Stuff you have fixed today

[Jelly_Sheffield]

Many of the American guys Ive worked with from the GOM over the years have favoured the Double H, suited their work style I guess. Now Im no longer travelling to work for a living and my stock of supply work wear has been consumed, I bought a pair of Ariat rigger type boots for general farmy type use. Though pricey they are water proof and actually very comfortable, though a tad on the heavy side.

I have to admit I actually quite like the big heel now I have got used to it, it's dead secure for climbing ladders, and you can shift your weight about more to distribute pressure differently when you're stood around like a lemon waiting.

It does however make me tall enough to clip the top of my head on some door-frames...

My farming friends are split between Ariat Dealer Boots and Red Band Gumboots (the split also mirrors British Arable vs. NZ Dairy farmers oddly enough).

 

[Dr.Al]

A simple plane modification, based on an idea from Derek Cohen (but implemented slightly differently by me).

This is my Rapier #43 plough plane:

The clamping piece is quite shabby. I suspect the original was lost at some point and a replacement was made with judicious use of files. The blade that's in there at the moment is from the #45 and is a bit too long really, but it works fine. At some point I'll make some shorter ones for this plane.

Another look at the plane body:

You can see the two nasty slotted screws that hold the rail in place but they never get undone (apart from today) and they're probably some daft imperial thread so remaking them is more hassle than I can be bothered with.

This is what it looks like if you remove the blade and try to tighten the screw to stop the clamp falling out:

It might not be obvious, but the clamp is still loose in that position. I did consider (a while ago) just making a longer thumbscrew. At least with that, I'd have been able to store the clamp with the tool while no blade was fitted. That's really what I see as the main goal: holding the clamp in place while you fit the blade isn't really an issue. The main reason I haven't done it is that I'd (probably) either have to re-tap the hole metric or make the screw with an imperial thread and that felt like more hassle than the job was worth. It's a sign of how little this has bothered me that I haven't even checked to confirm that the thread is imperial!

Anyway, Derek's solution looked like a great idea except that the screw holding the clamp in place had to be left loose and I thought there was a risk of it falling out and getting lost.

My approach was this...

I clamped the body of the plane in the mill vice, with the bottom bit on a parallel and a 20-40-80 block pushing on the only bit of the plane that's parallel with the bottom:

The blade's in place and the clamp screw is tightened very tightly (I gave it a bit of a twist with a pair of pliers to be sure).

I then picked what looked like a promising spot and made a counterbored hole. The counterbore is 7 mm and the hole is 4.6 mm:

That hole was deep enough to just touch the body; I then removed the clamp and finished drilling through 4.6 mm on the pillar drill.

The reason for those slightly odd hole sizes is that an M3 cap screw has a nominal 5.5 mm head. The one I got out of a drawer had a 5.4 mm head. I wanted a bit of clearance around head and screw so that the clamp could move around freely and pivot around the pivot point rather than around the screw. 8 mm felt a bit big for the counterbore so I went with 7 mm (which was the next end mill size down from my collection). That's 1.6 mm over the size of the head, so I drilled through 1.6 mm over the size of the screw. All of that should allow the clamp to move 0.8 mm in any direction. All my plough plane blades are (home-) made from 3 mm gauge plate, so the thickness of them should be very close to identical so 0.8 mm movement should be plenty.

With the clamp removed, I drilled a 2.5 mm hole in the same place in the body and then started tapping M3 (by hand but with the tap in the chuck):

The tap I chose was a taper one. I had expected that, even with a shallow hole, I'd probably pop out the other side of the plane (although I happened to hit a thicker webbed bit so the hole ended up blind).

Either way, the taper tap is beneficial as I could (with the plane removed from the mill vice and the tap in a small tap wrench) tap it a little bit, then insert the clamp and cap screw and tighten the cap screw. If there was still a lot of clearance under the screw head, I could insert the taper tap and go a little deeper and then try the fit again.

After a few goes, I have an M3 cap screw that's tightened firmly into the body but the clamp still moves freely while being unable to fall off:

 

[Keithmac]

View attachment 505142

He qualified 1st and won the first dry race.

Swapped bikes for the other FC450 I built the engine on a month back (wet setup) and won the second race too!.

Pretty chuffed with that, should have gone to watch really but a bit too "peopley" for my liking unfortunately..

 

[dobbslc]

Where do they race these Super Moto's?

 

[Keithmac]

Where do they race these Super Moto's?

This was at Olivers Mount, Scarborough but they go all over the country.

Believe last round was a Three Sisters in Wigan.

Looks a lot of fun but they normally arrive Thursday nights for the weekend meetings so need to be flexible with work.

The chap next unit on to us races too and his original builder was messing him about so we said we would do his last repair to get him out of the poo and it's gone from there really. The black FC450 was his old bike.

Quite interesting to see the fruits of you labour!.

 

[dobbslc]

Really good!