"Dave Plowman (News)" through a haze of senile
flatulence wrote in message ...
In article ,
Roger wrote:
Lord Hall, you lack knowledge me son. The in-line 6 is perfect for
balance. On a flat you put in extra crank balancers. A far better car
when a flat is in it.

I don't go along with Dave about the flat 4 being particularly poor.

I never said that.

You did.

** sip senility **

"Andy Hall" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 19 Nov 2005 12:46:58 -0000, "Doctor Drivel"
wrote:

Wickes are now selling the Draper ratchet pipe cutter for £15. This is
very
useful indeed and well worth having.

Item 12 he

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/...0227305-153323
6

Presumably because it can be fitted around a pipe in a corner? I can
see some value in that.

I have one. Work well.

I like to use a little Rothenburger miniature cutter that I've had for
a while to do these kind of jobs

And as mentioned on another thread, the Monument 15 and 22mm olive puller
at
around £20. This is very new on the market.
http://www.monument-tools.com/whatsnewv2.htm

Interesting. I've had a Monument pipe cutter for donkey's years.
Solid and simple and I like being able to get spare cutters easily.

I have had one for more than donkey's years.

Their product code 2645T on the same page is quite good as well...

Better is : BES No: 11629 I have one. V Good for toy pipes.

"David" wrote in message
...
In article ews.net,
Doctor Drivel writes

"Andy Hall" aka Matt wrote in message
.. .
On Fri, 18 Nov 2005 10:57:12 -0000, "Doctor Drivel"
wrote:


"Matt" aka Lord Hall wrote in message
news On Fri, 18 Nov 2005 00:04:46 +0000, Steve Firth

wrote:

Doctor Drivel wrote:

Prat Clarkson said that becasue it is not a Ferrari. Note: all
the
stars
have them, inc me.

The only star you resemble is the one my cat shows when she walks
out
of
the room.

LOL

That's a keyboard, a tea bag and a slurp of milk you owe me!

Lord Hall, please keep your mind on Makitas. This does you no good.

Even you have to admit that that was a pretty good response to your
delusion of grandeur......

Matt, it was not. I am a class act.

That almost a spoonerism

Bertie, you know you have to behave.

On Sat, 19 Nov 2005 15:50:24 +0000, Andy Dingley
wrote:

On Sat, 19 Nov 2005 13:15:22 +0000, Andy Hall wrote:

However, their No. 4 Smooth Plane and No. 5 Jack Plane ($300) are a
pleasure to use. I think they are worth every penny.

I don't. Bronze is a problem for corrosion and dark stains on wood, if
you have a damp climate and workshop.

Agreed, which is why I have the steel ones. However, I don't have a
damp workshop either.... I do have one of the little low angle
block planes, though, and haven't had any trouble with that in terms
of corrosion or staining.

Also there are a large nunber of
good options for a #4 for much less money (Veritas, old Stanley - my
"users" are all Sweethearts).

I'll buy a Lie-Nielsen if it's the only option available (a #140
perhaps), but I wouldn't go overboard on something where there are other
makers around. They are good though.

Mmm. THe 140 does seem a bit interesting in terms of function.



The #112 is an excellent plane. I usually use a L-N here because my
original Stanley one is a real dog. The handle arrangeent makes it much
more useful than a #12.

Didn't see that one. Do you think that it would be a better option
than the 85 that I mentioned earlier?


--

..andy

On Sat, 19 Nov 2005 17:29:44 +0000, Andy Hall wrote:

The #112 is an excellent plane. I usually use a L-N here because my
original Stanley one is a real dog. The handle arrangeent makes it much
more useful than a #12.

Didn't see that one. Do you think that it would be a better option
than the 85 that I mentioned earlier?

Probably. I've never really seen the point to an #85 or #87,
particularly the #85. I use mine for finishing great big tabletops, so
the bigger the better.

I think Veritas have recently started offering one too.

In article ews.net,
Doctor Drivel wrote:
I don't go along with Dave about the flat 4 being particularly poor.

I never said that.

You did.

Yet another example of your inability to comprehend simple English. Ask
your nurse to explain it to you with your cocoa.

--
*Reality is the illusion that occurs due to the lack of alcohol *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

"Dave Plowman (News)" through a haze of senile
flatulence wrote in message ...
In article ews.net,

Doctor Drivel wrote:
I don't go along with Dave about the flat 4 being particularly poor.

I never said that.

You did.

Yet another

You did.

** snip senile drivel **

"Andy Hall" aka Matt wrote in message
...
On Sat, 19 Nov 2005 20:15:19 -0000, "Doctor Drivel"
wrote:


"Dave Plowman (News)" through a haze of senile
flatulence wrote in message ...
In article ews.net,

Doctor Drivel wrote:
I don't go along with Dave about the flat 4 being particularly
poor.

