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var txt=new Array()
txt[1] ="Lathe sitting in the lounge where it remained for about 2 weeks until I had made a stand and found some hefty guys to lift it onto the stand (it weighs 180 kilos!)"
txt[2] ="Wonderful little (if rather expensive) bandsaw. An absolutely essential piece of equipment unless you are an exercise freak who wants a huge sawing arm!"
txt[3] ="Collet set for the milling head"
txt[4] ="Welding the lathe table in the front garden - how NOT to weld! My stomach peeled from the sunburn effect a few days later."
txt[5] ="The stand for the lathe bolted to the floor and the wall."
txt[6] ="The bandsaw on it's movable bench made from dexion."
txt[7] ="Home made electronic edge finder. This is an indispensible tool for accurately finding the edges of an object to allow accurate hole-drilling, milling etc. The left hand side has a couple of watch batteries insulated from the body by filling the hole with araldite then drilling out leaving a few thou' of the araldite. The same applies to the probe end on the right. The O.D. of the body is 12mm so it fits in my collet chuck as well as the drill chuck. The probe is exactly 5mm, insulated from the body again with the araldite technique, so when the probe touches the edge of the material, the LED lights and you know you are exactly 2.5mm (one rev of the handwheels on the milling machine) from the edge.
Click HERE for how I made it."
txt[8] ="The lathe on it's stand"
txt[9] ="The early workshop layout. I later changed it so that the left bench was the 'dirty' one for grinding and sanding, with the bigger bench on the right for the cleaner work and assembly jobs."
txt[10]="The new 4 jaw chuck on the home made backplate"
txt[11] ="Using the original 4 inch 3 jaw chuck as a rotary table / dividing head"
txt[12] ="The tapping machine I made for tapping the multiple holes in the loco frames"
txt[13] ="The workshop as it now is - a complete untidy shambles, but I know exactly where most things are!"
txt[14] ="My new metal shears - two views.
"
txt[15]="The new rotary table on the cross-slide. The locating dies underneath came as 16mm, so I had to make step-down dies with 16mm for the rotary table and 12mm for the cross-slide. There is a 2 morse taper blank in the centre which I turned down so the protruding bit is parallel shank and bored a hole in the back-plate of the 4" 3 jaw chuck so that it centralises when put on the rotary table. All works like a charm so I am all set for all the radial holes in the boiler fittings etc. I used it today to make the square on the locking bar for the smokebox door - pics of that will follow tomorrow in the simplex files. 26/09/2007"
txt[16]="The milling machine arrived today - I didn't manage to get any pictures of the installation as we needed all hands to the pump! 6 ruptures to treat - Isn't it a beauty - that's Cherry-Anne my maid, standing beside it to give a bit of scale!
The picture below is looking into the workshop from the door - doesn't it dwarf my 180 kilo lathe?! 23/11/2007
"
txt[17]="I made it my first job to design a simple device to be able to quickly set the vice parallel to the bed on the milling machine. It is dead accurate along the 2 foot length of the bar, so it's just a question of loosening the bolts holding the vice, slide the vice to grip the bar then, making sure that it's all free moving and not trying to distort the bar, tighten the vice down. 26/11/2007"
txt[18]="The workshop is in a complete shambles as I've been busy with domestic chores. Nowhere to put anything down or do any work - so a massive tidy-up is in order. 07/03/2008
"
txt[19]="Making rollers to Martin Evans design metricated! Mega swarf production, but the end product seems to work - I'll test it for real tomorrow bending the cab roof and hopefully the flare at the top of the back of the bunker. 28/04/2008
Lots of heat generated turning the rollers!
I know that a fixed steady would give a more perfect concentricity to the turned down roller end, but I don't have one. So the roller was "shimmed true" using the Malaysian equivalent of Rizla fag papers!
"
txt[20]="Making pipe benders for the copper tubing. This is the finished article - below are assorted pictures of it in bits and sample pipe bends.
A few things to note - one is that the rollers self align as I left sufficient slop on their spindles - the picture below makes it look as if the holes are not properly aligned on each side.
The roller carriage can be reversed so I can make either half inch radius bends, or tighter ones at 5/16 inch radius.
Also note the sloppy way I cut the grooves for the rollers - on the rotary table in the mill rather than trying to make a couple of nice round-nosed tools to chatter in the lathe. 11/05/2008
"
txt[21]="Bet you don't know what this is!
When boring the end of a long bit of 3/16" bar at high speed, the bit out the back of the headstock bent and whipped violently almost catching my arm.
So a simple solution - a wooden plug in the back of the headstock mandrel with a hole through it to keep the thin workpiece central - worked like a charm! "
txt[22]="1) Making Bandsaw Blades.
This technique originates from J.A.Crew, a geriatric buddy of mine in the UK, who explained the principles involved.
Cut the blade to 1/4" longer than the actual length. The reason for the extra bit is to allow for re-making the ends square when you mess up a chamfer!!
2) I grind the chamfer on my linisher with a well worn 180 grit belt, to make a chamfer about 1/8" long at both ends - obviously on opposite sides of the blade!.
Excuse the belly!!
3) I made a simple jig from angle iron for holding the cut ends of the blade straight
4) Flux up the ends and clamp in the jig - I just use a couple of mini-vice grips, making sure the back of the blade is hard up against the milled register in the jig. Often I find I need to slightly bend the ends of the blade so that the chamfers are hard up against each other.
5) Cut a tiny bit of silver solder - about 3/16" long from a 1/16" stick and position it as shown just beside the chamfer.
6) Then a pencil flame from below till the solder runs through to the underside
7) Grind off the excess ever so carefully on both sides - I use a worn mini sanding drum in my Chinese Dremel, and you're done
And that's it "
txt[23]="While I was doing heavy turning for the jigs for the Black 5 wheels, I also turned a proper backplate for the 3-jaw for the rotary table. It makes the mounting much quicker, more accurate and rigid.
The 4-jaw is not a problem as it bolts straight through to the T-nuts - all it needed was a locating plug which is a good fit for the hole in the back of the chuck body, to fit over the spigot in the centre of the rotary table
"
txt[24]="Some new gadgets for the workshop for painting the locos. Rather neat little water-trap-cum-oiler with pressure regulator and gauge. I have attached it to the compressor as sometimes I'm spraying outside and sometimes inside, so it would be a pain to keep moving the water-trap to the various locations.
Little spray gun as the badger is a bit small for the larger areas
And one of several different home-made sanding blocks.
"
txt[25]="Getting organised for cutting the boiler cleading - I have adapted the pathetic guillotine and made it into a "one-wing" gabro cutter which makes sheet cutting much more controllable.
I have also made a sheet metal saw by grinding the teeth off a conventional cross-cut and attaching a hacksaw blade - that also seems to work quite well on thin sheet - certainly better than the useless nibbler I bought before. 16/12/2008"
txt[26]="New workshop ready for use - a panaoramic view - the mill
The lathe
The dirty bench for grinding and sanding
The drill and main bench - notice the big bench in the middle of the workshop
The rest of the main bench and metal stock
Two of the reprobates who set this up in 10 days.
So all I need to do is put down the beer bottles and get building again. 16/09/2009"