Recent content by Jonathan Coates

Welcome Chris, I'm also from West Yorkshire. Merry Christmas.

Hope the day goes well and the coming year is good to all of you.

Thanks Jason, I love the idea but the hole in the centre of the radius is only 3/32" diameter. I thought starting small was a good idea!

Well I found time to make a start on the conrod part. The marking out and hole drilling went OK then I drilled each end for the centre in the lathe and had a head scratch about supporting it as well as driving it. The consensus seemed to be to use a boring head in the tailstock to avoid cocking...

K2, here are some photos as requested. This is my antique dog, at 15 years old she's a living fossil. These two are photos of the lathe tool adapter thing that I made for it. I'm hoping that I can grind something like Rustinox's shear tool for the shaper which will mean that I don't need a...

Well disaster was very narrowly avoided. After I put a bigger cutter in and trimmed off the offending parts, the dovetail was 0.5mm too small. But it works anyway. If I can devise a way to attach a steel wear strip I'll ruin the dovetail even more and fix it with a steel shim so that the locking...

Thanks Jason, I hadn't realised that the H section was so modern. I was going by steam trains from my youth of the OO gauge sort, not real ones and adding in that the plans maybe didn't think they should cater for equipment past the minimum lathe.. I'll do it as per the drawing if that's more...

Well my dog had a big birthday, 15 years young, so she got a steak for lunch and a nice roast beef dinner later. Somebody, mentioning no names, was kind enough to buy her a D bit grinder in very used condition and we have an agreement that if I fix it up I can play with it. I, oops they...

The last few days have been quite busy with home and work stuff but I got a chance to do a bit more with the cylinder casting. I've had to rebuild the lathe topslide as it was getting far too loose and I found that the gib screws can't do anything as the gib is locked by more screws from...

I couldn't get the measurement over the pins to go down. Cut after cut there was always a little still to come off. Now I know why, I messed it up due to incompetence and old eyes.

Like this, perhaps? You could make it even spicier if you got some hydrogen peroxide as well...

Thanks Andy, I've got a 10" one. Never thought I'd say that line. I found online an old newspaper advertisement where it's advertised with a 3/4hp motor. The associated web page tells me that a 1 1/2hp motor was an option as well. I've decided to go with a 1 1/2hp 3 phase and run it through a...

Today I found a spare hour and spent it finishing the flywheel turning. All it needed was one chamfer on the rim and the centre reaming so that went quickly. Then I decided to bore the cylinder. It's not obvious where the centre line is relative to the outside but there are two surfaces which...

Luckily, our excellent government have found a way to grow hydrogen on trees so that it doesn't need to be made from natural gas, but there is another factor that needs to be considered. The density of liquid hydrogen is very low, so if your motorcycle has a 2 gallon / 10 litre fuel tank, you'll...

Well yesterday turned out to be a long day, dragged out of bed by a work phone call and didn't get back until eating time, so I didn't get anything productive done except paying the bills. I was watching a young man by the name of Keith Appleton, who has been known to mess with this kind of...