Yorkshire fittings are fine, but they have two major drawbacks.
One is that if you leave the heat on them too long, all the solder will run out and the joints will leak.
The other is that they cost three times as much as fittings ordinaire. That’s okay if you are sellin’ 'em or only using a few, but as a savvy Yorkshireman or if you are doing a major plumbing installation, it would be far cheaper to learn to use dry fittings with flux paste, and decent solder.
Tha can allus tell a Yorkshireman, but tha can’t tell 'im much.
Yes Yorkshire Fittings are expensive Fruitcake, and I have used them in the past, but I always flux the joints and run a spot of solder around even though it’s already supplied. On my last job (tidying up all the pipes after we had a new combi boiler fitted and replacing the old back boiler) I used the standard fittings because I was happier with the joints, and the price…
It wasn’t that the plummer did a bad job, but to save time and money he patched the system together to make it work while doing the least possible alterations. That was never going to please this fussy, fastidious, engineer…
As soon as the name ‘Yorkshire’ was mentioned, it rang a bell. It’s the type of joint Wilco’s are likely to sell if it not wanting to go to a plumbers merchant or B&Q. OK for a ‘one-off’ DIY job.
I’ve always given both types of joint a good amount of flux …and put a small sheet of asbestos behind the pipe …and had some water handy.
Yep, that’s what I do Mart. Although when I was mending the fence along the drive last summer I had just ground some screws off with the angle grinder. I went to turn the grinder off and put it down, and when I came back the fence was going up in flames…:shock:
It was a good job I had a bottle of drinking water to hand…
In one place we were in, we hired a plumber to put the central heating in. He’d pulled up a section of the upstairs floorboards and I was close by when the blowtorch caught some wood shavings under the floorboards alight. He tried to reach them but drew his hand back because they were near to where the pipe joint was and it was still dripping solder.
Without hesitating, I plunged my hand past the joint, grabbed the burning wood shavings and pulled them out. I heard the skin sizzle as my hand rubbed by the pipe joint. A nasty burn on my hand for a week or two but the day was saved. Surprising what can be done when needs be.
Work continues on the Metal Detector with construction of the enclosure. After working out the dimensions I marked out and cut the joints. It might take a bit longer but I prefer to make all my enclosures and speaker boxes this way…
I then made a jig to compress the joints after glueing to make sure they seated correctly.
And after twenty four hours you end up with this…
While the glue was curing on the enclosure I set about cutting and machining three circles out of MDF for the search coil.
Thanks JB, I appreciate it…
Time has never been important to me while doing something that I enjoy…I used to love the skill and dedication of the old engineers who worked tirelessly on the old steam locomotives. The days when labour was cheap certainly brought out the inventiveness and devotion to detail that is sometimes lost today. One of the reasons I love your glasswork JB, you can see the love in the construction…
Yes, I believe that they were up hours before daybreak in order to get the things properly fired up in time to set off on their journey.
I remember watching programmes about those historical steam railways which still run now and again for paying passengers. I keep thinking about going on one one day.
I can recommend the North Yorks Moors Railway from Pickering to Grosmont JB, Steam trains in the summer and some of the best scenery Yorkshire has to offer.
If you’re feeling energetic you can walk one way (20 miles) and take the train back. It’s called the ‘Newtondale Trail’ and you get a badge… I’ve done it a couple of times, and would be willing to accompany you…
I like your attention to detail, and like you, I would rather make something myself than buy new.
When I was working it was all about getting the job done as soon as possible. The company gradually bought in more and more “stuff” rather than make it from scratch.
Now I’m retired it doesn’t matter how long a project takes. I would rather spend an hour cutting a block of wood down to size, or taking days to glue layers together to build something up to the right thickness before I can cut it to shape.
So how is the metal detector coming along? I hear you ask…
I had to make a slight change of direction with the search coil. As with most of my projects, I have to make it up as I go along, some ideas work and others don’t. Unfortunately, making the search coil body using 3 disks of 6mm MDF resulted in the 18mm thick body far too robust to work, and too heavy to be wafted about over the terrain for an hour or two.
So after a new design I ended up with this…The wound coil is supported by a single piece of 6mm MDF and sandwiched between two disks of hardboard and then as much material as possible removed to make it nice and light.
It also occurred to me that the old coil I made for a previous detector might also work on this detector, so once I have installed the electronics into the enclosure that I made earlier I’ll give it a try. This search coil is smaller than the recommended one I wound for the mark 2 model, but it might be more sensitive.
Or recovered items…
