What Did You Do Today (2016)

[MikeParticipant @mike89748]

For a trip to Poland earlier this year I used Saga. I'm a stroke survivor, but found the on-line forms easy to fill in, without any high-flown medical terms. Can't remember the cost, except that it was reasonable.

[RobboParticipant @robbo]

I don't like to piss on the parade, but lets not forget that Michael's instant attention has probably meant the cancellation of someone else's pre-planned treatment.

That's how it happened with us.

Edited By Robbo on 10/12/2016 09:26:56

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Posted by Robbo on 10/12/2016 09:26:34:

I don't like to piss on the parade, but lets not forget that Michael's instant attention has probably meant the cancellation of someone else's pre-planned treatment.

That's how it happened with us.

.

.

Piss away, if you wish, Robbo … I'm sure it's perfectly true.

… Unless there were infinite resources available, it's inevitable !!

My CABG was postponed twice during January, when more urgent cases had to 'jump the queue'.

… That's just how it has to be.

MichaelG.

[Russell EberhardtParticipant @russelleberhardt48058]

Posted by Limpet on 09/12/2016 19:42:52:

I couldn't agree more I've just had a knee replacement (hardly the same league I know) but nothing was too much trouble for the staff. why so called celebrities get paid so much and not the NHS staff I'll never understand. Hope you get well some Michael.

Hope you get some good physio. When my wife had hers done here in France they sent her for a seven week stay in a physiotherapy clinc, all paid for by the state. It made a world of difference.

Russell.

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

Yesterday, travelling south on the M1 we overtook a narrow gauge guards van or box van. From the location we wondered if it was heading for Leighton Buzzard railway. Not getting to many preserved railways each year I think I see more rail equipment on the road than I do in its natural environment.

[Clive HartlandParticipant @clivehartland94829]

The mild weather is playing havoc with the bees, it makes them active and with no forage they start consuming stores rapidly. I am already feeding four Nucleus boxes.

Yesterday they were very active and I was chopping back Bramble growth around the hives. Cutting through the tangle of stems with each one trying to hook onto you just to reach the main stems . Once cut they die back and later i will hook it all out to burn. Most of the growth is from birds eating the seeds and dumping them where they roost, of course Bramble also increases by, 'Layering' where a stem will root where it touches the ground. It will grow a foot a day in the Spring.

Clive

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Posted by Bazyle on 10/12/2016 11:07:03:

Yesterday, travelling south on the M1 we overtook a narrow gauge guards van or box van. From the location we wondered if it was heading for Leighton Buzzard railway. …

.

Ah! [or maybe that should be a horrified Aaggh!!] … I remember visiting there when we lived in Hertfordshire.

The track was unbelievably rickety; we expected to be de-railed at every joint.

But the "best" feature was surely the 50 gallon oil drum that they were using as an air reservoir … it wasn't yet spherical, but was certainly heading that way.

MichaelG.

[MuzzerParticipant @muzzer]

Posted by Michael Gilligan on 10/12/2016 12:14:15:

But the "best" feature was surely the 50 gallon oil drum that they were using as an air reservoir … it wasn't yet spherical, but was certainly heading that way.

MichaelG.

Biggest bang I ever made wasn't with pyrotechnics. I just put a litre of water in a 50 gallon oil drum, screwed the cap in and put it on a fire (an old arm chair, IIRC). The ends went spherical not long after I decided that legging it might be a good idea. When one of the ends let go, I almost crapped myself. The main barrel landed about 50m away and we never found the lid. It would surely have been capable of cutting someone in half. The other reason for legging it was due to this being Northern Ireland during the mid seventies. The rozzers came along pretty sharpish.

I wouldn't want to be near a barrel with bulging ends – they have strict regulations around the design and use of pressure vessels for good reason.

[Alan Waddington 2Participant @alanwaddington2]

Posted by Muzzer on 10/12/2016 13:49:47:

I wouldn't want to be near a barrel with bulging ends – they have strict regulations around the design and use of pressure vessels for good reason.

