Today I acquired...........

[DAPPH]

He was a long time member of a MIS, before he got a strop and left.
Was invited back to help the MIS to re open after lock down.
He knew better and did more work. Trying to curry favour with the MIS.

He now has thrown his toys out of the playpen and stomped off home.

I was asked back to give fire and other technical information.
The postings above is a sample of what we found.

That is the trouble with a fair few non technically trained guys in MIS . What they think is a good quick repair or the right use for a twist drill is usually a death trap just waiting for the first victim to come in range add a bit of dementia or seasoned Alzheimer's with a hefty dose of Tourette's thrown in for free .

 

[DAPPH]

I wish I had the others. Be very nice addition to have the set.

They aren't BSF spanners though they are BSW , it's that just they happen to fit BSF . That's why the BSW size is the upper most one BSF didn't come along till a fair time afterwards . So said one of my engineering tutors way back in 1966 . Is the there a government mark of ordnance on the other side ( the tent /or arrow ) by any chance ?

 

[angellonewolf]

Today I acquired. This really cool trolley. She a big lump. It will be ideal for pulling my big lathe parts around at home. A little restore works and happy days View attachment 239514

thats a bit tame for your standards would have thought at least 2 ton is more your style

but nice find easyer to move than the lathes you had last

 

[DAPPH]

Fractional inches are easy. If you tell someone a distance is 12 mm and they tell you they prefer fractional inches, just tell them it's exactly 120/254".

Fractional inches originate from common sense start halving things down from one inch it's easy to do with dividers down to sixty fourths .

In the early 70 's I worked on a a fair bit of German military gear in an ammo depot that originated pre WW2 and survived the war ..... it was all imperial .

 

[DAPPH]

I'm sure I've heard of an illness librarians (And presumably booksellers) get from books, can't find anything on it now though, tried googling it but apparently there's something more important going around.

Besides asthma & cancer of the lungs from the dust of paper fibres decaying you also have to consider the delightful unhygienic people who have read the books an any pernicious diseases or toxic substances they might have had on their hands
I'm amazed that the Welsh hospitals allow charity book sellers in their foyers to sell second hand books & magazines to people for reading on the wards .

 

[DAPPH]

Librarians lung, caused by mould spores and dust, many years ago I had a job modifying some racking in an archive and had to wear a respirator before disturbing any of the paperwork.

In the central repository where I did some work back in the mid 1980's in one of the major tax record areas there was a contracted cleaning team in light weight breathing gear going on each night de dusting the 26 or more miles of tax paper records on shelves going back to 1921 .

 

[DAPPH]

Thank you Mr. TYA so far I fall down on the first three points, not knowing what is good and what is good snake oil or bad snake oil.
The rest of it is kind of like using the wet grinding wheel which I use for sharpening chisels at the moment which usually gets me a sharp but slightly random edge.
Any particular product to be looking at?

This sort of guide ( mines over 40yrs old ) is good for a flat two faced ( carborundum /india ) oil stone or one of the more modern big nickel steel impregnated with industrial diamond dust that you use water as the cutting lubricant . Mine is moulded into a rigid hard plastic frame It cost about £60, 25 yrs ago , came in a nice milled out wooden case with rubber slip resist feet too . They are much cheaper these days ).

Always give the back edge of any chisel or plane blade a gentle flat rub across the diamond sharpener to remove any microscopic burrs produced from sharpening .

 

[Dieselman 63]

You'll get your reward in Heaven.

I’d better be buried with these then...

 

[The_Yellow_Ardvark]

Thank you Mr. TYA so far I fall down on the first three points, not knowing what is good and what is good snake oil or bad snake oil.
The rest of it is kind of like using the wet grinding wheel which I use for sharpening chisels at the moment which usually gets me a sharp but slightly random edge.
Any particular product to be looking at?

The Stanley Guide is good.
It has a good action and is well made.

Stones, MM do a nice combination stone, medium and fine. That will set you up well.

Oil, I use new engine oil.

The Power wet stones on grinders are hot and mis. But can give an edge.

 

[The_Yellow_Ardvark]

That is the trouble with a fair few non technically trained guys in MIS . What they think is a good quick repair or the right use for a twist drill is usually a death trap just waiting for the first victim to come in range add a bit of dementia or seasoned Alzheimer's with a hefty dose of Tourette's thrown in for free .

