My little Lorch-Schmidt lathe now up and running!

[Brianc]

You will find your lathe irreplaceable after a few "jobs". As Colin says, almost anything can be done on one - even building a steam locomotive. I use my long bed Myford Super 7 for opening tubular electrolytics for re-stuffing. I use a narrow parting tool
and pull the chuck round by hand. The cut is always perfectly square and the join and, using a tight fitting ferrule (also turned on the Myford), can hardly be seen.
Remember those little shouldered sleeves used with grommets for mounting sub-chassis etc? The missing ones can be made on the lathe quite easily. All in all David, a lathe is a most useful machine tool. Enjoy yours.
Incidentally, there are collets available for holding square and hex material and collets are vital for really precision work such as clock making.

[Yorkie]

Thanks for reading the thread Brian, and for your interesting comments.

What a neat bit of lateral thinking to slice open smoothing cap cans in the chuck - never crossed my mind - I could have done that on my woodturning lathe if I'd have thought about it, instead if using a juniour hacksaw, which is never going to be as neat.

Definitely a top tip!

David

[Yorkie]

Alan Beckett recently quipped:

Your lathe is usually used with collets, and they turn up regularly on eBay. You'd better make a nice comb jointed box for them - See Col for a suitable brass plate
Alan

I explained that the collects were already housed in a little wooden box that seems as old as the lathe. As I had nothing more to add, the thread fizzled out, though as and when the lathe gets put to use on tasks that are relevant to radio, I'll post details.

So why am I writing this now?

See Alan's last sentence above!

I'm sure that Alan meant it as a throwaway jocular quip, and that's how I took it, thinking nothing more about it.

However, the other day, a packet flopped through my letter box and landed on the doormat. To my surprise and delight, it was a nameplate for the collet box of my little Lorch lathe! I can't begin to imagine how much effort goes into making just one letter, let alone the whole nameplate. The surround was also cut from one sheet of brass, fixed to the baseplate, along with the individual letters, then the whole nameplate sprayed black, and when dry, the letters and surround in relief had the paint removed, were polished, then lacquered.

It's yet another example of Colin's handiwork, which calls for a combination of skill, patience, ingenuity, and a great deal of time - the most precious commodity that we have. I think to have the motivation to tackle anything like that, I'd have to be part of the escape committee in Colditz, making door keys!

I've now fitted the nameplate to the box, and have attached a couple of pics, which speak for themselves.

I should add that along with the nameplate came a greetings card and lovely bracelet which Colin's wife Bron had made as a gift for my wife.

So, a sincere thank-you to Colin & Bron.

Quote of the day:

'Friendship'

Don't walk behind me; I may not lead.
Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow.
Just walk beside me and be my friend.
(Albert Camus)

David

[AlanBeckett]

Ah, well, I knew what Col was up to
I've just bought an Avominor in a wooden box. It's beautifully made but a bit old and sad - http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=160623968008&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT
I'll have to put some pictures on and talk to Col.
Alan

[Joe]

That's even better than the AVO gears one.

Would it be possible to get a piece of brass, paint the letters on and then stick it in ferric chloride? I've never made a PCB but wondered if this would work or if the letters would get undermined. Whatever the result certainly couldn't be better.

Nice to see you've got the screw heads arranged neatly too, David.

- Joe

[Yorkie]

Ah, well, I knew what Col was up to
I've just bought an Avominor in a wooden box. It's beautifully made but a bit old and sad - http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=160623968008&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT
I'll have to put some pictures on and talk to Col.
Alan

Strewth, £1.20 - how jammy was that!!!?

I saved up for weeks in 1960 to buy one, which set me back £10.10.00 (then a week's wages for me), which equates to £150 now. It came in a leather case, complete with prods, and I still have it. (They were black Bakelite back then).

I don't ever recall them being in a wooden box, so I wonder if yours was purpose made by someone - it looks the part.

