Hello

[eifion]

I spend some of my spare time (when not walking our dog, gardening etc) making pieces of round metal into smaller round pieces and piles of dwarf........

[Jon]

Hi eifion - welcome to HomemadeTools.net

What's next up on your build list? Let me know and I'll post some links for you.

[eifion]

Hi Jon,

Humbug! Just spotted an error in my first post. SWARF not dwarf. Ye gods I hate spool chucker!!!

Much mischief in my playpen. Model boats to start, one to finish. RC aeroplanes to pre-flight and fly. A small collection of old model aeroplane engines to sort and cull. The remainder (mostly sparkies) to be fettled and mounted for display.

Then there is the secret engine project on the bench. It's secret just in case it turns into a desk ornament...... Also made a few 'tools' to hopefully make project building a little easier. Oh, and the secret project is on hold whilst I work out how to fit a DRO to my little lathe bed and mod a digital caliper to act as a DRO on the cross-slide.

One very large stalled project that needs a serious bump start.

Damnit - spool chucker at it again. Good job I re-read the post. Ooooh!!!!!!

[Jon]

Sounds like you'll fit in well here. Try these links for ideas:

Homemade Engine Tools - HomemadeTools.net
Homemade Model Making Tools - HomemadeTools.net
Homemade Tools: DRO - HomemadeTools.net

[eifion]

HiJon,

Gosh! Thank you for the links. Had a quick look and found my thunder has been stolen! I made a polisher out of a tired electric toothbrush and somebody has posted one already. Ho-hum. Might take some piccies and create some blurb and post it one cold winter's evening when the house is warm and the playpen COLD. Wading through all the tools should keep me quiet for a while.....

Take care

Eifion

[Jon]

Don't forget that the "original" person who made that invention was likely inspired by someone else too.

[mklotz]

I'm reminded of Charles Duell...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Holland_Duell

who was dumb enough to say that everything had already been invented. In a sense, he was on to something, but too dumb to understand that refinement is invention as is combining already invented elements to form new entities.

On another note... Spell checkers can never catch errors that do not form a non-word, e.g. "dwarf". Auto-correctors, the demented children of spell checkers, can only work when they learn to understand written text; don't hold your breath.

Ultimately, there is just no substitute for proofreading.

[Jon]

that refinement is invention as is combining already invented elements to form new entities.

We see a similar dynamic frequently in DIY forums. People are often very careful to credit the single previous inventor as the original person who first came up with the idea. In fact the idea, and its numerous incarnations, is often decades, hundreds, or even thousands of years old.

[eifion]

Being of ancient British ancestry (Welsh) I was brought up Welsh speaking. My next comment may cause some raised eyebrows. Each letter in the Welsh alphabet has a sound that IS the sound of that letter. OK there are mutations, genders and local dialect that can make it confusing for 'foreigners'!!! An example in English, the letter 'c' used in cat and race!!!! I can still remember a severe rebuke I received in a school English lesson. I was reading aloud some book and came to 'Mr Buzzfuzz'. My logical Welsh brain said BUZZFUZZ. The English teacher then verbally slapped me down with "Oh no it is pronounced BOWFUZZ." Fifty odd years on I still can't see the logic in that pronunciation.

"Sadly as a result of stress caused by the idiosyncrasies of English English compounded by American English my Spool Chucker has had a nervous breakdown and is on sick leave. Owing to the economic climate I have been forced to put Proof Reader on a three day week and to add insult to injury it was one of his non-working days when I posted 'swarf'. And after I hit Return at the end of this post I'm going to take Predictive Text outside and give him a damned good thrashing.......

Then I'm going out into my playpen to modify another digital caliper to use as a DRO on the cross slide of my little lathe.

[mklotz]

I'm reminded of G. B. Shaw who pointed out that, in English, "fish" could be spelled "ghoti"...

'gh' from "enough"
'o' from "women"
'ti' from "nation"

English has the largest vocabulary of all the languages. James Nicoll said it well...

The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.

While this larceny of words provides the advantage of permitting us to say in a single word what requires phrases in other languages, it has the disadvantage of saddling us with the spelling and pronunciation peculiarities of the language from which we stole it.