Table of contents for December 2025 in Model Engineer & Workshop

MMEX 2025 Once again, the Midlands Model Engineering Exhibition was a great success. I'd like to thank everyone involved, but particularly the speakers at our well-a… ended series of talks. One particular pleasure was presenting the Stevenson Trophy to Dave Sanderson; Dave knew John well and, like me, has great memories of dropping into John's workshop to put the world to rights over a hot cuppa. FUTURE CONTENT I was at the show for all four days and met many readers, and I got a very strong message – one that reflected that from our recent poll. Readers want more concise practical articles in the magazine; it doesn't matter if they are tooling, techniques or models, but it's clear that people want more articles that inspire them to get into…

Chester Open Week Chester Machine Tools are pleased to announce their forthcoming Hobby Open Week this December. Get your Christmas treats in early with their Open Week this December 8th - 12th, with plenty of great deals to be found, including free gift cards for the first 100 customers! It's a great opportunity to see their latest range of machines in store. Visit us this December 8th - 12th, 9am - 4:30pm at Hawarden Industrial Park, Clwyd Close, Hawarden, CH5 3PZ. What Three Words: ///ever. launch.page. For more details contact our Chester on: sales@chesterhobbystore.com or 01244 531631. National Hamfest 2025 National Hamfest 2025, the Radio Society of Great Britain's major annual event took place on 5 and 6 September 2025 at George Stephenson Hall, in Newark, Nottinghamshire. As ever, the…

These articles by Geometer (Ian Bradley) were written seventy years ago. While they contain much good advice; they also contain references to things that may be out of date or describe practices or materials that we would not use today either because much better ways are available of for safety reasons. These articles are offered for their historic interest and because they may inspire more modern approaches as well as reminding us how our hobby was practisced in the past. GEOMETER describes repairs and replacements for the more common types of liquid pump IN THE various types of pumps desribed in the previous issue, many of the faults which arise can be corrected without difficulty. The simple “lift” water pump, and others of similar design, may occasionally require a new…

The body of the cooling water valve was described in the previous part, now it needs a plug and an operating handle. This and the exhaust valve are shown in fig. 54. It turned out that ½” free-cutting stainless-steel stock was just the right size to be a sliding fit in the D-bitted hole in the body, on assembly a very thin layer of grease was enough to seal it. The stock was set to run true in a Griptru chuck and the shaft for the handle turned and threaded on the end. At the same se ing the groove for a BS012 O-ring was turned, photo 358, then the part moved to the dividing head on the mill to form the square for the handle, photo 359. The last…

Over recent years there has been much development in the way industry goes about design and manufacture with the advent of CAD, CAM, CNC, 3D Printing, etc and as these technologies become more easily available to the hobby machinist they are likely to become an everyday item particularly as the older generation are replaced by a newer one more familiar with computers and electronics. In this pair of articles I will try to give an idea of how they can be used in the home workshop be it for model or other related hobby use. I don't intend to go into great depth but just give some practical examples of their use so there won't be any description of how to use a particular CAD package, 100s of lines of…

My journey into lathes started with simple projects consisting of basic turning and drilling, gaining skills shaping and sharpening HSS tool bits, learning about speeds and feeds to create a suitable finish. All the while seeing new projects and techniques appearing in MEW magazine and reading as many books on machining as I could find. Jobs requiring threads started to appear, so I initially purchased taps and button dies to use in the lathe. Bu on dies can quickly cut a short thread but are prone to result in wonky drunken threads on longer sections, even when fitted in a tailstock tapping holder. The next subject to learn would be screwcutting, forming threads on the lathe using the change gears. This article describes my lathe's progression into the world of…

As a child I was given three presents which began a lifelong interest in science, invention and technology: these were the Philips Electronic Engineer kit, a water rocket and a tinplate replica of Antoni Van Leeuwenhoek's 17th Century microscope. I still have the Philips kit which contains all the components and instructions needed to build transistor radios, buzzers, light detectors and other gadgets. Meanwhile, the rocket provided limitless fun juggling pressures and water volumes to achieve maximum altitude. I even added a parachute! Although each of these toys was exciting, the Van Leeuwenhoek microscope stood out by revealing the wriggling micro-life present in ponds and sea water. Inspired by this memory I decided to recreate a modern version of the instrument using 3D design software and printing. Hopefully the Dutchman…

First, a reminder the dimension tables for different sized jigs are downloadable from the Model Engineer Forum with the series in Model Engineer by David Earnshaw, which gives an excellent explanation of Coventry die heads at h ps://tinyurl. com/yryx6msh or use the QRcode). The jigs, starting from the ¼” – 5/16” appear to be scaled up to the next size by very, very roughly 2:3 - maybe, this relates to accommodating the actual combined width of a stacked set of chasers along with their height that are to be sharpened in it. chasers vary in height inversely as to thread size - the smaller the thread cut the taller the chasers for that size of die-head. The ¼” chasers are not very thick and the 1” are about three times…

