Of photos, necks, chiropractors and MS Paint.

[Patrick Chadwick]

If enough of you guys are interested, I'll assemble them all together as a single "sticky" thread within the "Gunsmithing" forum .

Oh yes please, PLEASE, PLEASE !

Just one snag! I now feel obliged to scan the Rigby treatise - and don't know how to scan a book! I have a scanner and digital camera. The trouble with a flat-bed scanner is that you either press it hard down on the glass and break the spine of the book (120 years old!) or have a fuzzy section on the edge of each page closest to the binding. Usually a bit of both. On the other hand, I could photograph each page individually and dowload the photos into the computer.

The scanning or photographing is not the problem. In both cases, the question is (assuming that my software has the facility to generate PDF files integrated somewhere): How do you concatenate the 100-plus individual page files into one document?

BTW. As we are leaving in a week to give "the Antipodes" a good inspection - a once in a lifetime holiday - do not expect to see any results before May!

[Patrick Chadwick]

In case anyone wonders why I am so nuts about threads, then try refurbishing old percussion and BP revolvers - replacing springs is a matter of course, but it is the threaded parts that screw you! If you have an almost complete set of, say, "Chinese Whitworth"**, then there is a paragraph in Murphy's Law stating that the die you need is the only one of of the set that you have not got.

**I do actually have a couple of Chinese (or Japanese?) marked dies. The one stamped 5.5mm x 0.9 puzzled me until I worked out that it is a dead-ringer for 12-28. If anyone could tell me what on earth 5mm x 0.9 is good for, I would be delighted.

[Bruce_in_Oz]

Ping me a message if you are heading to South-East Queensland.

[Bruce_in_Oz]

Odd threads in Asia?

The Japanese navy was modeled very closely on the Royal Navy, right down to uniforms, equipment, drill and "traditions".

Their army, however, followed (up to a point) the German model. Then again, the type 38 Arisakas are full of "imperial" threads, including the breech thread. Type 99s are metric. What fun, changing ammo AND metrology in the middle of a war!

Thus Japanese Navy had things like machine-guns that were chambered for a dead-ringer for the .303 cartridge. Thus, THREE different 7.7mm cartridges across the services; rimmed, semi-rimmed and rimless.

Not only did the IJN adopt a lot of British stuff, but the Japanese ship-building industry adopted British practice, right down to the smallest nuts and bolts; Japanese marine engineering was still using Whitworth threads at least until the late 1970s. I don't recall a succession of Japanese-built ships sinking just because they contained "British" threads. (I'm sure there were other factors involved between 1942 and 1945). If it's not broken, don't fix it!

[Badger]

Ok, I've created a thread with the editions we were able to locate and published it here..

Machinery’s Reference Series (early 1900's)

Regards,
Doug

[jmoore]

Hey JM, that's a very nice example of the Mechanical Engineering Handbook you have there! But maybe not as old as my copy of Machinery's Handbook. - which is where I obtain up-to-date information on screw threads for my rifles. At least it was up-to-date when they were made!

Happy to induce a serious techie thread drift whilst away from computers for ten days or so. Yup, that one is earlier than my earliest Machinery's Handbook. BTW, there's some books on steam other odd subjects squirreled away in the shelves. Including a tome on aircraft construction dated around 1912 or so, I think.