I love your handcrafted solutions, your winding machine is great 👍. And congratulations to your patience with so manylayers, which was rewarded by immediate success.
Cheers, it needed to be just good enough to do the job and no better, but I would definitely upgrade it a little if I was doing another coil. It was pretty satisfying to see such a good spark once it was done. I could definitely do it better if I started over again, and I'd be tempted to try the traditional insulation method using fabric, paper and shellac - I think that would seal it from the elements better and also hold the wires firmly, reducing the risk of vibrations causing it to fail.
@GrumpyTim Do you have any idea how much longer the paper shellac method might have taken? Probably, you could apply some layers of epoxy resins around the bobbin to seal it from the elements, or might that be not flexible enough?
@@radiogagag9352 Initially I thought it would take ages doing it with shellac and be very messy, hence I went for the self adhesive tape, but thinking about it now, I could have pre cut the fabric and paper strips, so there would just be a bit of extra time applying the liquid shellac. It probably would be messy though, and there might need to be a pause between layers as the alcohol evaporated from the shellac mix. It would be quite smelly in the room too. I could still do a shellac dip on the coil I made, but it's not like I'll be relying on the engine, if it conks out, it conks out and I fix it again.
To quieten it for shows you could try immersing the end off the exhaust in a tub of water. Some older engines actually used a water type muffler. Good job with rewinding the coil!
Cheers James, I've already made a second silencer to calm it down for shows, but I really like the bucket of water idea - I'll give that a try, that might come in handy on the next project (whatever that might be).
I've used that coil winder jig again since then - with a few tweaks, because on that occasion I was rewinding a coil for an old field telephone, which had been eaten by a severe battery leakage. I need to rewind the coil on one of my Petter engines - it runs ok, but the secondary coil measures as open circuit, so it's only a matter of time before it fails completely.
Cheers ohjajohh, it definitely was satisfying to finally get it running - they don't usually put up that much of a fight!!! It's sounding even better since I shot the video, because I've now made the additional silencer, so it chugs away very happily.
Good old Avo meter! I At college in the 80s we were next to the electrical engineering classrooms, they had shelves with about 100 of these things. When I worked for the same college some years later, I saw a lot of them in a skip, a real shame.
I think one of the issues for the Avo meters was probably the unavailability of one of the batteries - it uses a standard "D" cell for measuring low resistance, but then it has a 15 volt battery for the high scales and I don't think you can get those - I'm planning to design and 3D print a battery holder to carry 5 CR2032 batteries and slot that into mine. I also need to make a new battery terminal for the "D" cell because one must have rotted off in a previous "battery leakage disaster" and someone has replaced it with some copper, but the copper is just too bendy, so I'll remanufacture that out of brass and then we'll be as good as new. I've also got an older (1943) ammeter with external shunts from 1.5 amps to 450 amps - I'll probably display that with this set, assuming it's not likely to rain - those old meters are too good to leave out in the damp.
In an update to my last reply, I went looking for photos of the 15 volt battery to see what it looked like, only to find out that I actually can buy new ones, and also that there were two different types, a square one in the earlier meters and a round one in later meters - mine turns out to be a later meter and as I had already bought the CR2032 batteries, I simply taped 5 of them along with a suitable conductive spacer into a cylindrical form and now I can measure megaohms - yippee!!!!
Yeah, there must have been loads of stuff that we'd now think of as exciting and cool just thrown in skips when it was no longer needed - a time machine is definitely the answer, just think how much cool stuff you could come home with for free!!!!!
Nuff respect Tim, windertron mk2 is a true masterclass of bodgery. A nice fat juicy spark, agree the first layers of tape were less tidy, nice and neat at the end though, would you ever try with fabric and shellac after your tape experience? I can imagine it doing a better job of consolidating the coil and protecting from vibration/moisture ingress. Either way, this is a huge step in shed based technology and I'm very impressed.
We love a good old bit of bodgery, and after sorting the reel friction issue, it ran really well. I'd definitely try the shellac and paper method in the future, I think it would be far better, like you say, for keeping the wires stationary and sealing the whole thing from moisture. I need to rewind one of my Petter mags sometime so that might be a good candidate for trying out the traditional method. I definitely want to do another rewind while it's fresh in my mind.
I just think it looks better for the outro when there's no ribbon in there - you get to see a bit more of the action. It's one of those machines that I could just sit and watch for hours without getting bored, but maybe I'm just weird!!!
Cheers Ben, the coil winder was suitably rough and ready - it wouldn't do for me to actually engineer something good!!! I only got that AVO meter recently - I'm kind of amazed that you can get such a good piece of test equipment for comparatively little money. Just need to knock up a 15 volt battery for the high resistance testing and then it'll all be working as it should.
In an update since the last reply, I'd read somewhere that you couldn't get the 15 volt batteries for the AVO meters any more, but when I went searching, there they were, available to buy brand new on ebay - but I'd already bought some CR2032's for the job, and it turns out that my later version of the meter uses the round battery rather than the square one, so I've just taped together 5 of those along with some spacers and I now have a 15 volt battery and a meter that will measure megaohms or is that megohms, I'm never quite sure which is correct.
@@BensWorkshop I bought an old portable valve radio last year, started making a video but put it on pause until I had time to look a bit deeper into whatever was wrong (it wasn't the valves). Anyway, I went looking for the batteries and didn't track down either. I think there was a 3 volt one for the heaters, if I remember correctly, I hacked a 4 "D" cell battery holder so it was wired as 2 pairs in parallel. For the 90 volt one, I got 10 PP3s and bought 10 of the leaded battery connectors, and made up a little harness so they were wired in series - it was a bit scary connecting that lot up but it should do the trick when I get round to looking at the radio again. One thing I did find was that you can buy a power supply specifically for powering those old battery radios. I think I found a UK maker/seller on eBay.
@@GrumpyTim Interesting on the power supply. I have a home made one in a cupboard. I have many such radios. The heater for battery valves (D series valves) is 1.5V, not 3. Also the usual suspect tends to be the heptode mixer valve at the front end. (Primary part of the superhet circuit).
Today I enquired some engines and one of them is a set like this one. It spins over but its missing the cowling, air filter and the whole cage. And the control box looks to be messed up.
Well it's good that the set is now in safe hands with you Joseph, and you'll have it running again sometime. I've seen a fair few of these sets without the cage - I guess people took the cage off for easy access or because it had got damaged and then the tow were separated for good. The air filter, although the original is nice to have, any old air filter will do. It's not particularly pretty inside my control box, but it all works fine so I'm leaving it alone for the moment. The missing cowling is probably the biggest hassle - time consuming to fabricate a replacement, and probably the only way to get one would be to buy another engine complete with cowling. I look forward to seeing whatever engines you got today at some point, your videos are always interesting to watch.
Hi Joe, short of searching the usual vintage shows, flea markets, boot fairs and so on, I can't really think of anywhere specific for parts. Another RU-vidr, Engineliver1, went to a dealer who specialised in old military stuff and got some parts from them, so that might be your best bet - or head to militaria shows and the like.
