Alan Evans

9 minutes ago, JHCC said:

And what a great circle it was!

Second only to the wide circle of friends you acquire when you frequently eat raw garlic....so I am told.

3 minutes ago, JHCC said:

Okay, I'll give you some latitude on that one. 

Ah that's good. I thought that if we both took the right attitude we would come full circle.

27 minutes ago, JHCC said:

"Sinter", not "sinister". And don't bring the northern hemisphere into it, unless you meant to be polarizing.

Takes one to know one...you brought the centre into the equation. Or was that another t(r)opic?

15 minutes ago, JHCC said:

Would that be the sinter of rotation?

Only sinister if it was rotating anti-clockwise, and only then if in the Northern hemisphere.

26 minutes ago, ianinsa said:

I love the original Mrs'Beeton.s  book great laugh if you just read it ie'Gin to clean mirrors ect

Ánd Alan my friend part of the"" blacksmith Culture" is being a skinflint

We must have had the paperback edition...we only ever used vinegar and newsprint for cleaning glass.

Alan

5 hours ago, the iron dwarf said:

you can easily buy a piece of PB and make bearings

 define easily.

The finished mass produced bearings cost very little over the small-quantity-premium on the raw material cost and delivery and maybe even less...and then you have to set to and machine it..to paraphrase Mrs Beeton...first buy your lathe!

I recently had to buy a solid bronze bush for the Telehandler axle drive shaft guide tube. It came from Italy via the importer via the local agricultural dealer and still only cost £50 odd pounds with their handling shipping and mark up. It would probably cost more (in time and money) than £50 to order the material, and machine it (complete with oil thrower groove)  even if I knew what the press-fit tolerance was...the old one and its housing was distorted...and I was able to carry on running the machine until the new part had arrived.

But all of the online bearing suppliers that I could find were only stocking Oilite bushes no solid Phoshor Bronze. But such is the temptation for saving money, I probably spent more than £50 worth of time looking!

I do have a lump of hollow bar left over from another project, but unfortunately it is too large for the bearing required.

Alan

2 hours ago, Michael Cochran said:

I had four bronze bearing sleeves measuring 3" long, 2" od and 1.75" id. They had some numbers on them (283224) that has me running circles to identify the alloy. Looks like a lead free bronze alloy, SAE 851. I'll be doing some more looking before I use them for anything but if anyone has any suggestions as to where to look feel free to let me know.

Over here that number describes Oilite brand or sintered brass bearings. Compressed brass or bronze powder which has oil in the interstices.

It is quite difficult to get anything else...I have been trying to find some plain/solid phosphor bronze bearings but nobody seem to stock anything but the oil filled sintered bronze.

Alan

Correction to the above...the new centring pins do have the oilway flat on them...they were just not visible through the packaging.  I am still inclined away from flooding with soluble oil for fear of contaminating the well.

Alan

Not so sure about the Emma Peel of course bit....I also had a soft spot for Purdy...wasn't too dismissive of Honor Blackman either.

Mind you I did see Diana Rigg play Viola in Twelth Night at the RSC at Stratford on a school trip. Made a great impression which has lasted.

Alan

On 5 February 2017 at 5:39 AM, Frozenforge said:

Here is the brand I have been using.

 

Prompted by your comments I tracked down a TCT mag drill bit.

They did have one listed as having geometry specific for rail steel, but it turned out they were special order and would take two or three weeks...so I ordered a standard geometry TCT which they reckon should do around twice as many holes as the M42 HSS that I have, and about 4 times better than M2 HSS. And is half the cost of the rail specific one.

The recommended speed for the 18mm dia. one is 530-350 rpm. in stainless steel which I guess is about as nasty as the grade 260 manganese steel rail for work hardening. My drill has 280 or 640rpm so I will go with the slowest.

What coolant/cutting oil do you find works best with them? Or would you recommend?

My mag drill has an oil reservoir in the chuck body and has a spring loaded centring pin which displaces the oil and feeds it to the cutter. However the pins supplied with the TCT cutter does not have the required oil way flat on it so I am going to be dabbing or pumping externally. Unfortunately the drilling has to take place close to our bore hole so I have to be careful with coolant....I do have a gel paste for drilling and tapping from Bosch which could be good.....mmmmm

Alan

On 14/02/2017 at 10:51 PM, ThomasPowers said:

Masochism Tango came to mind...