When i was an apprentice, one of the blokes decided to make a barbecue by cutting a 50 gallon drum in half with the gas axe………Only he forgot to unscrew the bung before work commenced. The resulting blast knocked him on is @rse and bent the cutting torch to 90 degrees from the handle. Drum lid was found about 100ft away…..he escaped with a singed tache and a bruised ego.

[Sam Longley 1Participant @samlongley1]

On TV the series Mythbusters set up a domestic hot water cylinder in a domestic type situation & shut the valves.

They then let temperature & pressure rise.

the resulting bang sent the split cylinder through the ceiling & about 100ft into the air

I still liked the one about how to remove hardened concrete from a readymix concrete lorry using semtex ( or something like that) the best though !!!!!

Must remember not to use too much next time

[MikeParticipant @mike89748]

There's a special 10-bore cartridge made for removing baked-on crud from the interiors of the kilns in which concrete is made.

My favourite explosion story happened when I was working in Zimbabwe in the 1960s, when one end of a huge CO2 cylinder in the local Coca Cola bottling plant blew off during the night.. The cylinder was wrenched from its horizontal mountings and propelled through two brick walls and across a minor road before coming to rest. The engineer sent to the site from Coca Cola South Africa said that it was the second such explosion he had investigated. In the case of the first one the cylinder was mounted vertically, and it went straight through a tin roof and was found in a field nearly half a mile away. What puzzled me about both incidents was that both happened in the cool of the night, and not in the daytime when the temperature could have been up to 90 degrees F.

[V8EngParticipant @v8eng]

Removed, I miss-read Mike's posting.

Edited By V8Eng on 10/12/2016 16:36:13

[Speedy Builder5Participant @speedybuilder5]

When I was an apprentice at vickers Weybridge in the 60's, for some reason, the R&D group decided to 'blow up' a VC10 main wheel in a distant corner of the airfield. They covered it with an old anti submarine net and proceeded to blow it up until they ran out of air at 3,000 psi. Not satisfied, they sent for more air and round about 5,000 psi there was a hell of a Booom. The tyre survived, but the mag alloy rim parted company with the rest of the hub. I don't know what it proved – probably that the safety factor was far too high.
For me, it was with my Dad to see what happened when you incinerated an aerosol can – exciting.
BobH

[DrDaveParticipant @drdave]

Sam's post about a domestic hot water cylinder reminded me of a water pre-heater at a power station that I will not mention. After an overhaul, the steam was turned back on to heat the boiler feed water, but the stop cocks on both input and output sides had been closed turning the pre-heater into a closed vessel. The resulting explosion sent the lid (a steel disc some 6" thick and 5 feet in diameter) 2 or 3 stories into the air. A passing worker had an unexpected hot shower, but fortunately, nobody was hurt.

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

Not a new problem see maiden voyage though I trust most of you are already familiar with this.

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

I'm making a model of a model – I have to make a big display model, but first I have to make a roughly 1/6 scale 'maquette' to show what it will look like. An interesting exercise that will help me solve some practical problems. It took two tries to make an acceptable perspex tank, six inches long, using superglue. It does bloom though!

That said, anyone needing to cut perspex I found that the dremel mini-sized (75mm wheels) angle grinder used with a carbide grit wheel and a fence does a good job IF you cut slowly. Cut as fast as it wants and you get small chips, but still no cracking.

The experiment proves the value of buying laser cut and polished sheets for the full size and using tensol, I don't want to mess around when doing that, I'll also make a wooden or MDF jig to hold everything aligned before committing to the glue.

Neil.

[Bob RodgersonParticipant @bobrodgerson97362]

Hi Muzzer,

if you work in the oil industry it is not altogether uncommon for Live crude to be bled off into a spare oil drum when removing tools from wells under pressure. This is OK provided you allow the gas in solution in the oil to come out. Bear in mind it can be at several thousands of PSI so if the cap is screwed on to soon guess what happens, yes, minion shaped barrels.