I never said that.

You did.

Yet another

You did.

I understand that Milton Keynes Theatre is doing Snow White and the
Seven Dwarves this year......

Matt, is that your local?

Apparently they don't have anyone to play Dopey as yet, so perhaps you
could consider applying.

Is this Wokingham wit? Please give advanced warning.

"Roger" wrote in message
k...
The message
from John Cartmell contains these words:

Your criticisms would have more weight if you distinguished between an
exaggeration and a lie.

:-)

Now how much do people pay for BMWs in order to be 10th on any list - and
so
far (some would say nowhere!) behind Skodas? ;-)

You don't need to buy new you know.

I find it curious that Skoda does so much better than the rest of the
VAG range all of which are listed below BMW. They are all VWs under the
skin and assembly is only a small part of the process. Badge shouldn't
make such a big difference unless (as others have suggested) Skoda
drivers really are more easily satisfied.


I can only speak from experience, but a few years ago I had a VW Passat
Turbo diesel. It was the worst car I have ever owned as far as reliability
goes. A friend of ours is a dedicated Skoda man to my knowledge he has never
had any problems with the last 2 Octavias he's owned and I wouldn't say he's
the type that would be easily satisfied.

It is often claimed that a BMW is a drivers car (well it is rear wheel
drive) and discerning drivers are undoubtedly going to be more critical
than those for who a car is a minor means to an end and the cheaper the
better.

Never owned a BMW, but from my past experience with German cars, I don't
think they are what they're cracked up to be. I will stick with Honda, the
previous one was 2 years old when I sold it, and the one I have now will be
2 years old in March 2006, neither have ever had even the slightest problem.

Roger wrote:

I find it curious that Skoda does so much better than the rest of the
VAG range all of which are listed below BMW. They are all VWs under the
skin and assembly is only a small part of the process. Badge shouldn't
make such a big difference unless (as others have suggested) Skoda
drivers really are more easily satisfied.

Therea re two ways of looking at it I suppose. The first must come down
to expectation management. If you buy a skoda - a car the in recent
history had a butt of jokes type reputation, it is quite easy for it to
far exceed your expectations and hence give you a very good "feel good"
factor about it simply by being a "good enough" modern car.

If you buy a top of the range prestige car and you fully expect it to be
first class in every respect, the you are likely to be far less tolerent
of any (even minor) faults or annoyances. This will be reflected in the
opinion you give about it.

It is often claimed that a BMW is a drivers car (well it is rear wheel
drive) and discerning drivers are undoubtedly going to be more critical
than those for who a car is a minor means to an end and the cheaper the
better.

True.

There is also a technical aspect with regards reliability. Many groups
of cars are based on the same chasis platform even when they apparently
come from unrelated badges. This is partly down to group ownership of
marques, but also joint development ventures between manufacurers.

VAG make basically the same model of car under several badges. So the
Skoda of today has little or no mechanical heritage that was brought in
from the original marque and is basically a VW/Audi. However in cases
like this there will often be certain features of a chassis platform
that are only available for a subset of the badges. Where these features
are have a particular affinity with good or poor reliability they will
skew the results for the brand.

There was a good example of this a few years back where the Seat version
of the Ford Galaxy and VW Sharron had notably better reliability than
the others, even though the cars were nominally identical and came from
the same factory. Closer investigation however revealed that Seat did
not market a VR6 engined version, but Ford and VW did. It was this model
that dragged down the average reliability results for the model but
obviously not for Seat.


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

In article ,
John Rumm wrote:
Therea re two ways of looking at it I suppose. The first must come down
to expectation management. If you buy a skoda - a car the in recent
history had a butt of jokes type reputation, it is quite easy for it to
far exceed your expectations and hence give you a very good "feel good"
factor about it simply by being a "good enough" modern car.

If you buy a top of the range prestige car and you fully expect it to be
first class in every respect, the you are likely to be far less tolerent
of any (even minor) faults or annoyances. This will be reflected in the
opinion you give about it.

Very true. I'd dismiss anecdotal evidence but would like to see a proper
survey that would expand the evidence from one place of employment where for a
period of about 2 years every new car owner has had their car off the road for
engine problems for up to a week - with one exception. The Skoda owner.

So does such a survey exist? Not cost of repairs or dissatisfaction - but a
simple "has the car had to go back to the garage for non-accident repair
within the first three years?".

--
John Cartmell john@ followed by finnybank.com 0845 006 8822
Qercus magazine FAX +44 (0)8700-519-527 www.finnybank.com
Qercus - the best guide to RISC OS computing

"John Rumm" wrote in message
...
Roger wrote:

I find it curious that Skoda does so much better than the rest of the
VAG range all of which are listed below BMW. They are all VWs under the
skin and assembly is only a small part of the process. Badge shouldn't
make such a big difference unless (as others have suggested) Skoda
drivers really are more easily satisfied.