I am a bit leery of that comment Thomas.

Smacks of a misspent youth listening to fast music.

Alan

Interestingly the UK National Health Service advice is to cool the burn with cool or lukewarm water and not ice or ice water. My cooling by blowing is not too radical a step from lukewarm water.

Alan

nhs.uk/Conditions/Burns-and-scalds/Pages/Treatment.aspx

First aid for burns

• Stop the burning process as soon as possible. This may mean removing the person from the area, dousing flames with water, or smothering flames with a blanket. Don't put yourself at risk of getting burnt as well. 
• Remove any clothing or jewellery near the burnt area of skin, including babies' nappies. However, don't try to remove anything that's stuck to the burnt skin as this could cause more damage. 
• Cool the burn with cool or lukewarm running water for 20 minutes, as soon as possible after the injury. Never use ice, iced water, or any creams or greasy substances such as butter. 
• Keep yourself or the person warm. Use a blanket or layers of clothing, but avoid putting them on the injured area. Keeping warm will prevent hypothermia, where a person's body temperature drops below 35C (95F). This is a risk if you are cooling a large burnt area, particularly in young children and elderly people. 
• Cover the burn with cling film. Put the cling film in a layer over the burn, rather than wrapping it around a limb. A clean clear plastic bag can be used for burns on your hand. 
• Treat the pain from a burn with paracetamol or ibuprofen.Always check the manufacturer's instructions when using over-the-counter medication. Children under 16 years of age should not be given aspirin. 
• Sit upright as much as possible if the face or eyes are burnt.Avoid lying down for as long as possible as this will help to reduce swelling.

2 hours ago, Glenn said:

If this were true, (cold water drives the burn in) let us start pouring cold water on our partly cooked stakes to drive the heat in and finish cooking our stakes.

It does not make sense.

Absolutely, I am sorry if it was not clear. I just mentioned what the hillbilly healer believed (as far as I remembered it from reading it 30 odd years ago) as background to my story.

What I think is as I stated. Cooling slightly less rapidly is a good thing because you do not get such a high temperature differential between flesh and skin. Not unlike your first advice to use room temperature water and not ice cold...I rationalise the effectiveness of the blowing idea on the fairly well established wind chill phenomena. I found it effective when I did not have access to water...it may help somebody else who finds themselves in the same position.

Alan

11 hours ago, Glenn said:

Any time you get burned, even only enough to say ouch, put the hand, or whatever, under water for 15 minutes. This removes the heat from the meat, and keeps the meat from cooking. Use room temperature water.

For the last 30 odd years I have dealt with the daily ouch burns by just blowing on them, rather than plunging into water.

Apart from the fact that it appears to be a natural/automatic reaction I discovered its effectiveness through a curious circumstance. Coincidently the day after I read about it one of the Foxfire books (Hillbilly folk lore book series) I was heating and riveting the last section of Davies Brothers railing at one end of the ornamental canal of Erdigg House for the National Trust. The railings were set on a low wall and as I stepped down from it with the oxygen-acetylene torch in one hand, I grabbed the railing to steady myself with the other...sadly just on the heated section. You will remember this was the last section of railing, the ornamental canal was on the other side so I had no water available! The Foxfire "fire drawing" routine was in short term memory and I carried it out. Didn't think much more about it...until that night when I went to bed. As every blacksmith knows minor burns start to tingle as you relax and warm up in bed, this burn didn't, so I have blown on them ever since, even when there is water present.

The justification the hillbilly healer put forward in the Foxfire book was that the cold water drives the burn in. I reckoned however, that skin and flesh cooled too quick with water which in turn promoted separation and blistering of the skin. By cooling it at slightly slower rate, that extreme differential is reduced and my burns seemed to blister less often. The more severe and blistered burns seem to heal as an ordinary graze type wound more rapidly when blow cooled...

Alan

On 05/02/2017 at 10:14 PM, George Geist said:

I'm inclined to believe many of them can be found in London hand engraving some of the worlds best firearms. Firms such as Purdey, Holland and Holland, Boss etc employ some of the worlds best belonging to British Jewelers Guilds. When not working on guns these guys also engrave watches and other fine jewelry.

George

On 07/02/2017 at 2:50 AM, Alan Evans said:

I am not quite sure about this. I am happy to be proven wrong if you know for certain.

