Screwing around (Was: Multimeter recomendations

[Jules Richardson]

Tony Duell wrote:
>> The new generation didn't have Erector sets as kids (the snap-together
>> plastic stuff without a plug-in motor don't count)
> 
> Kids these days :-)
> 
> I mentioned some months hack that I got my first electic shock before I 
> was 2 years old. By finding a screwdriver and unscrewing a wall socket to 
> see how it was wired. So I guess I learnt early ;-)

I was very young when I got my first burn from a soldering iron (not by 
soldering - I had some kind of plastic version of Meccano and decided that the 
soldering iron would be the perfect way to "drill" some more useful bolt holes 
through some of the beams). Earliest AC-mains shock I remember for sure wasn't 
until I was about nine (I decided to grab hold of a transformer that was still 
plugged in - it hurt).

re. toys like that though, I'm not sure if the problem is that kids today 
don't like them - or that they don't get the chance to find out because 
parents don't buy them and companies don't make/market them.

> I've seen left-handed taps and dies on sale. And of course it's easy to 
> cut a left-hand thread on a lathe. But I have never seen LH nuts an bolts 
> listed by any company in the UK. But I've not seriously looked for them.

The regulator in my air compressor uses a LH thread - I'm not sure if all 
compressors are like that or not. When it eventually gives up completely (the 
threads on the associated brass nut are pretty chewed up) I'll convert it all 
to RH parts I think (or plumb in a different regulator, but I can't get 
off-the-shelf parts that "just fit").

cheers

Jules