powerrabbit

Robert, there were quite a few implements/accessories for the 165, red plough with yellow plasic bodies, a trailed disc harrow with lever that lifted the discs, a 4 wheeled trailer with 'turntable' front axle on wire drawbar, a beast carrier which is a yellow trailer with drop-down rear ramp and green plastic/rubbery net cover for the top of the trailer and you could mix and match their other implements. There were several variants of the 165, one with front loader and scoop, (they never did one with the dung fork) one with an operating side mounted shape-saw and the tractor on it's own was also included in some of the farm sets.

I did manage eventually to order the booklet a couple of nights ago. The last episode to be screened was very interesting with the homing pigeons bit. I also thought that the 'black bread' left a little to be desired, nice bit of 'roughage' but I'm sure you would not be able to live on it. The bit on flax growing and turning it into fibre for parachute webbing and other strong cloth items for the War effort was very wrong in my oppinion, firstly, it was not a flax crop they were growing, nor was it flax that the 'POW's' were harvesting, it was linseed and you can't use the stems of linseed to make cloth of any type. Flax was and is not used for what they were doing, flax is used to make linnen, ask an Irishman. Hemp is what's used for what they were trying to demonstrate. The part with the War artist was also a bit of 'poetic license', War artists were more to do with the Great War, 1914-18 as in 1939-45 those that were 'employed' in this way were War reporters who would be seconded to batallions serving in the field carried cameras and notebooks, not easels and paint, in 1914-18 the War correspondents were more the artist types but their drawings were more of a propoganda nature to boost the morale 'back home' and usually depicted the 'better' side of War and not the horrors, that was their own private recording and would not be shown or come to light for many decades later, so they got all that wrong. Repeated tonight BBC2 17.00-18.00.

I find that after sanding down wood in these sort of projects, I do a bit on wooden clock cases, boxes and other 'treen' items that need a bit of reworking, using a very fine grade steel wool gives a very good smooth surface and then use a stain, repeating coats as the first coat usually soaks in a bit and subsequent coats will give a darker finish, then either let dry naturally or partially dry using a hair dryer and when the stain is dry apply a very thin coat of clear varnish with a very soft bristled brush, you don't get any visible brush marks then, and leave to dry for at least 3 days and then finish by applying a good wax furniture polish, like the old 'Mansion polish' and give it a good buff up with a soft lint free cotton cloth. A lot of older wooden articles were coated in 'shellack', I think that's how you spell it, this is a varnish with a stain in it and I think it's methalated spirit based so it drys very quickly. If you have a nice peice of furniture that's dirty, wiping it over with methalated spirits will clean it up and a good wax polish after brings it back to life. Polishing silver and glass I find that a creme polish, such as T-cut and its equivalents are best, non abrasive, also cleans and polishes brass and copper very well, if you have an old brass or copper item that's gone very tarnished and brown, again, very fine steel wool will clean it up, then polish it with the creme polish, you'd be surprised at the results.

If you look in the latest or up to date Ramsey's Guide Andy they should be listed there. I've just been looking in the 2002 edition, nothing listed there but in the 2006 'Model Price Guide', a thick paperback that is issued by the 'Diecast' Collectors' Magazine, they are listed as follows:- 8403 Spindrift Powerboat Team. Contains Ferrari & boat on trailer, helicopter, tractor & boat on trailer........£150 - 200. 8401 Wings Flying Club. Contains Land Rover & trailer, helicopter, Nipper aircraft, Lotus Elite.....................£150 - 200. 8400 Grand Prix Racing. Including Hesketh, Tyrrell, Land Rover, Fiat X1/9....................................................£150 - 200. 8402 Motorway Rescue. Including Police Jaguar XJ, Berliet break-down truck, Reault 5, Fiat X1/9..............£150 - 200 Numbers are the Corgi catalogue numbers. Prices may be out of date but still think you've got value there, nice find you lucky so-and-so.

I've only seen them in green/white and red/silver, both common. Was there an orange/white? Some implement colour variants described as 'rare' on eBay are normally ones out of the Britains sets and were normally not packaged in their own seperate box as an individual piece.

One of my dogs loves to be out in the garden late at night looking for toads, they seem to fascinate him, trouble is that toads don't taste very nice! Toads have glands on their skins, that's the bumpy lumps on their backs, that secrete a nasty bitter fluid, not that I've tasted a toad myself, but if an animal, such as a dog or a fox should lick it or attempt to bite it, the toad will secrete this nasty stuff, my dog never learns, he invariably ends up licking a toad and the result is, a dog with a grimmace, toungue in and out, foaming mouth and drooling uncontrolably.

