

I bought a 150mm refractor years ago .. got it cheaper 'cos one of the focussing trunions had snapped off in transport but I had no problem just focussing with the other. The stand and couter weights for that must be way more than neil's weight.. a heavy devil to shift. And it did detract from the interest by the time it was lugged out, allowed to cool etc. Back then i lived in London and it was the better choice for plaent spotting in poor lighting conditions.

Out here in rural Wales there's zero light pollution but I'm surrounded by 600 foot ridges so my sky sector is more limited – or i have to lug the beast even further away from barns and trees.

I did take soem quite successful pics just with a simple camera set to infinity and lens against lens. But if one wants a whole series of fancy pics to play with with enhancing software then really one needs to consider a motorised tripod and either a high res camera insert or an attachement for a decent camera.

Somewhere in the move i lost the finder scope too and the extra hassles means i havent set it up for a couple of years. I suppose it ought to go on the auction site.

[Rik ShawParticipant @rikshaw]

Spending today in the shop tidying up and organizing. Sorting out a draw full of studding I found a slightly rusty 12" length of this:

Its .377" diameter and my thread gauge tells me its 13 TPI. I have searched through all my data books but cannot find any reference to a thread of this size. A special of some sort I s'pose but for what I wonder?

Rik

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

Posted by Rik Shaw on 31/03/2015 13:30:41:

Its .377" diameter and my thread gauge tells me its 13 TPI. I have searched through all my data books but cannot find any reference to a thread of this size. A special of some sort I s'pose but for what I wonder?

Rik

Now try a 2mm pitch gauge on it. Chances are it's 10mm x 2

But if you only have one 12" length, never used it, rusty, chances are you never will then bin it.

In fact why am I even answering this post?

Letters on the back of a £4.00 note to Ketan at Arceuro [ might get me four quid back then. ]

[Rik ShawParticipant @rikshaw]

"In fact why am I even answering this post?"

Because you've got nothing better to do perhaps?

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