Made Simple – Made Easy

March 19, 2011

“A selection of gadgets to assist the Model Engineer” by H. Maurice Turnbull

This book was first published last year and is a large format booklet style publication of just 50 or so pages with a good clear selection of photographs of the tools created by Maurice Turnbull in his years making model engines etc.

The book comprises of three sections; devices for the lathe, for the milling machine and “other things”. There are 13 chapters on making devices and the 14th chapter is a selection of models that Maurice made with his tools. Each of the projects is quite small and even I could probably produce them in a spare weekend. Maurice quotes “I generally like to work on the principle that a gadget should not take much more time to make than it will save when in use”.

I would describe this book as being for an intermediate engineer in that it is assumed that you can turn and mill and that the topics are more advanced such as dividing, graduating, taper turning. However the projects do describe the construction steps in detail and there are drawings for several of the projects as well as extensive photographs. These are items/ideas to be adapted for your own workshop rather than necessarily specific to one make of lathe or mill.

Made Simple – Made Easy is published by Camden Miniature Steam Services, a company better known for republishing old books from the late 1800s, early 1900s on the topic of steam, machining, casting, trams, metal forming and the like. However they do publish a small selection of their own books.

There are previews of the book on the publishers website. http://www.camdenmin.co.uk/made-simple-made-easy-p-2863.html

I tracked down a couple of Maurice’s articles, in Model Engineer’s Workshop.

No. 8 Page 28 – H M Turnbull makes his own Keats angle plate
No. 19 Page 45 – Dividing computer program (not in this book)
No. 54 Page 12 – A steady setting device, with other uses
No. 59 Page 49 – Super slow modified drive

I would recommend this book, if like myself there was a particular item you were specifically looking for. You should also find the rest of the book a quite enjoyable read. However I would be negligent not to point out that there are several other similar books in the workshop practice series if you are simply looking for a tooling project to make.

By Andy from Workshopshed One Comment

  Posted in: Books and Magazine Reviews, Mechanical Gadgets, Projects Tags: Jig, Tools