As far as I know the gun trade and the hammer engravers are relatively separate from the horology / trophy / silver / jewellery trades. Most of the fine stuff is hand burin rather than hammer even in steel. There will obviously be a few crossovers with the shrinking of the bespoke gun trade. I have had a few projects hammer engraved by a fine craftsman in Birmingham, who trained in the gun trade there. But he was one of the few still doing it, and that was over twenty years ago.

There are not any Jewellers Guilds as such over here that I am aware of.

snip

Alan

 

Wrong wrong wrong...well at least on some counts. My apologies to George.

I have just come home from the Great British Shooting Show where I spent a pleasant few minutes chatting to a man engraving the side plate of a Holland and Holland shotgun. He turned out to be a jeweller/gold and silver smith who did mainly burin engraving, which is what he was doing on the side plate, but also some hammer and chisel engraving, exquisite work.

http://www.angusmcfadyen.uk

He was representing the Hand Engravers Association of Great Britain. He was saying that most of the production guns were now decorated by laser. He was most most miffed that it is referred to as laser engraving..."its not engraving at all!" 

https://handengravers.co.uk

I asked him about the various associations and guilds still in existence. Apart from the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths, who unlike many livery companies have more than half of their liverymen active in the trade.

There is a National Association of Jewellers.

Full membership of the NAJ is for retail store businesses but they do have a category of membership for individual designers and makers. 

http://www.naj.co.uk

Alan

Cannings or Hockley Chem. in Birmingham, used to make a lacquer to do just that job. I have a 30 year old tin somewhere. It has a pigment which collects in the grooves. It was used by the brass industry for just that sort of ornamentation. I think it was called self relieving or self revealing or similar.

Alan

3 hours ago, JHCC said:

And then I ran out of coal.

Don't you just hate black outs.

Alan

Sillier the better, especially coming from Grandad.

Alan

Pyjamas or ties some sort of clothing...

Four elephants used to be able to get in a Mini...two in the front and two in the back I seem to remember from school. Or maybe from another schoolboy.

Alan

I am just getting negative vibes here.

There I was minding my own business, idly chainsawing a halving joint in some Jarrah sleepers for a railway themed sculpture I am making and thought...I shall respond to JHCC and explain that I am going to shuffle off and lick my wounds having decided that resistance is futile in the face of such an onslaught...and blow me down Frosty got there first! 

Enough to make one blow a fuse.

Alan

ps Actually mine was going to be "resistance is useless" but that's another story.

1 minute ago, JHCC said:

Well, I was planning to make some things yesterday (finish a pair of tongs, make a new towel hook for the kitchen and a hook to hold the fireplace tongs, etc), but then the minister showed up to talk about the memorial service on Saturday for my mother-in-law.

In the end, the only thing I made in the forge was this:

Snip

Well it has potential...

I hope you use potentiometers on that side of the Atlantic...I think my unwind / wind-up was lost in translation and fell a bit flat.

I hadn't realised "wind up" was English slang rather than english slang.

Alan

9 hours ago, Frosty said:

OHmmmmmmm.

Frosty The Lucky.

I think it was a typo...fixed it.

Alan

That one was done with a 9" angle grinder slicing off an extremely hard and resilient metre of 60mm strip of 1600˚C furnace floor. Took about twenty minutes to cook.

Alan

1 hour ago, JHCC said:

To be fair, we've only had induction coils for less than two hundred years, and most people don't even know how they work.

To be fair, it would not have been so much of a wind up if I had taken that into consideration.

Alan

5 hours ago, Chris Comtois said:

I store mine this way and it's great!  I did discover, though, that you need to UNWIND them ALL THE WAY when you use them!  I had a 50' cord wrapped up like this, only needed about 10' to plug in my skill-saw.  A couple of hours of heavy use later, I smelled smoke and noticed the insulation on the wrapped up part smoking!  Seems common-sense now, but I never realized I was basically making an induction coil. 

Sometimes I just despair for the human race.  

Here we are thousands of years and countless generations of technological advance and yet something so fundamental as unwinding an extension reel is still beyond our wit. 

How could anybody be so...so...I am just lost for words....

Alan

Not so much unwind as wind up. 

Alan, your Darwin Award partner with a thirty five year old cable kept as an awful warning. 

I would like to meet them, could you make an introduction?

Alan

10 minutes ago, JHCC said:

So, you deduced induction?

Better that, than induced conduction...

Alan