The Home Machinist!

We always used the same steam cylinder oil we were using in the mechanical lubricator.

This is why you have the small scales, you get future long term members hook, line and sinker:
I think kids are somewhat intimidated by the larger scales. These, as Chip and Dale expressed in "Donald Duck's Toy Train", are just their size.

I was working at a facility manufacturing a product from an aluminum/magnesium alloy. One of the processes was a turning operation that used kerosene as a cutting fluid, with vacuum evacuation of the chips to a 20 yard dumpster outside. All well and good until a guy welding on the roof let a few spa...

Pretty sure Howard Gorin here on the forum is still selling these in kit form.

When I took a community college machining course in the 1980's they used Machine Tool Practices, ISBN 0-471-04331. It's got an intro to the controls and capabilities of each type of machine typically found in a shop, measurement, and basic setups. But it's really not going to teach you many of the t...

My Taiwanese EISEN has two zerks and two oil cups on the variable speed head housing. The manual definitely specifies grease for the zerks. My old Burke Millrite had zerks on the table which were clearly feeding the ways, and that type of thing is where it wants way lube but gets accidentally grease...

There's gonna be arithmetic?

I do mine in low light but not in the dark, I'd have to get organized to do that. Probably light my pants on fire or something.

I'm sorry to hear that Anthony, it sounds like Murphy's Law at work but thank you for the update. The presentation and packaging is beautiful too, it's a shame but I am still going to put mine on a loco and get it dirty!

When the flux (I too use black) dries out in the container as it will, just add a little water to it and stir it up. I find sneaking up on the melting point and then removing heat as soon as it completely flows helps, overheating is a bad thing. If you do try the cadmium-bearing, I'd do it outside a...

Good find Jeff. I see they also list 1/32 x 1/4 brass round head rivets which might be interesting to the small scale crowd.

This software has no lettering so each letter/number had to be drawn as a mechanical part. One way to avoid this is to do the lettering in another product like Inkscape, which is free and supports saves in svg/dxf. Import the 2d, scale it, position it, extrude it and then combine/merge it. You stil...