Good day all, I have a couple of items before we start, in the Sheffield Auctions, there were several live steam models, a vertical, estimated £50-120, a beam £150/250, and a horizontal, £150/250, all in brass; many penknives mostly by Stan Shaw, est. up to £700 each, and several tasty cameras, mostly Leica and Nikon, and accessories. In Paul Tiney's article, Home Foundry Work (ME&W No 4769) he refers to Fred Camm, and ‘Camm's Comics’. As Fred edited his last issue in 1959, is it not time to abandon the term? Fred did a wonderful job of guiding Practical Wireless through the post war years and it is still a major part of the electronics and Amateur Radio hobby. In this issue, astronomy, chocaholics, Begging the question, attacked by a…

PostBag is one of the most popular sections of the magazine - readers want to hear from you! Drop us a line sharing your advice, questions or opinions. Why not send us a picture of your latest workshop creation, or that strange tool you found in a boot sale? Email your contributions to meweditor@mortons.co.uk. PRACTICAL MECCANO Hello Neil, some months ago (april) you published the poster of the AMS Amateure Modellbau Switzerland about their 40 year anniversary exhibition in MEW. Recently I got their Club magazine where a lot of great Meccano models were shown built by their members. I got in contact with one of the participants, Mr. Peter Sullivan, because he showed a wonderful Tube Amplifier and Turntable built in Meccano that, according to the builder, Peter Sullivan,…

We have £30 in gift vouchers courtesy of engineering suppliers Chester Machine Tools for each month's ‘Top Tip’. Email your workshop tips to meweditor@mortons.co.uk marking them ‘Readers Tips’, and you could be a winner. Try to keep your tip to no more than 400 words and a picture or drawing. Don't forget to include your address! Every month we'll choose a winner for the Tip of the Month and they will win £30 in gift vouchers from Chester Machine Tools. Visit www.chesterhobbystore.com to plan how to spend yours! TAILSTOCK RELEASE TOOL WITH COMFORTABLE HANDLE Our tip winner this month is John Barber who decided to make a dedicated for loosening items in the tailstock: Rather than continue using whatever random piece of bar came to hand, I decided to make…

I've started so I'll finish. I decided that as I had started the boiler, I had better finish it off. Now we are into the silver soldering there are things which you need to know to make life easier. For a start, it is a great advantage if you can make a start on the backplate. I used Silverflo 24 for this little exercise to make sure that nothing moved while I was doing the rest of the silver soldering. I used low melting point silver solder for everything else and that works fine for me. I made up a steel plate with a bend in it to silver solder the studs in position for mounting the plate on it for the two lots of gauges, left and right-hand side.…

This third look at the platework covers the tanks and top covers. On the full size the tanks were welded assemblies, and I must say were not very neatly done, so it's easy to end up with a more presentable (but non prototypical) job than the GWR. There are fourteen laser cut parts as tabulated below plus some hand cut bits and pieces and some bits of angle needed. The side view and half-plan is fig. 69. The two cross beams on top of the tanks, with their short-leg ‘T’ section, are an easy start that used to be rather tricky to make a good job of. Laser cutting has transformed this. The parts are fairly obvious, being the two different legs for the ‘Ts’, with their taper ends and…

2025 EVERY SUNDAY Warrington MES Running day. Contact: contact@wdmes.org.uk Wakefield SMEE Public running day. Contact Denis Halstead 01924 457690 NOVEMBER 9 Stafford & District MES Steam up, County Showground, Stafford, 10:00 am. See www.sdmes.co.uk or Facebook. 16 Tiverton & District MES Running day at Worthy Moor Track. www.tiver-tonmodelengineering.org.uk/contact 18 Nottingham SMEE Peter Harris, Railway Tunnels. nsmee.org.uk/events/ 21 Rochdale SMEE Models competition night. Castleton Community Centre, 19:00. See www.face-book.com/Rochdale- ModelEngineers 29 Gauge 1 Yorkshire Group Running day at Drax Power Station social club, 9:30 - 15:30. Contact secretary@gauge1north.org.uk DECEMBER 7 Guildford MES Public open day, Stoke Park. Contact: Mike Sleigh, pr@gmes.org.uk or see www.gmes.org.uk 7 Stafford & District MES Steam up, County Showground, Stafford, 10:00 am. See www.sdmes.co.uk or Facebook. 14 Guildford MES Small Model Steam Engine Group meeting, 14:00-17:00, Stoke…

LittleLEC is the locomotive efficiency driving competition for small locomotives weighing 50lbs or under, devised by the late Peter Langridge who was a member of the Guildford Model Engineering Society as a companion to the larger IMLEC competitions. LittleLEC spotlights those small designs that were once the introduction to the hobby for many but now eclipsed by larger models capable of greater distances and speed. Locomotives are run around a track completing as many laps as possible within 20 minutes, the amount of coal used is recorded and efficiency calculated from this coupled with the weight of the engine, trailing load, track gradients and distance. The locomotive driven the most efficiently being the winner. A new venue this year, the Tiverton & District Model Engineering Society, hosted the competition on…