Recent content by Peter.

Nice camera John. We bought a Fuji bridge last year after my little Sanyo packed in. It's quite a bit lower spec than yours but still takes nice photos - which would be a whole lot better if either of us knew what we were doing with it. My motto: If you can't take shots - take lots!

Nice score. I bet it will clean up just great.

Great - thank you! I will pass it along.

A guy at work brought this in today, and asked if I knew anything about it. It was built by his late father possibly from a design in a magazine/publication. All I could tell him was it was a stirling, and that the flywheel and one conrod was missing. He has gone home to look for those tonight...

No offence Brian - I was only YANKing yer chain :D

That would be best. A Hilti TE35-upwards will make easy work of it. I use a TE80 whaich will drill a 2" hole at a push.

That won't endear you to many of us Brit's, Brian :)

There are no 'hard spots' or 'soft pockets' in concrete that you have to worry about for your 3/4" holes. How well your job goes will depend upon the drill speed and hit rate of your drill as well as the striking force, if you have a light drill which hits so fast it sounds like a missed gear...

My condolences John. Keep your friends close at this trying time. Pete.

You can get small diameter rotary stones with extremely fine grit diamond in them for polishng stone and granite. I bought one just to see how it would work and found that it was excellent for putting a small radius on HSS tooling because it cuts such a tiny amount. A bench grinder cuts too fast...

There's been a lot of heat generated in this thread and some sign of pack-mentality too. I thought better of this place. Parting with a center isn't the most dangerous thing you can do in your workshop, the OP managed to make quite a wreck without using one, that piece of brass could make quite...

I made a couple of tangential tools by brazing a stub of stellite onto a steel shank which was milled at an angle on the end to receive it. They work fantastically well. I've just about worn one out and the other I gave away but I'm making a few more shortly.

I go up to the next available size drill I have, be it a metric or imperial size. Often you don't need, or want the exact tapping size anyway.

Never heard of it either. How can you make a bore to suit a ring? That's like going for new tyres and being told you should have bought a car with bigger wheels.

I can't convert the fractions to decimals in my head - but I know the 1/8th sizes by learning them rote, anything more than that and I grab a calculator. I just bought a couple of hundred imperial taper-shank drills, but I do all my work in metric. Do I care? Nope - I just measure them with a...