For a moment when I first saw the title of this topic I thought it was going to be something 'politically incorrect'! There's been a lot of frogs and toads about this year being very wet. I don't have a pond but have a lot in my garden and there's been plenty of slugs to keep them nourished.

Speaking of school food, I can't recall much about the food served up at my primary school except that it was good and wholesome, cooked by a couple of local village women and served on china plates, non of these sectional plastic trays with everything dumped on them including 'pudding' like they do now, and we didn't have a choice, we had beef on Mondays, pork on Tuesdays and so-on. My secondary school meals however were a lot different, still no menu choice but the food seemed to be less interesting and not a lot of it and for a time, I was always hungry at the end of the school day. I used to take a container with me, 12 sandwiches, normally slices of meat and having to leave home at 7.30am to catch the scool bus needed a 'snack' at around 10oClock as that was my normal breakfast time, 3 sandwiches would be consumed at that time and 3 would be sold to other kids. Lunchtime was at 12.30, I would then eat 3 more sandwiches and sell the other 3 and with the money I made of my sandwiches I would also have a school dinner every day and still had a little money left over. 4.30pm was 'home time', on the bus and back to the village at 5.15 and then either on my bike or walk the mile home from the village, home to a roast dinner that my Mother always put back for me in the bottom oven of the stove.

Some of my widows still do! What really annoys me with todays society is the amount of wastage, food wase in particular. EU laws, supermarket 'sell by' dated foods and peoples eating habbits of today never existed back then, or even up until relavently recent times. Food was never wasted, anything that was getting a bit 'old' would have been made use of and any waste there was would be fed to the pigs, I remember right up until the early 1970's, an uncle of mine kept his pigs on the waste food from a nearby Country Hotel, drove the Morris Minor pickup to the delivery doors of the kitchens twice a day, loaded up about 4 bins of waste food, bones and all, took it back to the farm, lit the boiler and cooked it all up, not even allowed to do that now. My Father always said about food, 'as long as it was not starting to grow fur, it was still fit to eat. We never suffered any ill effects or even had a days illness, not like today, all these allergies and sicknesses people seem to suffer today!

I often wonder how people would cope with these sort of conditions nowadays, not to say that we should go back in time but the way things are going we very well could go there, not under those particular conditions and circumstances, surprising how you would adapt though if you had to, they did give a few families a taste of it in the series called 'back in time', that was another interesting series.

I think that in a War situation quite a lot of the ways that food could be stored and preserved came from these times as people 'experimented' with different processing ideas, they do say that 'necessety is the mother of invention'. I don't think that a series of tv programmes can really relay to people now exactly how it was in these times as you have to actually be there, be in that situation and experience the hardships first hand, to appreciate it you would need to know what it was like trying to keep warm in the dead of a snowy winter with a fuel ration, no electricity, rabbit stew, dried fish, salt beef, powdered egg and sharing a tin bath in front of the fire with the rest of the family, there were certainly more lean people around then.

You're not supposed to look at the programme with such a critical eye, I know that all of us do because we know about the things that 'shouldn't' be there and you're right, they should not, especially as the programme's intention is to portray reality and authenticity of the times and the equipment, or the lack of it available. I'm sure there will be other items that will be in the remaining programmes that should not be. Small square bales were about then but would have been very late on in the War and would have been baled by a belt driven baler and tied with wire. I wasn't aware of or heard any of my farming forebears of the time making silage, a process I believe that was discovered by pure accident.

I think, without going back into the link William, that these records come from the area Council records archive, If you go back to the link and look at the title it will say, in blue Ithink, where the rcords come from, if you find the offices in the region where these records are kept you can go to the offices and look through the records yourself, they will either be on microfiche or in the original ledger record books where you will also be able to see listings by year of all names and the addresses where they lived at that time, their professions, and who were living in the houses, all listed occupants.

This is where I got the information to roughly date the cake crusher William, if you read down the list the J. Every you mention is there also. http://steve.pickthall.users.btopenworld.com/ssx1867/lewes1867d.html

And finally, the cake crusher. This bit of kit has 2 cast aluminium rollers below the hopper which can be opened and closed, wider or narrower apart, by means of moving a small handle into a series of holes on a quadrant on the right front. The rollers are about 3" in diameter and have interlacing 'pyramid' spikes on them. I've never seen one of these before.

And here's the Ruston Hornsby PB.

