expeatfarmer

Started sizing the drill bits yesterday turns out I have sharpened 346 plus 28 masonry drills not started on the morse taper lathe drills yet thought I would save that until I am really bored !!!!!

Very nice, I have a few older cars myself and know that they are only original once. Well done on a very sympathetic re- commission .

Should be a good day for logging and photos today not a cloud in the sky over Cumbria.

At least we can go out in the garden and build a snowman !

For the last few months I have been medically chair bound with the exception of odd forays to the garages and workshop to find things. Father Christmas was very good to me giving me a comfy office chair, an LED head torch and a Drill Doctor drill sharpener. My new lockdown past time is sitting at the kitchen table in my comfy chair ,my headlight beaming away and my drill sharpener on the table in front of me. Over 50 years of workshopping I have somehow amassed a huge collection of drill bits , some were my Father's , Rhys gave me a pile of Morse tapered lathe drills but most I have bought when embarking on a new project. Although I am quite capable of sharpening drill bits ,it has not been a regular workshop maintenance task and consequently it was quicker to buy some new drills rather than sort out and sharpen old ones, UNTIL NOW ! The drill Doctor machine will cope with drills from 1mm ( if you are careful ) up to 3/4" . The drill bit is set in a chuck which aligns the flutes to produce a point angle of 118 - 135 degrees with minor up or down variation. The chuck is then slotted into a holding socket above the diamond grinding wheel to be rotated slowly by hand, two turns will dress up a tired drill to new, 10 turns will restore a broken drill. The machine was not cheap but works extremely well, will cater for split point drills and masonry bits, clean working ,not too noisy and a nice way to spend a few hours in the warm recycling useful things. I would certainly never have stood at the grinder for many hours hand sharpening hundreds of drill bits. I have now ordered a couple of graded drill bit holders so that I can again sit at the table and sort out all the sizes and then give a couple of sets to my sons. I recently bought a spring caliper guage for measuring valve shims and was very pleasantly surprised to find that it can display in mm / inches and also fractions of inches so I can now identify some of the odd sized tapping drills I have. That should take up a few hours maybe I will improve my set up with my headlamp and some wireless earphones tuned in to Planet Rock!

on the final model it was the steering wheel mechanism and an option for a higher ratio of gears to give a higher road speed, it is not recorded if the one machine sold to London Docks had the higher gear option. The machine was also fitted with the flywheel driven electric kit to power the lights.

This is what we are looking for the prototype is on the right and final version with steering wheel to the left.

Such things dreams are made of !

Following on from the article by Patrick Knight with extra photos by the editor as published in the latest edition of the VHGMC Magazine The Cultivator , I have two ITC Skimmer machines, one is complete ready to work, the other is mobile and has all major new old stock parts for a rebuild. Rarer still I have a new condition operation and parts manual for the skimmer from which measurements etc can be scaled to make up missing frame. Sadly I have disposed of most of my entire range collection due to ill health, the machines I have are available if anyone is interested. The skimmers are unique machines based around an MG6 chassis but fitted with a second final drive gearbox driving the tracks working speed when skimming was 25ft per minute. Quite amazing machines that would travel, skim 1/2″ of sand over a 4ft width, elevate and break up the sand and then discharge at about 5ft off the ground into a dumper all from a 600cc petrol engine. Being slightly lacking in power many waterboard machines were modified for bigger engines, one of my current machines was purchased in Devon with a brand new for Escort engine and gearbox fitted ( never run from new), another was fitted with a twin cylinder electric start engine.Both now have original type Ransomes petrol engines. When I first set out to collect one of every model MG made the ITW ( wheeled model),Whitlock loading shovel WR8 were the Holy Grails of which there were thought to be very few remaining, Skimmers were known of but none seen, over the years many more Whitlocks and ITW machines have come to light as have a number of Skimmers. The search is now on to find out what happened to the ITW Barge Tractor which evolved over a number of prototypes the final model I believe was sold to Port of London so far never to be seen or heard of again, UNLESS YOU KNOW DIFFERENT Happy Christmas

Happy birthday Norman have a good day Great Grandad! Good day for roller building in the workshop !

Happy birthday Harry , have a good one.

Congratulations Norman

Looks like a fantastic setting is it near the river?

Managed to strip the blown engine today, crank snapped in two places,conrod amazingly bent, fortunately piston and barrels are unharmed I will salvage what parts I can for someone else.

No planning to dig a pond at some point so will keep it.

Another three gone today, two MG6 and the Jarrett MG5, Had a disaster with TVo MG6 spent the whole day yesterday serciceing and getting it started, ran for a couple of minutes and then big bang crankshaft snapped through one of the webs, conrod through the block piston smashed serious mess, fortunately I have enough spares to build up a replacement but never the less they are not leaving without a fight. Now down to 137, Digger, ITW Barge and two sand skimmers.

Sounds as if you may have a blockage at the fuel tank outlet, sometimes there is a fine gauze mesh filter which gets blocked. Unscrew the fuel tap from the tank and you should see it, if not try blowing low pressure air from a foot pump up the fuel line back in to the tank.

I used a 45 gallon plastic drum with a 6mm weldmesh grid against the inside wall all round, worked very well on 12 volt charger 4 amps, just out of interest I tried an old 80 amp stick welder as the power supply, the weldmesh disappeared overnight and the liquid was nearly boiling, item to be de rusted was immaculate but very black !!!!

What did you do with it , a galvanised chassis would last far too long normal steel would outlast you WADR.

Sorry to hear that Norman that was a good old bus. So ends a lifetime link with Land Rovers another era ends !!!!

Winch ITW has now gone, dumper is advertised lots of interest in other machines and most spares have now gone. I have virtually met lots of very nice people it is very pleasing to help so many machines to come back to life.

Part of the fun of collecting the crawlers was meeting new people with shared enthusiasm for these machines. Strangely, going through all my glory holes and pulling out all the machines and spares I have and then dealing with new enthusiasts looking for parts has been equal fun it is good to know that as a result of my bits many other machines will be up and running.It has also been really pleasing to see that many of the enthusiasts are youngsters late teens and early twenties as well as the older group. I still have piles of stuff to go through so if anyone is needing a particular part I am happy to have a look and see if I have one.

Impressive piece of work between you, fair price for the work and material involved good luck with them I know some MG2 owners will be delighted to get one .

What will you do with all the brownie points ?

Thanks Norman you are welcome for a social distance coffee if you are passing. I was pleased to be able to extract the set for photos before they left, extracting the whitlock will be a tougher job. Good to see them in your garden Harry looks like plenty of playing space.