Oct. 2017
Bluewater Bulletin
Bluewater Model Engineering Society Sarnia, Ontario
Vol. 33 No.1 October 2017 Editor John Lovegrove
Our next meeting will be on
November 13th, 2017 @ 7:30 pm
Northern Collegiate Cafeteria, Indian Road, Sarnia.
The October Meeting
This was our first meeting of the new season and in our new meeting room at "Northern"; the cafeteria. The layout of the tables is not ideal for our meetings and the room is not really as satisfactory generally as the one we previously had. I did go to the machine shop to make sure no one had gone there by mistake and found the class teacher sitting in the room catching up on some paperwork. I explained why I was there and he expressed some surprize that we had been moved out of the room. He promised to find out from the principal what had happened and phoned me back the next day to say that at some level there had been liability concerns about using the room. I have since been in contact with the Community use of Schools people and apparently there is a policy now in place whereby classrooms with "special equipment" should not be made available for use by outside groups. There is an appeals process so I am pursuing this and have submitted a request to allow us to use room 148 again.
The first meeting of the year is generally regarded as our AGM. Election/appointment of officers was discussed and there were no surprizes with Bruce Mannerow being returned as President, Nick Jonkman remains as Treasurer and I continue as Secretary/Newsletter Editor.
The Treasurer gave his report and although it is not our policy to record the bank balance in the newsletter, suffice it to say that we are still solvent (even more so after collection of "subs" for the coming year.)
Bruce let us know that he has a CD with all sorts of machining information that anyone is welcome to borrow. He also talked about a couple of Jo Pie videos: Modified chuck for thin materials. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3x8H1Xb-jg and why some setups give inaccurate results. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2WYJNI7KKg
Obtaining supplies for our hobby is a frequent subject for discussion: Don Eastman mentioned Mikro-Mark who are located in New Jersey. I had not heard of them before but they seem to carry a huge range of items for model making:
There were some comments about their prices being quite high but for difficult-to-get items this can be a secondary concern.
Bruce brought along a piece of tube that was used as a test piece for the rifling jig he has made for the barrel on his 18 pounder. The depth of rifling turned out to be rather inconsistent and he is not very satisfied with the result. He is now pondering what to do about the real barrel (he does not want to risk messing it up at this stage.)
Bruce also followed up on something he saw at Hobbyfest; mention of the Library running 3D printer sessions. When he checked he found that the sessions had been cancelled. Ed Spencer said had talked to someone who told him there were major reliability problems with these printers. (I wonder whether this applies just to the cheapie ones or the more expensive professional grade machines as well.)
There was some discussion about the Curta Calculator which was a drum type mechanical calculator developed in the 1930s. I remember using Facit and Muldivo mechanical calculators in my university years and what a pain they were. Thank goodness for modern electronic calculators and personal computers! Anyway, here is something about the Curta: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curta
I mentioned that I had been to the Great Dorset Steam Fair and a few other places of interest to model engineers while on vacation in the UK. I had burned a couple of CDs with a selection of the photographs I took and these are available for club members to peruse.
Show and Tell
Ed's engine Pics
Ed Spencer really is into locomotive production. Looking back at the June newsletter he had a new boiler for Sweet Pea, he now has a "haystack" type boiler and part of the chassis etc. for a Raritan. Again, he also brought along the former parts for the boiler.
Bruce continues to work on the chassis for his 4½" Howitzer. Putting in the 1/16" dia. rivets is still proving a painful exercise and the ratio of those successfully installed to those taken out of the package is still not good. (Apparently quite a few get dropped on the floor, never to be found again.)
Bruce also reminded us that his part-complete Raritan locomotive is still for sale.
Sale Items
Tom's muzzle Brakes
Tom Dunn continues to work on muzzle breaks and brought along a couple he has made along with some commercially available ones.
Kassey's Whatsit'
Occasionally we get one of those "what the heck is it" items. This time Kasey Schuilenberg brought one along and no-one really had any idea what it was. The best guess was some kind of wire or rope guide.
Stu Brownlow’s son Patrick wishes to sell his Model 200 Logan 10" x 24" lathe. It has a full set of change gears, quick change tool post and live centre. It runs on 220V. The asking price is $US1750. There is also some other tooling where he is open to negotiation. Patrick is located in Macomb (north Detroit.)
Meetings for the rest of the Season
2017
November 13th
December 11th
2018
January 8th
February 12th
March 19th (12th is March Break)
April 9th
May 14th
June 11th
Our Website
https://sites.google.com/site/bluewatermes/
The TSME Newsletters