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I don't know for sure that I could make a working oscillating engine in four hours, and I've been doing this stuff for 45+ years. Big ask for a beginner. I reckon I spent more than four hours making Myfordboy's Stirling engine out of a sweets tin but I was not in the best of health at the time...

G'day from Cairns. Drive gear for a thread dial is nothing fancy. You can cut one out from a sheet of 2 or 3mm brass by hand. Tooth shape is not critical as it is not transmitting power. Just mark it out with the correct number of teeth and cut and file to shape. A recent issue of Model...

I use vinyl cut from an old handbag as a "bib" on the front of the carriage on my ancient Drummond to keep chips off the ways. Works very well. Very hot chips do tend to stick to it and burn little divots into it so I like the silicone idea.

Use good quality HSS to grind your grooving tools out of. Some of the cheaper stuff available is not that strong when ground down to small cross-sections.

I've had personal experience with only one Optimum lathe and it was not good. It was a small TU180 or something, a micro/mini lathe. But very poor quality. Came with a massive bow in the bed, (over .25mm), lead screw so out of alignment the carriage jammed from new. Ways and dovetails very...

Almost all ignition condensers are about the same value. Just buy one that physically fits your mounting. Some sparking at the points is normal so it may be OK anyhow. If your plug is sparking and the engine is running, I would not worry about it.

Those are a very nice lathe and worth putting time and money into fixing up if you have the time and skills. Trap to avoid is pulling it all to a million pieces and then losing momentum and you end up with a pile of parts that gradually get lost. As you note, cleaning the gunge off would be the...

Many times there is more than one correct answer. Machining involves a lot of creativity so there are many ways of doing the same thing. Everyone's opinion is useful in some way.

Some beautiful work there. Thanks for posting.

Aliexpress.com is a good source of low-cost but reasonable quality milling cutters, collet holders and other accessories. In spite of their rock bottom prices I haven't had a bad one yet.

LOL, more relevant to this thread.

You missed the most important meaning of entropy: a gradual decline from order into disorder, resulting eventually in complete disorder. Seems more relevant.

So does that mean the price of steel will follow the cycle and come down?

Not last time I tried. Some time back, I admit. But these days a small flat-rate international shipping box suitable for a small bit of round bar costs about $60. US-outbound shipping prices went crazy a few years back. I get most of my tooling and parts and stuff sent from the UK (or China)...

The prices you guys are quoting are way cheaper than we pay in Australia, if we can even get something as exotic as stress-proof or free-machining. Then shipping on top of that can cost as much again (I live at least 1,000 miles from the nearest online metal supplier). Just for a quick example...

Media's an increasingly tough game. And getting tougher, with Facebook and Google hoovering up 85 per cent of all new online advertising spending.

Yeh, I think lathe levelling/alignment threads are in danger of becoming like the endless dino vs synthetic oil threads on motoring and motorbiking forums. Getting to the stage where one has to wonder if it's worth, as your old mate commented, giving the same old answers to the same old...

Haha, you sound like me. (no pun intended but all kudos accepted) If I wear my hearing aids on any of my old motorbikes the rattling scares the daylights out of me. Taking out my hearing aids is much easier than rebuilding engines so is the preferred method!

Yes, ironically I have the Mighty Drummond solid mounted on a specially made stand of heavy heavy angle iron and four-inch channel braced directly ffrom the lathe's mounting bolts to the floor, where it is also bolted. But it is not as accurate a lathe as my loose-mounted Myford sitting on two...

Myford's factory inspection sheet specifies the far end of a six-inch test bar in the headstock spindle should point between zero and .0006" toward the direction of tool pressure, ie toward where the operator stands. Connelly in MC Tool Recon. allows plus or minus .0003" at the end of a 12"...