The issue is with "dan" is that he is technically minded. But will not except that:
What is allowed in his private workshop is not allowed in MIS.
H&S is something we have to follow.

He does not like being told by other people who know more than he does.
He has now left, threating not to return.

We are glad.

 

[Dr.Al]

Thank you, looks like the sharpening station is out of stock ATM, perhaps I will order the Veritas honing guide and try it with the two christmas cracker grade diamond stones I have.

I've got the Veritas one as well as an Eclipse one I inherited. Either is fine, but the Veritas one is better. It comes with an attachment that makes it very very quick to set the blade to the right stick-out and has a much wider wheel so is easier to keep narrow tools like chisels from rocking on the stone. If you want to curve the corners of a plane blade slightly to stop plane tracks from happening, you just apply a bit more pressure on each corner for a few seconds and that's enough. It's also got an eccentric adjuster so the secondary bevel is very quick to do.

As for stones, I don't think it matters that much. Oil stones are good, waterstones are good (but the coarser grade ones need soaking and they need flattening periodically) and diamond stones are good. If you're not doing it often then wet & dry paper on a bit of glass works well too, it just gets expensive if you do it a lot as you'll got through a lot of wet & dry! I've built up most of the options available over the years as I wanted to try them out and compare.

I use a fine India oilstone for metalworking tools (mostly honing the edges on high speed steel lathe tools). For second-hand planes, chisels and so on that need a lot of reshaping, I use 120 grit wet & dry on glass as it saves mucking about having to flatten a stone (which tends to be needed more if you're using a coarse stone and taking a lot of material off).

For normal sharpening I use a double-sided diamond stone (325 and 1200 grit I think) and an 8000 grit waterstone. The 325 grit stone is used after the 120 grit wet & dry for getting stuff into the right shape, but otherwise is just used as a quick way of flattening the waterstone. The 8000 grit waterstone is nice as it doesn't need to be soaked in water (just a quick spray from an atomiser bottle I keep handy) and gives a mirror finish. I'm not convinced it's completely necessary: the 1200 grit is probably fine. Having said that, you can tell a bit of a difference in the finish on the wood after planing with a blade sharpened to 8000 grit vs 1200 grit.

Resharpening is a case of bunging the tool in the veritas guide, spinning the eccentric so it's set high for the secondary bevel, stroking it on the 1200 grit until there's a burr raised across the edge, then repeating on the 8000 grit. I then take it out of the guide and do the back. For a chisel that's just rubbing the back on the stones (with the chisel at 45° to the stone), 1200 then 8000. For a plane blade I stick an old and useless† short steel ruler on one edge of the sharpening stone to raise the plane blade back up slightly and effectively put a tiny secondary bevel on the back. Finally I do a few strokes alternating sides on something soft (I now use a bit of leather but used to just use my belt) to break the burr off.

I reckon it takes me less than a minute to resharpen a plane blade, including the time to put the blade in the veritas guide. Some of the second-hand tools I've got have taken me literally hours to sort out though! At least that only needs to be done once.

I keep a 1000 grit diamond stone in the kitchen as it's much less messy than the alternatives and I can keep the kitchen knives sharp with a few strokes on each side every week or so.

† Useless as it has imperial on one edge and metric on the other - I now only use the ones where either millimetres or half-millimetres are available on whichever edge you want. Keeping the imperial one near the sharpening kit is handy though as the veritas guide is marked in silly units.

 

[eLuSiVeMiTe]

Patchbay finally arrived.
Damaged.

Looking back through the listings that corner is either cropped out or out of shot conveniently.

Ally front plate. Recon if I try and bend that it's gonna snap.
Will anealing help Ali?

 

[angellonewolf]

^^^ looks quite thick would have thought it would bend back

 

[zx9]

I've got the Veritas one as well as an Eclipse one I inherited. Either is fine, but the Veritas one is better. It comes with an attachment that makes it very very quick to set the blade to the right stick-out and has a much wider wheel so is easier to keep narrow tools like chisels from rocking on the stone. If you want to curve the corners of a plane blade slightly to stop plane tracks from happening, you just apply a bit more pressure on each corner for a few seconds and that's enough. It's also got an eccentric adjuster so the secondary bevel is very quick to do.

