Recent content by dutchgray

I own two cordless Makita SDS drills. One Is the smallest and lightest they do in 18v and the other is the big twin battery one they have been making for years, both excellent tools in their own way.

Who here has the factory Bridgeport draw bar wrench with the bend in it, makes reaching by hand easier. The open end is a smaller size and fits the smaller nuts on the table power feed trips, which are really the only thing on a Bridgeport that you need to adjust regularly that isn't 3/4"

For employees to use in a shop, corded, good ones like German made Metabo or Fein or the higher end Makita ones. If your employees are the types that push tools really hard all the time than going cheap and keeping a bunch of new ones in stock may work out cheaper over all, Hitachi used to make...

Im looking at getting the Fein one that takes Bosch 18v batteries, not bought it yet so no first hand knowledge but it looks like i will be buying one soon.

I would expect the galvanise to wear through pretty quickly if you didn't paint it, all the cold rolled sections i have ever worked with are very lightly galvanised so I would think painting is a must, maybe a grippy truck bed lining type of surface in a suitable colour.

I picked up this "Metabo" cordless drill recently at a car boot sale, had to have it even though I have no real need for it.

I didn't mean flex, I meant permanent bending. Of the full sized flat bars, the only ones that have held up have been Vaughan. I have tried (or people I work with have tried), Hultafors, Roughneck, Estwing, Stanley, all those are not good enough. I should dig out my small hultafors bar and...

Unfortunately they are not very durable if you put them under any real load, you can permanently deform them very easily. The full size version snapped across the nail pulling hole on me.

I often see "expired" cut off or grinding discs at the car boot sales we have over here, (think flea market, estate sales, auto jumbles all rolled into one thing) not allowed to use them at work because of "health and safety" but never had a problem with using any at home as long as it's only a...

Oil stones just wipe off the excess oil, water stones, just leave to dry except my real course grit stone which is kept in a small plastic box submerged in water, I change the water when I use it, don't let it freeze, been fine for 15 years stored like that.

Stanley Fatmax, you can get them easily in the UK, fully metric, on the top and bottom of the tape blade

On the hacksaw front, the only ones I have ever been able to cut straight with are the old fashioned ones with the round wooden handles inline with the blade, they are not at all ergonomic so are quite uncomfortable to use but they work for me. Also if you get one that can take 10" blades, those...

Irwin ruined "Jack" in short order when they purchased them, back in the 90's they were pretty much the only handsaw brand you would find for sale in the UK and almost every carpenter used them, now Irwin did improve the plastic handle but they changed the tooth profile from a simple triangle...

Estwing makes loads of them at 16" long, the 22oz, 24oz, 28oz and 30oz, I'm not sure if they do a long version of the 20oz. There's also a 25oz cali framer style head which is 18" long, which imo is best avoided and they really should do a shorter version of it.

Doing it with the broach is definitely expensive in tooling, it should be cheap in machining time because it should be a quick set up and one single operation to go from a raw casting to the finished slide cavity. On old Records the lower running surfaces on the body of the vice are all...