Nothing In Particular

[pre65]

I've just found out my Mum is in Brentwood Community Hospital.

Fortunately it's not life threatening, although her blood pressure was very high.

She's being assessed, and having loads of tests done.

Mum came home yesterday, to a cold house (heating broken) and without them informing me.

IF the local surgery follow up the hospitals findings she should be OK in the short term. The Council have contacted me/her regards care needs and we hope to have a meeting soon.

[Nick]

is it possible that the beeb were 6 days late in publishing this item online?
these are strange times we live in
I blame Trump for my scepticism

'cept the topic is very niche for an April Fool piece - what proportion of the BBC's audience would even be interested, let alone be able to 'get it''?

CERN reported something similar a few weeks ago.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/202 ... le-physics

[Ray P]

Anyway, in a related way, it would be the sixth force of nature; the fifth being the mysterious one that enables people to believe in things like QAnon, Flat Earth, etc. in spite of an absence of any evidence for the former and the overwhelming evidence against it for the latter.

mmmm, are you implying that religion is the fifth force of nature Ray?

No Ed, I was just being tongue in cheek and explicitely didn't include religion.

[Ray P]

is it possible that the beeb were 6 days late in publishing this item online?
these are strange times we live in
I blame Trump for my scepticism

'cept the topic is very niche for an April Fool piece - what proportion of the BBC's audience would even be interested, let alone be able to 'get it''?

CERN reported something similar a few weeks ago.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/202 ... le-physics

Yep, I've seen this emerging evidence for a fifth force reported elsewhere - perhaps I didn't put it very well but I was commenting from the perspective of an April Fool story needing to be more 'credible' and targeted towards the general audience, like the (im)famous spaghetti tree one from way back when, rather than a niche topic, which, relates to something that is so totally weird that it might actually be true.

[Nick]

You mean like

[IslandPink]

Mum came home yesterday, to a cold house (heating broken) and without them informing me.

IF the local surgery follow up the hospitals findings she should be OK in the short term. The Council have contacted me/her regards care needs and we hope to have a meeting soon.

I'm glad she's OK and back home Phil. Shame the details weren't well handled.

[steve s]

I've been wondering how i could do some braising without spending a few hundred on torches, bottles and regs
I read a few months ago some of the wartime bike frame builders used house gas and compressed air and it worked well
I've got a large propane bottle with an adjustable regulator and a decent compressor,
I've just bought a propane/ oxy torch from china, there are some very cheap plastic ones from £13.99 but I thought I'd lash out £35.00 on an all metal one
I've got my fingers crossed it works on compressed air and gets hot enough ?

I have a couple of bullfinch propane torches but they don't get hot enough, the last one bought has a much bigger burner but it still doesn't get me there.
Will update how I get on.

I've been busy decorating these last few weeks but did some research on why the propane/ compressed air didn't work last year when I tried it.

There are a few air/ propane torches available but at £300+ they're expensive.

today I put a small butane nozzle on the standard oxy acetylene torch, connected it to the compressor and got a pleasant surprise.
It lit up beautifully and gave a perfect flame. It heated some 3/8 steel rod to a yellow / red within less than a minute, good result.. and just what I needed.
I was looking at buying an oxy set up, but they are expensive for how little I would use it but this will easily cover my needs

I'm going to make a couple of nozzles in different sizes , I'm sure that with a bigger nozzle it will put more heat out.
Now the decorating is done I can get back into the shed

[ed]

Firestarter!

now I know why he was always bringing prodigy to Owstaon

[jack]

Looking to buy a decent combi Tig/mig setup for mostly bodywork on the Landy and other small jobs... Having a gasless option also good.

Thoughts?

[pre65]

Thoughts ?

Yes, I've had thoughts on an AC Tig welder for some time, AC because of welding aluminium.

If wanting to use 13 amp single phase that limits the power, and I've seen units of (mainly) Chinese origin for around the GBP 500 mark.Up to 200 amps would surely be enough for most diy needs.

I've never tried mig, so personally it's not on my list. I already got my own BOC account, so adding another bottle for tig would not be a problem.

Invariably, an AC/DC tig would be more useful for general use.

[Ray P]

One for Mr. Bass

[Mike H]

Phil - glad your mum's back home, might be more difficult from now on?

Bins - (sorry!) I agree about the eyesore aspect. So much so as per my photo, I thought I'm not putting up with that so I moved the purple and blue to the bottom of the back garden against the hedge (not a great distance away by any means, but less intrusive on the retinas); the brown already mostly lives roundabout there, if not in the front garden (to be handy for next mowing session etc.), my thinking is, now that blue and purple are each only emptied once a month, and will probably take a while to fill them up (!) it sohuldn't be too onerous to get them out to the front when required. The green is still adjacent to the kitchen door as I suspect that will the most frequently used. But yes I was looking at them all together and thinking "this is a right PITA!"

Something else I was going to say - forgotten

Oh yes - smiley reminded me.

Some of my photos hosted on my web site (incuding smileys) stopped showing on the Bantam forum, turns out my security certificate had expired 4th April (didn't even know it had one!) so I had to BUY another one late last night. That fixed it.

You never know what's going to happen next.

[pre65]

Phil - glad your mum's back home, might be more difficult from now on?

Indeed it might Mike, depends on how the meeting on Friday goes with regard to a care package,

And on another point, got to do a little job on the workshop vice. I noticed one jaw was not square, there was a gap on one edge between the vice body and the jaw. I managed to get 3 of the 4 holding screws out, but the last one needed help from the blowtorch. First job since fitting the new hoses. I'll clean the mating surfaces properly before re assembling both jaws.

I've ordered 4 new screws, they are 1/4 x 20 x 1" countersunk head, so BSW. Not a vast selection on Ebay so I ended up with socket head rather than slotted, but that's fine. I remembered that countersunk head screws were measured overall length.

I did struggle to find my thread pitch gauge for a while, but found it eventually.

I might even remove the vice handle and put a rubber buffer each end so when it drops down it's quieter.

PS. I even managed to find a 1/4 BSW tap to clean up the threaded holes.



*

[Ant]

Apparently im decorating the living room. Dont know why, its only 10 years since it was done last.
Not entirely sure where im supposed to put everything thats actually in the living room while it is done.
The amount of work involved just to move things out appears to be astronomical.
Fergodsake......

[Nick]

Some of my photos hosted on my web site (incuding smileys) stopped showing on the Bantam forum, turns out my security certificate had expired 4th April (didn't even know it had one!) so I had to BUY another one late last night. That fixed it. Image

https://letsencrypt.org/