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Good that you apparently are still driving a motorcycle, Roncohudd. Upon the third motorbike that I crashed to total loss my wife and daughter advised me not to try a fourth time as I was clearly not able to stay seated on a bike.

Heating with wood holds my close interest. From age 50 thru 70 I hauled an annual 15-20 tons of oak out of the surrounding woods to feed my large wood/waterstove. The heated water from the waterjacket fed into the floor heating system of my 25 x 100 feet converted farmhouse. The measured...

In my Dutch horological society there are three brands of milling machines popular: the EMCO F3, the ACIERA F3 and the past ten years the WABECO F 1200 has become quite popular. With judicious use, very good cleaning discipline and good awareness of the direction of play in nuts/spindels you can...

Hi Brian, your planned micrometer additions sound useful. Perhaps it comes with old age, but I found myself mis-reading micrometers quite often one turn, which is 0,5 mm in a metric micrometer. So now I always do a first reading with calipers and follow up with a micrometer.

For years I have been a staunch supporter of HSS tools, and I still am. But with the arrival of affordable good quality fine diamond grinding wheels it has become possible to grind carbide insert tools with shiny honed sharp cutting edges. So the carbide inserts can be used for delicate turning...

Hi Rin, the earlier suggestion of the Aeolipile machine of Heron is nice, because you can make it with hand tools only. Also the Wobbler or the oscillating steam engine is relatively simple, but needs a lathe and a mill/drill. As for calculations I would not set your sights too high. Efficient...

Working on my master of science project in the early 1970's I visited Schaublin, the Swiss manufacturer of precision machine tools. Frédérique Schaublin told me that any fresh design engineer or manufacturing engineer had to spend at least two years in the service department to get a full...

Any hard steel objects I want to soften I throw in the wood stove and next morning I find them nice and soft in the ashes. I test every once een a while the temperature in the fire of my wood stove by putting a piece of aluminium in. Melting temp of aluminium is about 660 degrees and it tends to...

Agree with the former advice that selling piece-meal will yield several times the price you get from a wholesaler. The hard part is to catalogue, photograph and describe the contents of the workshop to appropriate detail. You clearly have the knowledge yourself and if you can get the assistance...

Designers who copy and adapt existing designs have for ages been the mainstay of manufacturing know-how in the design office. When you change an existing component using the original calque most of the times you keep all the adherent often well-proven information like tolerances, surface...

Don't worry, a little oil drip is good for our machines.

William Noble is right. Today's machining data like feeds, speeds and tool angles are for today's very stiff high speed CNC Machinetools. It is best to look at the machining data from the period wherein your lathe or mill originated, which includes the basic design of many Asian machines for the...

Most hobby workshops I know are the result of organic growth. The owners each follow their own path of feeding and weeding, and thus our advice for the next level machine is often more useful than our advice for a first machine. But it may be of interest to a starter how I just have completed a...

Leaving the head in a well trammed position is my favorite. As a matter of fact it is often easier and thus more precise to set a relatively light angular vise or sine vise to the required angle than the relatively heavy head. Some makes have a tapered dowel for the zero position, but beware...

Vederstein, actually it was a close call that steam did not get useful in Antiquity. Their society ran on slaves like ours on oil. When slaves became too expensive to run (pump dry) the silver mines of Athens the Greek invented the windmill. Their 2500 old windmill design can still be seen...

Hi Rick, thank you for the good words. The woodworking tools are as a matter of fact for the home-wind turbine classes that my son runs. He is a professional mechanical engineer from the same Technical University of Delft where his father, grandfather, great grandfather and great-great...

Hi Ric, don't despair because of age. I'm 76 and still do horological work, but mostly tooling. My only preparation for the future is that I have trained my grandchildren aged 12 thru 17 to understand and use all my equipment. I have three lathes, a Schaublin 102 VM of about 70 years old which...

Looks quite solid and impressive! In my shop I use Proxxon BFW 40/E with various holders for the lathe, the mill and on the tool grinder. If on the tool grinder you run the Proxxon in reverse your get a good grinding surface speed and excellent dimensional and surface quality on small rotational...

One of my professors at the Technical University of Delft advised his male students to counter (mostly sentimental) distractions of the study by setting the lower body parts for some time in a bucket filled with cold water. He advised to keep such a bucket in your room for this purpose. He was...

During my first years in the general machineshop of Philips (now sold and the maker of the precision positioning systems of the world leading ASML chipmaking machines) I researched the amount of time spent on preparation and execution. In this machineshop (at the time comparable with GE-LEO)...