Home-made Tools and those you've adapted or modified. And also "tips and tricks".

[68vitesse]

Bar for pliers etc, idea from a towel rail, already had the steel strip shaped in vice with big hammer.

Regards

Paul

 

[ahebron]

Today I made three lead hammers but only ended up with two finished ones.
After a bit of research I came to the conclusion that a lead hammer is the best thing for fitting centre spinners on vintage car wire wheels. A bit more research and they cannot be bought  in NZ. Most likely something to do with them being lead.
A mechanic friend donated his box of old wheel weights and as it for my parents car they picked up a stainless steel pot from an op shop and a spoon with holes in for cleaning the dross off the lead.

My dad had a bit of a moment when the hose would not connect between the gas cooker and bottle but it turned out to be left hand thread.
Started by filling the pot with all the dirty wheel weights and setting the camping stove to high and watch some of the weights start to melt, it turns out not all wheel weights are lead. The stick on mag wheel ones are a ferrous metal that like the magnet so easy to lift out of the pot. This halved my mass of weights

My first mould was an tomato sauce refill tin of about 550ml capacity. I hole punched a 25mm hole in the side about midway up. The handle is a 300mm x 25mm length of galv pipe that roller doors spin on which I plugged about 50mm in and I cross drill 2 x 8mm holes so the lead would pour through to help the handle stay in place. This hammer looked impressive but at 6kg was deemed to heavy but a good first attempt. It was melted down
A ginger spice tin and Colmans Mustard tin (rectangle) were the next 2 moulds and these had the same handle treatment with one using the 6kg hammer handle.
These two came out at nearly 3kg each so everyone should be happy. I am coating the lead hammer with rustoloeum leak paint that provides a rubber type coating.
i am happy with the results and while this method is sacrificial for the moulds but I cannot see myself making anymore of these.
When working with the lead I had a full face 3m mask that I bought when I was grinding lead out of a car body prior to welding panels, I had cotton overalls and welding gloves when pouring. The garage door was open for a through draft and I had a fan on full. 

[Pete Lewis]

gosh that reminds me of antics as apprentice similarly  the lead mallet to flog the machine vice on the mill had worn out so we nicked some lead strips from the body shop 

next to the apprentice school and made a mould like yours . heated with a blow torch , what we didnt see was it was too hot and great volumes of green fumes were 

building down form the ceiling , the drawing room for special operations was above us had to be evactuated 

when we looked up the thick green fog was halfaway down the walls  , we could have made a lot very sick , i think we just got a you silly boys  rollocking

but hot lead in the hands of nuppties is rightly dangerous, we were to busty looking at what we were doing than look up and Panic !!!!

and the supervisor wrote out a rec for a new mallet  

Pete

[johny]

I thought wheel weights were made of something else now to stop lead being flung off into the environment (and thats why you need a few more to achieve balance?).

Whatever it is looks to have melted ok but reckon you might have to watch out how hard you wack things with it😲

[ahebron]

Hi johny
They are lead but as I said the mag wheel weights are a ferrous material.
This bucket of weights is old ones taken off wheels so there is very good chance the non ferrous ones are lead.
It is just for knocking on and off spinner ears on wire wheels so might only get used once a year hopefully.

[ahebron]

This afternoon working on the headlight relays on my Vitesse 6 I got fed up pushing the bullet connectors into the joiners.
Looking up the tool and realising it was going to be in excess of NZ$80 to purchase including tax and freight I had a look to see what I have in my tools that could be modified.
Being a soarkie I have a few abusd pliers and side cutter but what caught my eye was a sad looking pair of channel lock long nose pliers with the tip of one jaw missing.
Out with the grinder and cutting wheel and in 5 minutes i had a useful bullet connector closing tool.
I cut the tips of the jaws, cut a slot down the jaws and then roughly cut parallel faces in at the point the jaws would have pushed the connectors home on both sides of a joiner.   

[Peter Truman]

Do you use a smear of copper grease to stop the bullets from locking in?

I think I've replaced all the Vitesse Bullets in the last 10 years, currently going thro the Spits.

I usually locate the male end in the sleeve with nose pliers then a flat end screwdriver to push home. With the replacement female bullet sleeves they seem a little looser/larger & need closing up a little to get a grip on the male insert, or there smaller!! I also have to centralize the outer insulation sleeve after pushing the Bullets home. Hopefully there good for another 40 to 50 years?

Like you to get a Raul?? from the UK is prohibitive & your DIY is a solution

Hope ALL is OK over there with the recent floods and Earthquakes! you appear to be relatively close to Wellington.

[ahebron]

Hi Peter

I never thought of smearing with copper grease, I will definitely give that a go.
I bought a bag of '3m' wheels for my dremel that I use to clean the bullets before they go back in, all the ones I fit are soldered as the crimp tool is expensive and my bullets I believe are the solder type.

