Glad you liked it, thank you! 


And here's today's example of old and new joined together - I just finished this at lunchtime. It's my parents old mantle clock which I think they were given as a wedding present, which would make it 1939. It hasn't worked since the early 1980s - and was pretty inaccurate throughout my childhood. I've now fitted a quartz movement, the particular skeleton movement I chose involved an interesting drilling job over the weekend cutting a dead straight and circular 130mm diameter hole!


Cheers,


Andy

  


P.S. I feel I should add that they threw it out in the late 1970s when Dad was given a carriage clock as a retirement present - I rescued it from the bin, took it with me to university and used it as long as I could, and was determined to get it working properly one day - did take me a while to get around to it!!!

Anyone feeling withdrawal symptoms after the end of the latest series of The Repair Shop might want to check out Salvage Hunters: The Restorers, which is currently running on Quest TV https://www.questtv.co.uk/salvage-hunters--the-restorers.  It's a spin-off from the Salvage Hunters series, and is an hour long (give or take a few adverts).

Yesterday I thought I'd better start my serious clear out of my workshop and various sheds (this is going to take months). One of the first things I threw out was an old washing machine motor that had been there for years. But I thought I'd keep the capacitor "just in case".


Tonight, the motor capacitor in our tumble dryer blew. And yes, it was 8uF


Sometimes life just works right  (If that capacitor had blown two days ago I probably wouldn't have even remembered that I had one!)

Its great to see this discussion topic still running.  

I started clearing out our shed last week and turned up quite a lot of stuff that can be recycled or redeployed elsewhere and had some great ideas for upcycling to make some items for the garden.  A few of items that will present interesting challenges are:

• Several pieces of microwave test gear 

• Radar jammer off the Ark Royal

• Equipment to test compasses on Lancasters 

My husband is a radio amateur and thinks he picked up the latter two items at a great little shop in Lincoln on Steep Hill that sells all manner of military and civlian radio/radar equipment.

Hi Deborah,


You've reminded me that at my mum's house I've still got a couple of valve signal generators and a huge valve Avometer (I left them there when I finally moved out in 1984!) If anyone, preferably near London, knows of a good home for them I'd be delighted to donate them.


Cheers,

Andy

The springy nozzle has a low-ish  thermal mass but more usefully and is a poorer conductor than an equivalent solid tube. This reduces the length of metal gas pipe needed before you are cool enough not to melt the plastic.

You find springy handles on oven doors and steam valves from a certain era too, and  the idea is the same, running cooler.

Thank you Mike, that makes sense. I was thinking in a completely different direction involving the gaps betwwen the coils allowing for premixing some air with the gas ?


Best regards

Roger

Here is an old 18 volt torch with an LED lamp retrofitted :)