Ed Poore

There's a name I hadn't seen in a while. My hydraulic press was made by Tangye but the chap I bought it off did some digging and thinks it was an old victorian screw press before being converted to hydraulic. Certainly like Brunel built it, four 3" AF nuts holding the head onto the base via two 6ftish forged solid 4" columns.

Surely you want the one with the longest shelf life Nige because by the time you actually find time to use it most would have rotted away to nothing.

@geoffbeaumont I'm being a bit thick - are you after something for the roof or something for the walls? It's worth having a hunt around in the local area for sawmills etc. (as an example) because sometimes you can be pleasantly surprised. When I built a stable last summer I naively assumed that given I have a trade account with two local builders merchants (and they at least say that I get a good discount because in the three years I've been here I've put a substantial sum through them). Rough indications when planning / pricing up was that the studwork / ply kick-boards was going to be ~£1k, ship-lap or feather-edge cladding about £2k and then about £1k for the box-profile sheets for the roof (for a 6x4.4m stable). Got quotes with the local builders merchants and they knocked stuff down to ~£700 for the studwork & ply, the cladding was going to be ~£1.5k and the anti-con roof sheets (from National Cladding in Ammanford) was £900ish. Anyway for a bit of a punt I phoned Pete Gregor who runs a small sawmill in the village and he popped up to have a quick look and quoted £900 to supply 3/4" Douglas Fir cladding (about 9-12" wide) dropped off. To say I bit his hand off was an understatement, cheaper than the bog standard carp stuff from the builders merchant and far superior quality cut to order. He even cut some 2x2" lengths to trim the corners and joints. Moral of the story - don't forget the small guys... He even dropped up two bulk bags of sawdust today for bedding, bunged him a few quid for bringing it up - he did say it was FOC if we'd collected but as I knew he had a transit tipper and Merlo at the yard I was expecting him to just dump a bucket or two in the back rather than bag it all up. Anyway a picture of the finished article. And yes I know that's a 6t tractor trailer behind the Range Rover - I'd normally have moved it with the JCB but it's poorly at the moment. The little New Holland 1220 tractor did sterling work extracting it initially but even with the missus standing on the front-weights it was still pulling wheelies so something a bit more substantial was required. The RR lost out because it had a lower tow bar than the Defender but did make light work of moving the trailer for a deep clean of the stable yesterday.

He's fine. Sent him a text and just had a reply back. Just very busy with work and kitchen, just about managing to find time to sleep. Said normal service should be resumed shortly.

I'm almost the opposite @elbekko used AutoCAD from back in the days when it was still on DOS and moved across to Inventor (full blown version of Fusion). My previous job we had Solidworks and I could just about manage it but I found it quite unintuitive coming from Autodesk products. I remember discussing with the chap who was our main CAD guy (he ironically also came from Autodesk) and at the time there were things back then that Inventor had been doing for years that Solidworks still couldn't do. The one that sprung to mind was translational constraints (at least that's what I called them). For example I could model a hydraulic cylinder, model a digger using that cylinder and then directly whilst editing the model move the boom and so on with it being constrained by the hydraulic rams. There was nothing close to that in Solidworks and the package we were using was about 5 years newer than the version of Inventor I was using. By the time I was leaving the company it had been added to Solidworks but it took a long time. I guess it's down to what you're used to. For me the way of constrain things felt backwards in Solidworks but I think they overhauled it after I had any heavy involvement with it

Assuming it's the car that flipped looks like the wheel / hub assembly snapped off.

Since it's a LR forum and we're not known to overbuild things... Air con pump onto the LR engine - pressure and volume, sure thing for blowing up the kayak and then you don't need to worry about it anymore

Or just swap it for one of these instead and then you don't have the faff... (PS dogs and inflatable stuff don't mix very well...)

Could you not do something like what I did last week (albeit for the workshop compressor), I removed the standard tyre valve clip from the inflator and replaced it with a PCL female end. The clip then had a male end threaded onto it so now I can swap "tools" downstream of the tyre inflator. The use case for me was that I needed to pressurise (under control) a TDV8 air suspension bag I was replacing. The upside is now if I want to blow up a tyre I simply clip in the tyre valve thingy to the end of it, if I need something else then I can do that (in this instance I have a little pig-tale which has a 1/4" PCL fitting to 6mm push-fit connector that's suitable for the RR air-lines. So get a standard "T-Max" style compressor but cut off the end and put a proper tyre pressure gauge / inflator onto the end of it. I'm quite happy with the digital one I got and it was about a tenner from Amazon I think.

