Stuff you have made today

[Guzrik]

Suspect I blew the headgasket of our Panda, so made a adapter to put airpressure in the sparkplug hole.

Then discovered the hexagonal was too big so milled it two millimeters smaller.

Then added a piece of metal tubing to be able to push in the hose when mounted, and depress the blue ring to pull the hose out
when done.

Tommorow I will replace the thermostat housing and then I can test for headgasket failure.

 

[Moose McAlpine]

Suspect I blew the headgasket of our Panda, so made a adapter to put airpressure in the sparkplug hole.
View attachment 266637
Then discovered the hexagonal was too big so milled it two millimeters smaller.
View attachment 266638
Then added a piece of metal tubing to be able to push in the hose when mounted, and depress the blue ring to pull the hose out
when done.
View attachment 266639
Tommorow I will replace the thermostat housing and then I can test for headgasket failure.

Even with all valves closed you're basically looking at cylinder leakage which will be blowby of the rings. A failed multi-layer steel headgasket is unlikely to show up by that method of testing.

Have you done a compression test? (Often inconclusive in head gasket failure.)

 

[Guzrik]

Even with all valves closed you're basically looking at cylinder leakage which will be blowby of the rings. A failed multi-layer steel headgasket is unlikely to show up by that method of testing.

Have you done a compression test? (Often inconclusive in head gasket failure.)

Is this your own experience? For me this is the first time and you are the first to say it is not a good method.
The idea is that the air blows into the cooling system and thus shows up as bubbles in the expansion vessel.
For this it doesn't matter if the valves or rings leak as long as I can have 6 bars on the combustionchamber.
I do realize this is only one of the functions of the gasket and I can imagine the smallest leaks are hard to see even with this method.
Compressiontest seems less sensitive to me?

 

[Moose McAlpine]

Is this your own experience? For me this is the first time and you are the first to say it is not a good method.
The idea is that the air blows into the cooling system and thus shows up as bubbles in the expansion vessel.
For this it doesn't matter if the valves or rings leak as long as I can have 6 bars on the combustionchamber.
I do realize this is only one of the functions of the gasket and I can imagine the smallest leaks are hard to see even with this method.
Compressiontest seems less sensitive to me?

Yes, in my own experience. What you've made is essentially a cylinder leakage tester, but without the gauge for measuring leakage. The principle behind it is right, but 6 bar is very low compared to combustion pressure.

Often* steel gasket failures are hard to pinpoint, while it may have failed you still need significant pressure to force combustion gas past the gasket into the cooling system. Combustion pressure can typically be 20-70 bar, or more.

If you were to get bubbles in your coolant reservoir from the tester, you would get them with the engine idling, which would be an easier test. Also, if this were the case then you could verify the failure with a carbon monoxide reaction test:



(Because if the gasket has failed and 6 bar will push bubbles into the cooling system, then combustion gas is already in there and this will detect it. Even if it needs 20 bar and the gasket has failed, this will show it where your tester won't.)

*Not always, they can fail quite spectacularly with combustion gas, oil and coolant all mixing freely.


I'm not saying your tester won't work, it may well do.

 

[Ruffian]

Little bit rough and ready but needed to get it together to find sizes.
4 shotgun stocks for legs and ¾x¼ alloy flat frame for when the actual top gets made for it.

 

[daedalusminos]

Managed to get most of the parts complete for the next project.

 

[My Old Landy]

I made a tool to set the lathe leadscrew backlash.
I turned up a ring with a few thou clearance and then decided to use the rotary table to get the side holes in the correct place

2MT mounted 4 jaw scroll chuck in a 3MT sleeve into the 8" table but it worked out a treat

 

[Dr.Al]

I had a couple of thin pieces of cherry that I wanted to rip in half so I made a tool to help me rip them accurately.

Here it is:

I guess you'd call it a kerfing saw or something like that. It's made out of oak, about 200 mm long and about 90 mm high; the spacers and clamp pieces are 60 mm high. I've made spacers in 4 mm, 5 mm, 6 mm and 8 mm thickness at the moment; I'll probably make some more in due course - they're very easy to make. The 8 mm one has more dramatically rounded edges than the others as I'll generally use that as the outer clamp piece when using thinner spacers and it makes it more comfortable in the hand having rounded edges.

The idea is that you fit a spacer about 1 mm thicker than the thickness of wood you want and then press the fence against the side of the wood while taking cuts all the way round the edge of the board. You then get a saw out and it's fairly easy to follow the pre-cut kerf.

Another view:

and another:

The flange-button head M5 screws you can see in this picture are held in place with 5-minute epoxy, so dismantling just involves the knurled brass knobs and no tools.

Finish is four coats of Shellac and one coat of paste wax. This was the first time I'd used Shellac. It isn't as nice to apply and doesn't look quite as good as the Tung Oil/White Spirit/Varnish mix I've used in the past, but I love the fact the coats dry so quickly so I don't have to spend several days applying finish.

It all started with this saw blade, which I spotted on ebay for £10 (someone had bought the wrong blade for their saw). I don't have the saw but I saw a potential use:

I snapped off the tang and drilled four holes in it - I was a bit worried about how easy it would be to drill, but it was quite straightforward.

Here's what it looks like inside the saw:

Here's what the result looks like with a 9 mm thick bit of cherry and the 4 mm spacer (this was done as a test before I applied the finish or made the knurled brass knobs - hence the nuts and washers):

The saw then follows the cut easily:

The result:

Planed to 3 mm and looking good to me:

I think this saw is going to get a lot of use, which is really satisfying, especially since I started and finished making it (including the knurled knobs and all four coats of Shellac) all in one day.