I spent my career at British Gas - the first ten years 'on the tools' then in service and sales management. Service engineers were provided with a standard tool kit, and when electrical fault finding on central heating and other appliances became a major aspect of their work, the kit included an Avo Multi-Minor. However, they were not very robust or versatile for field work, and the lack of a cut-out to protect them sealed the fate of Multi-Minors before too long. BG later developed their own multimeter which had probes for testing thermocouples, and for checking surface temperatures of radiators and so on.

Service Engineers were trained to do most of their testing by continuity tests with the power off, looking for open circuits or shorts on components such as gas valves, pumps, transformers, wiring, and checking the operation of thermostats. Hence, the Avo Minors were extensively used on the Ohms ranges. However, they also had to do voltage checks, and it's very easy, when tired or under time pressures, to absent-mindedly forget to switch from the Ohms range to the upper AC voltage range, then with no cut-out or any form of protection on the Ohms range. Bang! - the meter was scrap. Few lasted much more than about 3 months.
I don't recall which firm made/makes BG multimeters, but it would be a nice little contract fo them. They stuck with an analogue meter as for testing such things as thermocouples they give a much clearer indicaton than seeing the digits on a digital meter dancing about all over the place. (Just as does peaking tuned stages in a radio).

Different of course if the meter is our own property and used for hobby purposes - we're not under time pressures, unlike field service engineers, going from place to place with a toolkit in which a meter gets buffeted about. Mine is now over 50 years old. Quite a clever design - having a 'landscape' layout rather than 'portrait' the meter scale is nice and large, and the movement is damped too.

Happy days!

David.

[Retired]

Hi,

Thank you for such glowing comments David from both me and Bron; you and Jennifer are the most generous and kind hearted people we know and it is a pleasure to have you as friends; we were pleased to be able to give a bit back as a small token of our sincere thanks for all the things you so kindly give us. We are looking forward to your next visit in the near future.

I'm keeping my head down Alan or I could well end with with a production line making brass nameplates.

Thanks for the compliment Joe and like you I not only noticed David had aligned the screw heads but knew he would do so as David gets even the smallest detail right.

I have a friend Joe; who recently tried to produce Radio brass emblems using the etching method; the results were mixed and the main problem I believe was the under cutting you mention also it was rather difficult to control the process to the fine degrees he would have liked although I was kindly sent pictures and he did get one emblem that to me was pretty near perfect so perhaps with a bit more refinement of the process the technique could be perfected. I also agree with you Joe that this Lorch nameplate is better than my AVO one; the AVO nameplate was my very first attempt and as such I was delighted it turned out so well.

As David rightly points out I did in fact cut the entire border for his Lorch plate as one complete piece whereas for my AVO I cut the border as four individual strips.

For the letters I use printed paper attached with double sided tape to the brass sheet but as an experiment with the Lorch border I used a marker pen in similar fashion to using engineers blue and then it was very easy to simply use a scriber to add the straight lines and a pair of drawing instrument dividers with very sharp points to add the four curved inner corners; the lines showed up well on the marker pen.

For the Lorch plate I used thicker gauge brass sheet this being 30 thou; the AVO plate was made out of 15 thou brass sheet. The thicker brass was easier to cut and handle also once the letters were cut out for the Lorch plate I removed the paper templates as I found leaving these in place and fettling using needle files the adhesive clogged up the file. I find it quite easy to cut very accurately using the fretsaw so little fettling is required but it does take a tremendous amount of concentration and co-ordination between both hands for good results.

I am so pleased with the success of the Lorch plate that today I've cut out a set of new AVO plate letters as I intend to replace the original AVO plate. I found out the hard way just how sharp a piercing saw blade is; I was sawing very near the edge when the blade broke free to be arrested by my finger; it's amazing how much blood appears after such a nick!!

Out of interest I timed the cutting of 21 letters this morning and it worked out at six and a half minutes each letter; this was just for cutting the letters out and doesn't include printing and adding the paper templates also the letters will require fettling; it does take a lot of time but I find once I get into the rhythm it is very therapeutic and time passes very quickly.

If I was to make more of these plates I would experiment with different adhesives for attaching letters and borders but so far the results are excellent and the Lorch plate could easily pass off as the real thing. The most enjoyable part of this project was trying something different.

Kind regards, Col.