Thanks for your concern we are directly over the harbour from Wellington City. The earthquake was a good one (6.0) but as it was deep and out to sea it didnt cause any damage. They used to terrify me but ever since Kaikoura I just accept them, we where in Hastings when that one struck and it is 250 miles away and it sacred the bejesus out of me. It woke us up and standing up was not easy, I opened the door to the motel unit to see the pool surge out under my Range Rover parked next to it, power lines arcing in the distance it was something else.

Rain was heavy in Wellington with localised flooding and slips but nothing out of the ordinary and Wellington is used to winds so we just did the usual and hunkered down till it passed over, funnily enough the summer Wellington has been the place to be in NZ. 
The 2 cyclones bought floods that are devastating and the country has never seen destruction like it, the main food bowls of NZ have been wiped out but the thing is they are the food bowls because of the silt that the rivers spread across the plains.  Northland, Auckland, Coromandel, East Cape, Hawkes Bay have been hammered with Waikato, Bay of Plenty, Wairarapa and Manawatu suffering localised damage. The forestry industry has a lot to answer for  as the slash that has come down the rivers has destroyed everything in its path. This will cost many billions to put right and I imagine like Christchurch Redzone homes will not be rebuilt in certain areas. I am pretty sure friends and colleagues have lost houses but have no way of finding out and to be honest they have a lot to deal with without letting people know. 

Sorry about the rant.

[Peter Truman]

Understandable considering what’s happened recently stay safe.

NZ in our area of the world drew the short straws regards volcanoes and earthquakes & gets the carry over of our weather.

[ahebron]

But on the positive note there is only 2 things that can kill you here, the land and the locals.😜
 

[PeteH]

Barely a word over here?. Much coverage of Turkey/Syria. But hardly any coverage of the N-Z flooding? nor any Earthquakes?. We have friends who live on North Island, Mick, died from Prostate a few years back now, took our wedding photo`s back in `64. His wife and family are still there. Hope everything recovers OK?.

Pete.

P.s. Back on Connectors, Anyone esle come across these?

Most of the low voltage, and some A-C connections on all 3 of my American R-V`s had a load of them.

Pete

[ahebron]

As a registered electrician I dont like those connectors, they are cheap and nasty and I will remove them if I come across them.
They are known as wire nuts, I prefer a screw terminal with properly terminated cable ends or wago type connectors both are safe to use on mains voltage.

As an aside 230 volt AC is classified as low voltage, Below 50 volts AC and 120 volts DC is extra low voltage.

[mark powell]

2 hours ago, ahebron said:

Hi Peter

I never thought of smearing with copper grease, I will definitely give that a go.
I bought a bag of '3m' wheels for my dremel that I use to clean the bullets before they go back in, all the ones I fit are soldered as the crimp tool is expensive and my bullets I believe are the solder type.

Thanks for your concern we are directly over the harbour from Wellington City. The earthquake was a good one (6.0) but as it was deep and out to sea it didnt cause any damage. They used to terrify me but ever since Kaikoura I just accept them, we where in Hastings when that one struck and it is 250 miles away and it sacred the bejesus out of me. It woke us up and standing up was not easy, I opened the door to the motel unit to see the pool surge out under my Range Rover parked next to it, power lines arcing in the distance it was something else.

Rain was heavy in Wellington with localised flooding and slips but nothing out of the ordinary and Wellington is used to winds so we just did the usual and hunkered down till it passed over, funnily enough the summer Wellington has been the place to be in NZ. 
The 2 cyclones bought floods that are devastating and the country has never seen destruction like it, the main food bowls of NZ have been wiped out but the thing is they are the food bowls because of the silt that the rivers spread across the plains.  Northland, Auckland, Coromandel, East Cape, Hawkes Bay have been hammered with Waikato, Bay of Plenty, Wairarapa and Manawatu suffering localised damage. The forestry industry has a lot to answer for  as the slash that has come down the rivers has destroyed everything in its path. This will cost many billions to put right and I imagine like Christchurch Redzone homes will not be rebuilt in certain areas. I am pretty sure friends and colleagues have lost houses but have no way of finding out and to be honest they have a lot to deal with without letting people know. 

Sorry about the rant.

Every time I read of NZ's floods and slips, puts me in mind of this..

[PeteH]

IMV. Deforestation, is/has been, a bigger threat to the planet all round. The Amazon Rain forest is allegedly only a fraction of what it was 100years ago. Same with huge area`s of Asia. And recent similar issues in the USA where put down to over-logging for building timber, of which a huge percentage of US homes are still constructed.