 

[RichardM]

"Christmas" build - need to sort motor cover, wheel guards, dust extraction, tidy electrics and tart things up a bit!

 

[brewdexta]

I had a couple of thin pieces of cherry that I wanted to rip in half so I made a tool to help me rip them accurately.

Here it is:

View attachment 266727

I guess you'd call it a kerfing saw or something like that. It's made out of oak, about 200 mm long and about 90 mm high; the spacers and clamp pieces are 60 mm high. I've made spacers in 4 mm, 5 mm, 6 mm and 8 mm thickness at the moment; I'll probably make some more in due course - they're very easy to make. The 8 mm one has more dramatically rounded edges than the others as I'll generally use that as the outer clamp piece when using thinner spacers and it makes it more comfortable in the hand having rounded edges.

The idea is that you fit a spacer about 1 mm thicker than the thickness of wood you want and then press the fence against the side of the wood while taking cuts all the way round the edge of the board. You then get a saw out and it's fairly easy to follow the pre-cut kerf.

Another view:

View attachment 266728

and another:

View attachment 266729

The flange-button head M5 screws you can see in this picture are held in place with 5-minute epoxy, so dismantling just involves the knurled brass knobs and no tools.

Finish is four coats of Shellac and one coat of paste wax. This was the first time I'd used Shellac. It isn't as nice to apply and doesn't look quite as good as the Tung Oil/White Spirit/Varnish mix I've used in the past, but I love the fact the coats dry so quickly so I don't have to spend several days applying finish.

It all started with this saw blade, which I spotted on ebay for £10 (someone had bought the wrong blade for their saw). I don't have the saw but I saw a potential use:

View attachment 266730

I snapped off the tang and drilled four holes in it - I was a bit worried about how easy it would be to drill, but it was quite straightforward.

Here's what it looks like inside the saw:

View attachment 266731

Here's what the result looks like with a 9 mm thick bit of cherry and the 4 mm spacer (this was done as a test before I applied the finish or made the knurled brass knobs - hence the nuts and washers):

View attachment 266732

The saw then follows the cut easily:

View attachment 266733

The result:

View attachment 266734

Planed to 3 mm and looking good to me:

View attachment 266735

I think this saw is going to get a lot of use, which is really satisfying, especially since I started and finished making it (including the knurled knobs and all four coats of Shellac) all in one day.

I like that a lot

 

[mr migwire]

Did a bit of metal mangling today...

Firstly, made myself a dowel plate out of 6 mm mild steel Tried it out on some oak and it seems to work:

View attachment 266584

must practise getting number stamps lined up! To be honest, I wasn't being especially careful with the number stamps, ,so I'm not surprised they're a bit wonky.

Also made this out of a lump of 63.5 mm diameter 303 I found in a skip at work a while ago:

View attachment 266587

The bottom bit is 20 mm diameter, the top is 35 mm square and 3 mm thick with two of the edges chamfered (at different angles). It's got an M8 thread going all the way through and the top is countersunk so I can leave a screw in the hole to stop little bits falling through. That leaves enough thread at the bottom to hold it down onto my bench if I want to.

Completely ridiculous to machine this from solid (especially a 63.5 mm diameter solid, when 50 mm diameter would have done) rather than fixing a bit of 3 mm plate to a bit of 20 mm round bar, but I had the 63.5 mm bar and I was quite enjoying using the lathe and mill...

Here it is in use as a planing stop:

View attachment 266588

Should be useful for anything I want to plane that is thicker than 3 mm.

Also used a scrap of plywood to make a little storage thing for all my 20 mm dogs, including this new one.

View attachment 266589

Just an offcut of plywood with lots of 20 mm holes through and a saw cut running along the length underneath so that it slots over the top of the angle iron that the drawers rest on. I would probably have preferred to make it two rows so there's some room for expansion, but that was the size bit of plywood I had and I've never yet felt like I haven't got enough dogs, so it's probably fine.

I tend to use a length of blue masking tape as a datum to keep the number punches lined up, works a treat.

 

[selectedgrub]

must practise getting number stamps lined up! To be honest, I wasn't being especially careful with the number stamps, ,so I'm not surprised they're a bit wonky.

It looks good to me.

 

[Dr.Al]

I tend to use a length of blue masking tape as a datum to keep the number punches lined up, works a treat.

I've done something similar in the past; I was just being lazy this time

 

[DAPPH]

I've done something similar in the past; I was just being lazy this time

Being a lazy git I'd only punch the whole numbers on the gauge plate along the side of a clamped on bit of straight wood .

 

[nickk]

In the 2.5 years we’ve lived here ,my partner has been reminding me to make curtain poles,this holiday I’m finally getting around to it!Only 3 more left.

 

[Barking Mat]

View attachment 266811 View attachment 266812 View attachment 266813 View attachment 266814 In the 2.5 years we’ve lived here ,my partner has been reminding me to make curtain poles,this holiday I’m finally getting around to it!Only 3 more left.

I like the gaffa tape support.

Seriously, nice curtain poles.

 

[MattF]

In the 2.5 years we’ve lived here ,my partner has been reminding me to make curtain poles.

Typical bloke rush job then.

 

[Moose McAlpine]

Finished the table legs. Welded, smoothed on the outside then painted quite badly.


The holes are offset so the rear wheels stay inside the table's footprint.

 

[Tangledfeet]

Stood on the plastic workshop dustpan a while ago and I've been meaning to make a replacement. Finding a 400 x 240mm sheet of 1mm cold rolled presented itself with the opportunity, not a single piece of waste.

 

[roblane65]

Nice table