sundaymorningstaple wrote:This is true. But then I guess that why I've got three full sets of tools at home. SAE, Metric and one other oddball one - Whitworth (it wasn't always odd ball and you will understand) . I've got a full set of Whitworth wrenches, taps & dies. (That what happens when you restore your '57 AH 100-6 without doing research first).
And that was 35 years ago. All of my tools are Craftsmen except for some specialty tools and my antique set of custom made high carbon steel gouges made by my paternal grandfather some 90+ years ago when he was a Pattern Maker with Bethlehem Steel in Baltimore.
Learn something new every day!
I have done lathe/woodwork (and metalwork) at school, but I'd completely forgotten that the '''rotary chisels''' are called gouges.
Ah, Austin Healey
My dad was driving his one day, when he noticed a very pretty young lady and as it was raining took the initiative of offering her* a lift (dear reader, those were
much more innocent times).
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&si ... 6sEMwD7ovE
Whitworth taps and dies, makes sense (I've used taps and dies in metalwork classes). Still don't 'get' what's different re: these Whitworth ones, despite a quick skim of
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Standard_Whitworth
If you have a moment can you sum it up in say 12 words or less?
* my mother!
So... my very existence is down to the pulling-power of AH cars...
Oh, and talking about quality tools. Not saying they're the greatest quality, but I did my best. My parents still use two fire pokers that I made c35 years ago. One out of round bar, eye-hole top, good solid point at the other end. The other out of square bar, more detailing, and oval eye, with a tiny 'fold back' right on the end, and a full 360 degree twist over c4" a little below the handle.
That was right before a friend and I made a 'flint-lock' pistol (the stock in woodwork club, the barrel from like 3/4" round steel bar, and firing mechanism in metalwork club. The thing used a little screw-in cartridge (the size of a tiny medical plastic dropper-bottle). On one side you had a cavity filled with 'classic gunpowder', connected via a small hole to the other side where you put the high-percussion explosive soaked/dried in blotting paper (I won't go into details but that charge was based around Potassium Hexa-cyanoferrate II**). I have no idea how on earth we got these recipes... as this was long before the internet, but heavens did we have some fun (except 'that day' when I could have blown my hand off, but by luck only got hospitalised with 1st degree burns! [Pro Tip: grinding gunpowder in a pestle and mortar is not a good idea]).
In the next episode: DIY 'depth-charges', aka water-activated hand-grenades ... lol.
** My cohort in all of this was THE science swot at school, you know the type, 'genius but stupid'. Whilst making the percussion caps he decided to dry the infused sheets of paper in his mothers gas oven. Well that was his v1.00 (and only) attempt at doing it that way, but it was terminal for the oven, as he succeeded in literally blowing the door off it!