As for stones, I don't think it matters that much. Oil stones are good, waterstones are good (but the coarser grade ones need soaking and they need flattening periodically) and diamond stones are good. If you're not doing it often then wet & dry paper on a bit of glass works well too, it just gets expensive if you do it a lot as you'll got through a lot of wet & dry! I've built up most of the options available over the years as I wanted to try them out and compare.

I use a fine India oilstone for metalworking tools (mostly honing the edges on high speed steel lathe tools). For second-hand planes, chisels and so on that need a lot of reshaping, I use 120 grit wet & dry on glass as it saves mucking about having to flatten a stone (which tends to be needed more if you're using a coarse stone and taking a lot of material off).

For normal sharpening I use a double-sided diamond stone (325 and 1200 grit I think) and an 8000 grit waterstone. The 325 grit stone is used after the 120 grit wet & dry for getting stuff into the right shape, but otherwise is just used as a quick way of flattening the waterstone. The 8000 grit waterstone is nice as it doesn't need to be soaked in water (just a quick spray from an atomiser bottle I keep handy) and gives a mirror finish. I'm not convinced it's completely necessary: the 1200 grit is probably fine. Having said that, you can tell a bit of a difference in the finish on the wood after planing with a blade sharpened to 8000 grit vs 1200 grit.

Resharpening is a case of bunging the tool in the veritas guide, spinning the eccentric so it's set high for the secondary bevel, stroking it on the 1200 grit until there's a burr raised across the edge, then repeating on the 8000 grit. I then take it out of the guide and do the back. For a chisel that's just rubbing the back on the stones (with the chisel at 45° to the stone), 1200 then 8000. For a plane blade I stick an old and useless† short steel ruler on one edge of the sharpening stone to raise the plane blade back up slightly and effectively put a tiny secondary bevel on the back. Finally I do a few strokes alternating sides on something soft (I now use a bit of leather but used to just use my belt) to break the burr off.

I reckon it takes me less than a minute to resharpen a plane blade, including the time to put the blade in the veritas guide. Some of the second-hand tools I've got have taken me literally hours to sort out though! At least that only needs to be done once.

I keep a 1000 grit diamond stone in the kitchen as it's much less messy than the alternatives and I can keep the kitchen knives sharp with a few strokes on each side every week or so.

† Useless as it has imperial on one edge and metric on the other - I now only use the ones where either millimetres or half-millimetres are available on whichever edge you want. Keeping the imperial one near the sharpening kit is handy though as the veritas guide is marked in silly units.

Great write up thank you, the range of items available is bewildering when you think you need something but don't know what.

Edit: Now saved in my docs as Dr Al's sharpening guide so I can come back to it.

 

[zx9]

Patchbay finally arrived.
Damaged.

Looking back through the listings that corner is either cropped out or out of shot conveniently.

Ally front plate. Recon if I try and bend that it's gonna snap.
Will anealing help Ali?

over the years I must have skipped a lot of those both 1/4 inch and telephone jacks, last rack we broke with a patch field was in Feb this year I did not know there was any value in them.

 

[Seadog]

I had similar with an old Pioneer cassette desk. If you're careful you can get it straight. It was bent a similar amount to yours and looked to have been dropped on concrete. With a bit of silver paint it was barely noticeable. Someone was happy to give me £40 for it

 

[eLuSiVeMiTe]

over the years I must have skipped a lot of those both 1/4 inch and telephone jacks, last rack we broke with a patch field was in Feb this year I did not know there was any value in them.

Definitely keep them.
Very useful for the synth crowd.
When I start buying rack mount fx units it will be a blessing.
Sending 3 signals to a reverb or comp that only has one in.

 

[Seadog]

I did not know there was any value in them.

I've bought quite a lot of telephone and Igranic plugs over the years. They fetch very good money on eBay. Bulgin three-pin mains connectors as well, the large round style.

 

[8ob]

A padded Jasic inverter bag, much kinder environment for the welder when on the move

A few bits from my local hydraulics shop skip

And a load of these, no use to me so if anyone wants them let me know.

 

[Dr.Al]

Great write up thank you, the range of items available is bewildering when you think you need something but don't know what.

Edit: Now saved in my docs as Dr Al's sharpening guide so I can come back to it.

The Taunton's sharpening book is well worth a read if like me you like dead tree based reading matter. It's where I learnt the trick of using a steel rule to speed up sorting out the back of a plane blade. It's also got specific explanations of how to sharpen basically anything vaguely related to cutting wood.