Martin Hocking
Member
- Messages
- 370
- Location
- Norfolk
Late one sweaty saturday afternoon around 65 million years ago, Terence the tricerotops gazed up from chewing the cud to see a giant ball of light hurtle across the sky. ‘Oooh would you look at that…’ he thought. Completely oblivious to the danger he was in, he went back to stuffing his beaky lips with hard to digest greenery.
65 million years later, on a slightly less sweaty Saturday afternoon, the same words come out of my mouth while searching ebay. A day or so later as I walk into an enormous barn somewhere in the Norfolk countryside equally blind to the risk I was in. Around five days later I’ve just bought a Cardiff lathe and all of my dreams have come true! The good ones and almost certainly the bad ones too! It looked like this:
Now lets just roll back a little way, the reason why I make the cretaceous reference is to do with the type of machine a cardiff lathe is. Scientists generally believe that in the event of a mass extinction and food chain collapse its the largest animals that are first to go, I’d like to present my own theory, the theory of Derekosaurus. What is the Derekosaurus? Well the Derekosaurus is a very dull species, no giant teeth, no spectacular armoured plates, no unusual defence mechanism involving its bowels. It simply goes about its business, in such a way as to leave almost no trace, which is precisely why palaeontologists have found no fossils of such a species!
So back in the present day, as we gaze across the cycads and tar pits of the UK machinery landscape We can see that a lot of the megafauna have fallen, never to be seen again. The exquisitely designed machines of interest with special bells and whistles (and myfords) have been herded up into nature reserves. Of course this leaves the derekosaurus, machines like the cardiff clinging to existence half underneath a tarpaulin in what used to be a commercial premises…
Ha! God that got quite bleak at the end! Like just about most of what I write I’m overdoing it, but I remember a time back when I was single in my twenties when my internet search history was full of one thing and one thing only, cardiff lathes for sale on ebay. There seemed to be a new one every week! I think in the year and a bit that mine has sat in my garage I’ve only seen one come up and that was on here! How times have changed…
65 million years later, on a slightly less sweaty Saturday afternoon, the same words come out of my mouth while searching ebay. A day or so later as I walk into an enormous barn somewhere in the Norfolk countryside equally blind to the risk I was in. Around five days later I’ve just bought a Cardiff lathe and all of my dreams have come true! The good ones and almost certainly the bad ones too! It looked like this:
Now lets just roll back a little way, the reason why I make the cretaceous reference is to do with the type of machine a cardiff lathe is. Scientists generally believe that in the event of a mass extinction and food chain collapse its the largest animals that are first to go, I’d like to present my own theory, the theory of Derekosaurus. What is the Derekosaurus? Well the Derekosaurus is a very dull species, no giant teeth, no spectacular armoured plates, no unusual defence mechanism involving its bowels. It simply goes about its business, in such a way as to leave almost no trace, which is precisely why palaeontologists have found no fossils of such a species!
So back in the present day, as we gaze across the cycads and tar pits of the UK machinery landscape We can see that a lot of the megafauna have fallen, never to be seen again. The exquisitely designed machines of interest with special bells and whistles (and myfords) have been herded up into nature reserves. Of course this leaves the derekosaurus, machines like the cardiff clinging to existence half underneath a tarpaulin in what used to be a commercial premises…
Ha! God that got quite bleak at the end! Like just about most of what I write I’m overdoing it, but I remember a time back when I was single in my twenties when my internet search history was full of one thing and one thing only, cardiff lathes for sale on ebay. There seemed to be a new one every week! I think in the year and a bit that mine has sat in my garage I’ve only seen one come up and that was on here! How times have changed…
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