CHERTSEY

BOATS, BRIDGES, BOILERS ... IF IT'S GOT RIVETS, I'M RIVETTED
... feminist, atheist, autistic academic and historic narrowboater ...
Likes snooker, beer, tea, rivets and solitude, and is strangely fascinated by the cinema organ.
And there might be something about railways.
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Friday, 12 March 2010

An interesting thread

Jim told me a while ago that he was going to make me up a special toolbox for Chertsey. Well, here it is. Actually, it turns out it's not really a special toolbox just for me (just as well given that I can't lift it), but is in fact all the AF spanners he has collected over the years, brought together in one place. Together with some very nice Snap-On ratchets and things that I've had my eye on for a while (just needed something to use them on).

Whilst it's very nice to be able to reel off words like Whitworth and BSW, and UNF and UNC, and snort at metric, and I had some idea of what it all referred to, I didn't really know what was what until I spent a happy hour browsing various spanner and thread (and British fastenings, how lovely) sites this morning, and now I'm pretty sure I could hold my own in most beginners to intermediate nut and bolt type conversations, and I bet I now know more than most girls, at the very least. It's nice knowing obscure things. Things like this have a language and a poetry all their own.
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9 comments:

  1. Anonymous12 March 2010 at 22:57

    Snap On sockets not ratchets or at least not yet as I can't find my 1/2" drive Snap ON ratchet but I will :)

    PB

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  2. Blossom12 March 2010 at 23:29

    Sorry Jim'
    The Ancient Order of the Fellowship of the Great Architect in the Sky, find you guilty of betrayal to the ancient art of Engineering and teaching a member of the fair sex words like Whitworth and BSF and
    UNF or UNC is unforgivable, I am afraid this amounts to almost blaspheme for there can be no end to it, before we know where we are the wench will be demanding equal rights and a vote! (only joking, honest Sarah) but Sarah do tell me what is the shiny silvery tool on top of the red handled side cutters at the left hand end of the top drawer of your tool box, and what type of threaded fastener do you tighten/loosen with it?

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  3. Simon12 March 2010 at 23:48

    ha - at first I thought you meant the junior hacksaw, very useful for 'undoing' old bolts... ;-)

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  4. Anonymous13 March 2010 at 08:32

    Ha, is Blossom trying to catch you out Sarah :-)
    A woman and tools is a scarey prospect to most men :-)))
    Julie

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  5. Anonymous13 March 2010 at 09:42

    Sorry about the tatty old box - I took Sarah's for my Whitworth spanners on Warrior. I am not afraid at all, it is just that she refuses to keep them tidy:))))) or at least a tidy that I understand.

    PB

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  6. Blossom13 March 2010 at 12:44

    Yes Jim I know exactly what you mean about 'tidy'. As far as the 'tatty tool box' is concerned, I had not noticed but I'm sure that when you bring Chertsey up to Kings Bromley the tool box could undergo a make over with roses on the lids if you wanted me to! not that that would improve the "everything has a place and everything in it's place" but at least it would look tidy with the lids shut. (Sarah's being far too quiet in all this for my liking, I am now getting quite twitchy as I was expecting quite an 'active' response from her :-)

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  7. Sarah13 March 2010 at 13:32

    Aha. I am not responsible for the contents and of course I eschew shiny adjustable things even if they are Snap-On ones and it will be dispatched forthwith (I can never get the hang of making those things work anyway) although I have been promised some slip jointed pliers, ahem.

    As for tidy, well that is a bit of an in-joke going back many years to when I first knew Jim and was helping him work on a wonderful Bedford CF camper we had, and he would call out to me, as a surgeon to his scrub nurse, 10mm!! and I would have to try to find it in an enormous box full of assorted spanners all filthy and oily and in many cases rusty, and when I had eventually scraped enough grime off one to ascertain that it was the correct size and hand it over, he'd say not that one, that's a shit one, get me a Snap-On one... So I tidied this spanner box, and cleaned the spanners and put them in order (I was young and naive) and within a month of course they were back to their original state.

    I've only been quiet because my internet connection was playing up.

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  8. Anonymous14 March 2010 at 16:15

    It would not have been 10mm btw, the CF was AF and as you well know there is no similarity between 10mm and AF. The shiney thing is an AF Vise Grip :), I have some MOles but they are metric.
    PB

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  9. Sarah14 March 2010 at 16:53

    Had I but known then what I know now.

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