Winter upgrades
Discussion
Wedg1e said:
chedder said:
Hmmmph....all we got to make was a depth gauge, and a fat lot of use it was too! The teacher forgot to send them away to get the measurement scale etched on!
Quick, calibrate it as a penis measuring tool 
Oh I forgot I was allowed to machine engrave the numbers.Trump that Wedg1e boyo
Took 12 weeks as my instructor took great delight in crushing every failed component in the vice
dickymint said:
:showingoffhere: my 4th year apprentice phase test was to make a vernier caliper - by hand (i kid you not). The only machining allowed was the turned and knurled locking screws, 2mm screws to hold the frame to the body and the ground wear strip. The rest was hacksaw filed and emery cloth. The nibs (for measuring inside diameters) were to a tolerance of +/- 2/10ths of a thou using emery and finished off with a lump of diamond polishing wheel! The graduations were done manually on a miller using a dividing head and a load of maths Oh I forgot I was allowed to machine engrave the numbers.
Trump that Wedg1e boyo
I can't trump that Richard: when I left school I served my time as a bank cashier Oh I forgot I was allowed to machine engrave the numbers.Trump that Wedg1e boyo
Supposedly a job for life, I'd be a bank manager by 40 etc etc... yeah right. 18 months after I quit, Barclays and NatWest shed 55,000 staff and nobody noticed.Accuracy has never been my thing; even back then I always said that as long as you were within a couple of thou (£
at the end of the day, what was the problem? Alas Internal Security didn't see it that way, bit of a career blot that was. However...
Although I went to college for my C&G in motor vehicle repairs, that's the only formal technical training I ever had after 3rd year comprehensive - I spent the last two years doing bloody languages
. Most of my car repair skills are self-taught.At 17 I didn't know a soldering iron from a magic wand. By 19 I was making money from electronics repairs... self-taught, again up to C&G as I passed the RAE.
My dad showed me how to gas weld when I was 12, failed miserably to teach me how to stick-weld (as did the college MV course) when I was in my 20s. I taught myself to MIG and TIG weld by simply buying the relevant equipment and trying it.
I'm gradually learning the art of turning and milling; I don't break quite as many cutters these days
Luckily most of what I do is for work so a lot of 'stuff' goes on expenses <ahem>. You know how it is: you need to make a 2" brass thingy, unfortunately you have to buy 5m of brass as a 'minimum order, boss, honest'... Taught myself plumbing by installing a complete gas CH system with combi; I can lay bricks albeit very slowly. Plastering is one skill that eludes me. Domestic electrics are a doddle.
I got my current job 14 years ago on the basis that I said I could repair anything
Taught myself AutoCAD as well though I'm pretty rubbish at it, only managed to design systems that we sell for £150K so far. They're used to give small furry animals huge doses of radiation for cancer research, so I guess I do my bit in some small way. Note I have no pets
eesbad said:
dickymint said:
Trump that Wedg1e boyo
I don't know about Wedg1e, but I made an aluminium soap dish when I was 11 and got a 'B' from the Metalwork teacher, who NEVER gave higher than a 'C'...Think my Mum has still got it somewhere...
I still use it regularly to this very day.Which is more than can be said about everything I made during my apprenticeship.
- G clamp.. got nicked.
- Jeweler's vice.. will come in handy when I need to work on a gnat's pocket watch.
- Continuity tester is brill if you have a double door to get it into the room.
- Logic tester.. never worked.
- Stepper motor driver.. Still waiting to find a use for and at 20+ years on I'm not holding my breath.
- Battery voltage meter.. great unless you want to measure really big voltages... like 12! It was also so inefficient it would flatten a battery in no time but had the useful side effect of keeping the room warm.
Still I had the last laugh, he gets to play with Lotus's all day and I get to mess with fixing boring credit card terminals... Right where's my bottle opener... Ahhh beer
dickymint said:
Always remember my apprentice instructor saying to me the day I finished me training - "Yep Rich you are now a fully qualified fitter/turner. You certainly are fit for nothing and turned out rubbish".
Aye, but joking aside, how many years was it before you felt like you knew the job?Wedg1e said:
dickymint said:
Always remember my apprentice instructor saying to me the day I finished me training - "Yep Rich you are now a fully qualified fitter/turner. You certainly are fit for nothing and turned out rubbish".
Aye, but joking aside, how many years was it before you felt like you knew the job?
So from then on started working with more refined tools. Got fed up with this as it was like making Air-fix kits all day. Then I was a technician fixing Auto-insert machines (machines that fire resistors, diodes etc into PCBs) and surface mount machines.After that I became a calibration engineer (electronic stuff). As you know I am now training to be a Corgi gas engineer (why the hell they are called engineers beats me)!!So I guess like you I'm a Jack of all trades and master of none
chedder said:
rev-erend said:
Starting mine now..
New EMS and a very wild 5.3.. and a few other things.
Rumour has it, you will need a 24v starter motor off a Landy 101 just to turn it over!!!New EMS and a very wild 5.3.. and a few other things.
Stage 1 of winter upgrades complete!
Lovely old 2 pot cast iron calipers
New WMS alloy 4pots
New vented and grooved discs, calipers, ceramic pads and braided lines, all fitted in about 3hrs for both sides, have to bed them in for a week or two then rport back, but on first drive out, the performance is impressive and a whole lot more feel to the brake pedal.
Lovely old 2 pot cast iron calipers
New WMS alloy 4pots
New vented and grooved discs, calipers, ceramic pads and braided lines, all fitted in about 3hrs for both sides, have to bed them in for a week or two then rport back, but on first drive out, the performance is impressive and a whole lot more feel to the brake pedal.
Edited by chedder on Sunday 7th October 19:34
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