Last week I was asked if I knew anyone that was into stationary engines as a friend of a friend was moving away and needed to sell some kit. This kit consisted of 2 engines and an engine driven (belt) crusher. I never really gave it another thought until another friend of mine mentioned the same kit so we popped out the road to take a look. On seeing what was on offer gave me food for thought so we went to see my other friend, who mentioned this kit to me in the first place and to cut a long story short, I bought it, it all had to go together. This is what I ended up with and I collected it and brought home yesterday. The first engine is a 1923 Lister model B, 5hp. This engine has not been running I don't think for a number of years as one of the valves is stuck and a few other bits need freeing up, the magnito needs sorting out but the engine turns over so it's not seized or stuck. The second engine, which was the one that I was most interested in, is a Ruston Hornsby model PB, 3hp. This engine is rare in these parts. It's a hopper water cooled horizontal and is a bit unusual having a Wico EK1 magnito fitted. There is a large suppliers brass plate attached to the engine, Drake & Fletcher. The previous owner has all the paperwork for it but has got to look it out for me so when I get that I should know more. The third bit of the kit is a linseed cake crusher, model OC1, made in 1867 by Cheale & Sons of Southover, Lewes in Sussex. Here's the Lister B. I'll post up the others seperateley.

Last nights episode was very interesting, liked the bits where they were making the new roof tiles and brewing the hooch at the same time and the engine driven saw to cut the logs to fuel the tile kiln. One little criticism, when they were re-enacting the 'decoy' fires, I don't think they would have been using wooden pallets in 1941.

Yes, funnels, not smoke stacks as in ships funnels or traction engines but funnels used to put liqiuids in receptacles like fuel in tanks and the like. Well, I thought that this may make an interesting topic as there are so many types, shapes and sizes. I don't collect them but at the local bootsale thismorning I could not resist buying this one for the princely sum of £2. Mde entirely of copper, apart from the hanging ring, it measures 5"1/2 across It has an air vent in the cone, notice how the bottom tube is slightly leaning to one side, I think there is a reason for this, it was originally made specifically for liquid that would froth when being poured into the container so the tube being like this would direct the liquid to the side of the vessel it was used to pour into to eliminate frothing. Also notice the 'flange' at the bottom of the cone, this flange fits perfectly over the top of bottles that have the same neck as wine bottles, This leads me to think that it was intended for filling bottles of either wine or perhaps cider. For its size I would think that it was for filling gallon and 1/2 gallon stone cider jars.

Here are pictures of the working model stationary engine I mentioned in another topic. As I said, I have not had it up and running but it could quite easily be fitted up. Petrol fueled, Wico magneto driven, water cooled and oil lubricated. I was told by the guy I bought it from that the long exhaust is needed as the engine exhaust pressure has to be in balance with the compression of the piston. The dog food tin will give you an idea of its size. I have had this engine now for nearly 20 years. I don't think it is a representation of an actual engine but is a wonderful bit of engineering.

I have an actual working one, well, when I say working, it will run but I've never had it running as there is no mounting for the fuel tank or a water cooling tank, those would have to be mounted on a seperate board. I'll dig it out, take some pictures of it and start the new topic later on.

A freind of a freind wanted to unload a couple of stationary engines back in the week, very close to me, so went to take a look at them to see if they were worth having. One is a 1923 Lister A, 5hp the other is a Ruston Hornsby PB 5hp horizontal engine. Both were running two years ago and have been barn stored since, all painted up and on trolleys but could do with cleaning up and a better coat of paint. The Ruston has a suppliers brass plate on it, Drake & Fletcher. The owner has all the paperwork for it but I haven't seen this yet. There is a cake crusher that comes with them as well, made somewhere in Scotland, can't remember the name on it. It's the cake crusher and the Ruston engine that I'm most interested in, I will probably move the Lister A on again. I'll be fetching it all home in the middle of the week. When there back I'll post up a new topic, I don't think we have one on stationary engines.

Yes Barry, the prototype is reserved and when all the photos have been taken for the release announcements and advertising it will be on its way to me. This will be the 7th David Brown model in the 1:16 scale range in my collection from G&M Originals, all but one being the prototype. I woiuld need another rather large cabinet to display all the David Brown models in my collection of all scales as to date they number around 58.

Yes, best one yet. Extremely heavy apparently.

Did you have any trouble ordering the booklet Bill? I've just tried to but after putting in my post code and clicking 'proceed' nothing happens, perhaps it's not working at the moment, I'll try again later.