Pete

[Colin Lindsay]

14 hours ago, PeteH said:

IMV. Deforestation, is/has been, a bigger threat to the planet all round. The Amazon Rain forest is allegedly only a fraction of what it was 100years ago. Same with huge area`s of Asia. And recent similar issues in the USA where put down to over-logging for building timber, of which a huge percentage of US homes are still constructed.

Pete

I agree, we've denuded large areas of the planet and this has to affect things. Locally I can drive for many miles across hills that were once forest but are now yellow grass and a few sheep dotted about. Sensible thing is of course to replant trees, but unless the land owners make large sums of money out of it - which they aren't at present, even with it lying idle - they won't allow it.

[Wagger]

Replanting trees is a good idea but they take ages to grow and start photosynthesising. We invested in a scheme some years ago that was 'Supposed' to produce Carbon Neutral fuel. Sadly, it was a scam and a Ponzi Scheme. Many much more educated than me bought into it, and it was highly praised on 'Trustpilot'. I switch off anything recommended by that now. Lost our investment and had to move house. Never again!

Beware!

[JohnD]

The scheme adopted by the Federation of British Historic Vehicle Clubs, Tree-V, may be more substantive, Wagger.   See: Tree-V Announces our Tree Planting Site | Federation of British Historic Vehicle Clubs (fbhvc.co.uk)

 

John

[chrishawley]

16 hours ago, JohnD said:

The scheme adopted by the Federation of British Historic Vehicle Clubs, Tree-V, may be more substantive, Wagger.   See: Tree-V Announces our Tree Planting Site | Federation of British Historic Vehicle Clubs (fbhvc.co.uk)

Now, that get's me curious. But before going off on one I suppose I should check out whether my suppositions are remotely correct (or possibly not!)

Let's say a youngish tree picks up 10kg/year as a very broad guesstimate. Then 1000 trees is roughly 10,000kg CO2 per year.

Petrol, let's say, produces about 10kg/gallon of CO2. So in that respect 1000 trees is 'worth' a 1000 gallons of fuel. On a yearly basis.

For a point of comparison let's say 1 ton of cement produces 1000kg of CO2. And that the UK uses up about 15 million tons of cement a year. So that would be 15,000 million tons CO2 or if Tarmac followed the FBHVC initiative would necessiate planting 1500 million trees per year.

Surely that has to be wrong??? For if so it makes 'offsetting-by-tree' look facile.

[PeteH]

Planting Trees. Nice to see them Grow, in fact quite satisfying as they mature. Promoting planting as a Way of offsetting carbon?. To my mind I am with Cris on that one, it`s a bit facile. However It dosent hurt anyone either. But to make a real impact. "WE" would need to replant the whole of South America, and Asia, as a start, along with huge tracts of North America and the anchient woodland(s) of Europe. I suspect?. Virtually all the North Yorks Moors, where I understand once forest?, along with huge tracts of other bits of the UK.

As an aside. When each of my Grandkids where born, I "harvested" Acorns on my dog walks, planted several and each time I got at least 3 or 4 sucesses. the best of which we planted where we Did the Self Build. The "oldest" of them is now a 15ft or more hight Oak, still in the garden of said build, although we moved out over 10 years ago now.

Pete

Edited February 22, 2023 by PeteH
Spellin!

[Steve P]

4 hours ago, chrishawley said:

Surely that has to be wrong??? For if so it makes 'offsetting-by-tree' look facile.

It is, re-planting forests would be a great idea, but it will not happen because as Colin says, there no money in it.(unless you run a tree planting carbon capture scheme).

The clamour for land and resources is exponential for the population increase, and economic growth of some areas of the earth, and that ain`t changing anytime soon. So put a little sticker on your planet killing classic, but don`t pretend it will make difference to the UK`s goose fart of emissions.

S

[Pete Lewis]

so is this starting a hedge fund 

Pete

[Colin Lindsay]

19 hours ago, Steve P said:

It is, re-planting forests would be a great idea, but it will not happen because as Colin says, there no money in it.

You only have to watch Car SOS to see the sort of Ulster people we're up against locally. Two episodes where they come over here only to leave empty handed. If someone here thinks there's money in something, you'll not get it for any less.

[Wagger]

I've been resisting this one for years. Surely the 'Elephant in the room' is too many rotten humans. Unfortunately it is a very controversial topic and I have no idea how it can be managed. People seem to want to bring more children into a World that is gong to punish them for life.

Way back in the time before Henry the 8th, the King was worried that forests were being depleted.

We have become too clever at survival, but will need to become even more so as a species. I won't post any more than this as it has got me into deep water long before now.

 

[68vitesse]

An even more dicey subject is pollution caused by pets, particularly dogs.

Regards

Paul.

[Casper]

and someone needs to tell FBVC that sycamore isn't a native tree.

C.