When you see the drums with the end caps domed you are never too sure weather to try to vent off the pressure or run.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Posted by Neil Wyatt on 10/12/2016 20:10:44:

It took two tries to make an acceptable perspex tank, six inches long, using superglue. It does bloom though!

.

My Dad did quite a lot of [optical quality] fabrication with Perspex, and I'm pretty sure he used chloroform as a solvent adhesive.

MichaelG.

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Posted by Michael Gilligan on 10/12/2016 20:27:09:

Posted by Neil Wyatt on 10/12/2016 20:10:44:

It took two tries to make an acceptable perspex tank, six inches long, using superglue. It does bloom though!

.

My Dad did quite a lot of [optical quality] fabrication with Perspex, and I'm pretty sure he used chloroform as a solvent adhesive.

MichaelG.

There's been a lengthy debate in the pages of MEW and Tensol is recommended both by readers and the purveyors of Perspex.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Posted by Neil Wyatt on 10/12/2016 20:41:15:

There's been a lengthy debate in the pages of MEW

.

Neil,

a. My Dad was doing this work in the late 1960s

b. Sorry, I must have missed the debate in MEW … which issues?

MichaelG.

[Clive HartlandParticipant @clivehartland94829]

50 ml of Tensol 12 for £8.99 all paid from:- Trent Plastics.co.uk. For interior use only, shelf life is short and store refrigerated.

Clive

[NJHParticipant @njh]

"My Dad did quite a lot of [optical quality] fabrication with Perspex, and I'm pretty sure he used chloroform as a solvent adhesive."

Quite right Michael – I worked in a lab for a while – we made lots of experimental apparatus from perspex using chloroform to weld the assemblies. Very nasty stuff though and extreme care needed.

Norman

Edited By NJH on 10/12/2016 23:27:51

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Posted by NJH on 10/12/2016 23:26:36:

… using chloroform to weld the assemblies. Very nasty stuff though and extreme care needed.

.

Thanks for the confirmation, Norman

Tensol 12 looks nasty, too: **LINK**

http://docs-europe.electrocomponents.com/webdocs/001e/0900766b8001e610.pdf

… but I don't have enough chemistry to know how much dichloromethane is safer than trichloromethane, or how its solvent performace compares.

This is apparently of academic interest anyway; since I was evidently mistaken in thinking that I was helping Neil [by suggesting a solvent in place of superglue].

MichaelG.

.

Edit: I've just found this helpful summary statement: "dichloromethane is the recommended alternative to other chlorinated solvents (i.e. least worst)" here http://safety.dept.shef.ac.uk/chemical/Solvent%20Substitution.pdf

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 11/12/2016 00:13:24

[MikeParticipant @mike89748]

Yes, we used to make "glue" for perspex by putting perspex chips and chloroform in a tightly-corked flask, together with a few small steel ball bearings, and shaking it. I'm still here, but considering the number of dangerous chemicals I fiddled with in my 20s, I often wonder why!

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Posted by Michael Gilligan on 11/12/2016 00:00:33:

Posted by NJH on 10/12/2016 23:26:36:

… using chloroform to weld the assemblies. Very nasty stuff though and extreme care needed.

.

…

This is apparently of academic interest anyway;

…

MichaelG.

…

Not at all – you do seem to be able to buy Chloroform. Read the Safety Data Sheet though!

But can anyone answer this question please? I've got it in my bone-head that Perspex has become a generic description in the UK for 'any clear plastic sheet'. I have no evidence to support this except I have some genuine ICI Branded Perspex (at least 30years old) that's slighlty softer than recently bought plastic and more inclined to melt when sawn. Also, the new stuff goes yellow after a few years, where as the real thing is still clear.

Can anyone confirm that DIY Store Acrylic Sheet really is the same 'Perspex' used to make Spitfire canopies?

If 'Perspex' isn't really Perspex, then we don't know that Chloroform is a good solvent. And it's expensive!

Thanks in anticipation,

Dave

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