Can you split the journey up - get it from within France to somewhere near Calais, then worry about the crossing, then do the UK portion separately. I'm fairly sure their normal rules are not to go outside the UK but it might be worth phoning CLH Trailers in St Clears and seeing whether they can offer any advice or options? It may be that their insurance doesn't allow it so it's a non starter but it may be a policy thing that they might waive for an additional fee. With the way trailer prices and demand are at the moment it is likely an option to buy one, do the job and sell it on for a profit. The danger is you realise how useful it is and don't sell it.

Those were both bargains. I got my triple bank of elliot pillar drills and table for £150 and the donkey saw got chucked in for the same again but not a shaper. Bandsaw was £100 that was a bargain even if I did have to fetch it from Essex.

Bring it down to Summer Sisters and I'm sure I can make use of it. There no drawbar on this one so I need to make one, currently bought some ISO40 tooling but many other things getting in the way currently.

Ah but then you'd have probably snuck off with the G. Dufour mill instead then (sitting back corner next to the press). Bigger capacity than the Bridgeport and better suited to your garage because of the lower height . Also has 40 taper tooling so makes the Bridgeport tooling look like toys. Power feed on all axis too.

I've got a nice spot for one in the workshop...

Thinking about it I did something similar lifting the last big bale of straw into the stable. Timber frames and the bale goes onto a mezzanine and I lifted off the wall plate and roof accidentally. Slung a strap over it and pulled it back down with the JCB and put a few more nails in it.

Surely @Stellaghost has the capabilities to lift the roof of his garage in situ.

More tomorrow's project now but we got the loader arms up out of the way this afternoon. And yes the RR is currently legless, it's air suspension met with an angry grinder in the workshop today, bush on top is seized on so having to cut delicately through so as not to trash a £600+ strut. New bag arriving tomorrow at the local parts place so hopefully I can get the old one off without too much damage to get this back together. Oh and more importantly investigate what the hell's happened to the Perkins engine in the JCB, I'm missing that already (well all of this week, last week didn't count because we were in Spain).

Only another 100 miles or so... Anyway do you think we've successfully distracted Mike from his head issues (the one attached to his neck is a lost cause).

If you aren't planning on dismantling it Stephen then I'd highly recommend flipping the head upside down onto the bed. Makes the centre of gravity much much lower. If you want to remove it a large vice on the knee and using the knee to lower it help massively.

Going to bring it down? 😇

You'd be amazed at how little they can actually lift officially. I think it'll hold about 2t max in the bucket at full reach and it'll be lifting it's arse up with that. Admittedly the bucket weighs something similar. When you consider my JCB will lift 2t to 14ft and is only 5.5t (without buckets). To be fair there's always one or two machines at Ben's yard, I've tried to get him to leave one with me instead of the yard but it hasn't happened yet.

Alas despite having a lot of space two JCB's are just excessive for me when between the neighbours within 2 miles there's four tele handlers, at least four loader tractors, 2 more backhoes, a 24t, 21t, 2x13t, 5t, 2.7t and 1.8t Komatsu 360s. Got one in the back garden for the 6x6 . Unfortunately to put said HIAB onto the 6x6 (even if it was finished) would necessitate the JCB. Chicken and egg scenario. I've got some big box section so may just buy a UC beam and make a gantry crane. Will always be helpful.

If its any consolation Mike I think the JCB has just done it's head gasket. Just be thankful you don't have two 40mm steel plates either side of the engine blocking access... Not sure my engine crane is tall enough to get that out so it's going to be a call to a neighbour to see if we can lift the loader arms out the way to make things easier.

Everyone needs to be getting on @Jon W's case he sourced me a set of new 285 KM3s for about half the price they're retailing for.

You're not doing something silly like torquing from memory because you've done it so often and actually cocked up the torque settings. Since its all apart I'd be checking the block and head for flatness at the very minimum. Duck oil is also good for finding tiny cracks that you can't see.