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[Doctor Gollum]

That repair would probably outlast the car

[Nick W]

Over 40 years ago, on holiday in Normandy, Mum's Avenger split two(of four) heater hoses. As the cottage was miles from anywhere(although Rods2 would recognise the hamlet name) Dad made a temporary repair using ordinary and very old garden hose. Which was still on it when the car was traded in for  a new one four years later.....

[Nick W]

That repair would probably outlast the car

It's 16mm diameter brass with an 8mm hole through the middle. It ought to outlast me. I cut the plastic pipe back to what seems good material but I don't trust it. As this is the feed for the water-cooled turbo, it's important. And such a common failure that there is an upgraded part.


That's when I'll top up the anti-freeze

[Nick W]

Not in Wheeler's Workshop, but the garage down the road: a bright green Holden Maloo, probably for an MOT. They had a HSV last week.

[Nick W]

Today, some jewellery.


broken earing from my sister:





so I cleaned both bits with a wire brush in the Dremel, added some flux, refilled my 'Heat Tool' with butane and soldered the two bits together:







So that's Christmas sorted

[Nick W]

More years ago than I want to remember, I started making a simple hacksaw from a magazine article to be powered by a wiper motor. Last year I found I found it behind a cupboard



 
and resolved to finish the thing. That was taken after I'd cleaned it and checked the frame still slides along the arm.


Some cutting, machining and welding of various scrap I had lying about, plus scrounging an MGF wiper motor and linkage:








Produced this (almost) finished tool:





There's even some Omega content: the upright that holds the pivot was cut from an Omega towbar.


It works, albeit slowly, when connected to a battery charger and cuts through steel bar which was my requirement.


To finish it needs wiring with a switch and fuse. I'll paint it when I've finished the wheeling machine I started at a similar time.

[ronnyd]

Reminds of the ancient one i used to use at my last job. 

[STEMO]

Hmm.....when it's raised from the slider, which I presume it is when resting on the piece of work to be cut, does it not 'rock', rather than a smooth back and forth motion?

[Nick W]

Hmm.....when it's raised from the slider, which I presume it is when resting on the piece of work to be cut, does it not 'rock', rather than a smooth back and forth motion?

the frame that hold the blade can only slide along the pivoting arm, as it's constrained by two more pieces of the tube you can't see in the photo. The whole assembly - frame, pivot arm, motor, mount and linkage - pivots. This means the cut starts short and at a steep angle, and gets longer and shallower as it progresses. That's typical of powered hacksaws but is a design compromise. They're intended to be simple, robust(proper commercial ones!), cheap and compact; a mechanism that keeps the cut parallel would be a lot more complicated. It's a roughing out tool that can be left unattended to munch through large stock. More sophisticated cutting is done on bandsaws.

[ronnyd]

Hmm.....when it's raised from the slider, which I presume it is when resting on the piece of work to be cut, does it not 'rock', rather than a smooth back and forth motion?

the frame that hold the blade can only slide along the pivoting arm, as it's constrained by two more pieces of the tube you can't see in the photo. The whole assembly - frame, pivot arm, motor, mount and linkage - pivots. This means the cut starts short and at a steep angle, and gets longer and shallower as it progresses. That's typical of powered hacksaws but is a design compromise. They're intended to be simple, robust(proper commercial ones!), cheap and compact; a mechanism that keeps the cut parallel would be a lot more complicated. It's a roughing out tool that can be left unattended to munch through large stock. More sophisticated cutting is done on bandsaws.

Agree with that Nick. Worked at my best job for 25 years. Started off with a Hacksaw type, (it was there when i started). Suggested buying a bandsaw and they bought a Startright automatic one. Great piece of kit. Even used to leave it running when i left off on short billets and it switched off when it tripped the microswitch on the barfeed.  The clamping vice had rollers to feed the bars out to the workstop.

[Nick W]

That's a horizontal bandsaw, and is a step up for cutting off lengths of stock.


Then there are vertical bandsaws that are used for cutting shapes, which would be much more useful to me. But even a small metal cutting saw takes up much more space than I have and is extremely costly. Most of the smaller machines are intended for cutting wood, so tend not to be robust enough and run far too fast.

[ronnyd]

The worst, (or funniest), part of fitting a new bandsaw blade was untwisting it. I used to drop it on the floor and stand well back. 

[Viral_Jim]

I subscribe to a few YT woodworking channels and this seems to be the approved method.

[Nick W]

Some time ago, poster on another forum suggested that 3D CAD makes designing things complicated, and requires months of training to produce something simple like a crankshaft. I thought at the time he had that back to front, and when reminded of it decided it warranted a quick look. A few minutes in Fusion360 produced this, from one dimensioned sketch(visible in the pic), 3 extrudes and a mirror operation:





another few minutes and three jointed copies later I had something that looked like it would work:





Then things got a bit out hand, and I ended up with a mostly working(F360 doesn't have a follower joint) CAD model of a 60cc DOHC water cooled, wet liner engine that with a little extra work could make a working prototype:








It's about 165mm long, 185 high and F360 reckons it will weigh about 4kg which seems a bit low to me.




These are pretty





If we don't start ringing soon, I'll end buying several blocks of aluminium and a chunk of 50mm steel bar

[STEMO]

A fancy drawing board. The thing you have to keep going back to when stuff doesn't work.