Therea re two ways of looking at it I suppose. The first must come down
to expectation management. If you buy a skoda - a car the in recent
history had a butt of jokes type reputation, it is quite easy for it to
far exceed your expectations and hence give you a very good "feel good"
factor about it simply by being a "good enough" modern car.

If you buy a top of the range prestige car and you fully expect it to be
first class in every respect, the you are likely to be far less tolerent
of any (even minor) faults or annoyances. This will be reflected in the
opinion you give about it.

It is often claimed that a BMW is a drivers car (well it is rear wheel
drive) and discerning drivers are undoubtedly going to be more critical
than those for who a car is a minor means to an end and the cheaper the
better.

True.

There is also a technical aspect with regards reliability. Many groups
of cars are based on the same chasis platform even when they apparently
come from unrelated badges. This is partly down to group ownership of
marques, but also joint development ventures between manufacurers.

VAG make basically the same model of car under several badges. So the
Skoda of today has little or no mechanical heritage that was brought in
from the original marque and is basically a VW/Audi.

The Czechs screw them together better.

Andy Hall wrote:

re Arbortech AS160, rest snipped

I'd rent one first and form an opinion before considering buying.
Certainly it did do the claimed thing of cutting (e.g. breeze block)
without shooting clouds of fine dust everywhere.

Thanks Andy and also Grunff for your comments. Renting isn't likely to
be a possibility for us around here. I have found and contacted the
French distributor so we'll see what they say. It's not something we
would buy without seeing it in action first. If the concept is good and
the tool becomes popular I guess other manufacturers might soon come up
with something similar.

--
Holly, in France
Holiday Home in Dordogne
http://la-plaine.chez.tiscali.fr/

In article ,
John Cartmell wrote:
So does such a survey exist? Not cost of repairs or dissatisfaction -
but a simple "has the car had to go back to the garage for non-accident
repair within the first three years?".

The annual Which survey gives such details - if you read the whole thing
rather than just the generally published headlines. The part of it which
is of real interest (to me) is whether you'd recommend your car to a
friend. And this seems very independant of actual reliability. After all,
it's possible to have a supremely reliable car that you just hate
driving...

But I'd be most surprised if *nothing* went wrong on any car in 3 years
and say 35,000 miles. Of course, many slight faults will be left until the
next service. And what may be a slight 'fault' to some ignored by others.

There's a real problem with surveys. Getting a good cross section of car
users.

--
*Out of my mind. Back in five minutes.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On Sun, 20 Nov 2005 15:09:28 +0100, "Holly, in France"
wrote:

Andy Hall wrote:

re Arbortech AS160, rest snipped

I'd rent one first and form an opinion before considering buying.
Certainly it did do the claimed thing of cutting (e.g. breeze block)
without shooting clouds of fine dust everywhere.

Thanks Andy and also Grunff for your comments. Renting isn't likely to
be a possibility for us around here. I have found and contacted the
French distributor so we'll see what they say. It's not something we
would buy without seeing it in action first. If the concept is good and
the tool becomes popular I guess other manufacturers might soon come up
with something similar.

Aren't there tool rental places in France, or is it just your area? I
would have thought that Bordeaux was large enough to have this?

To put a scale on it, though, I'd consider buying one if I were
doing a complete house renovation including all chasing etc and
exterior work. Probably not for less.


--

..andy

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

But I'd be most surprised if *nothing* went wrong on any car in 3
years and say 35,000 miles. Of course, many slight faults will be
left until the next service. And what may be a slight 'fault' to some
ignored by others.

We had a Toyota Carina and then an Avensis, both company cars, both
lasted 3 years, did more miles than that and AFAIR not a single thing
went wrong with either of them.
--
Holly, in France
Holiday Home in Dordogne
http://la-plaine.chez.tiscali.fr/

"Andy Hall" aka Matt wrote in message
...
On Sun, 20 Nov 2005 15:09:28 +0100, "Holly, in France"
wrote:

Andy Hall wrote:

re Arbortech AS160, rest snipped

I'd rent one first and form an opinion before considering buying.
Certainly it did do the claimed thing of cutting (e.g. breeze block)
without shooting clouds of fine dust everywhere.

Thanks Andy and also Grunff for your comments. Renting isn't likely to
be a possibility for us around here. I have found and contacted the
French distributor so we'll see what they say. It's not something we
would buy without seeing it in action first. If the concept is good and
the tool becomes popular I guess other manufacturers might soon come up
with something similar.

Aren't there tool rental places in France, or is it just your area? I
would have thought that Bordeaux was large enough to have this?

To put a scale on it, though, I'd consider buying one if I were
doing a complete house renovation including all chasing etc and
exterior work. Probably not for less.

You can always sell these things on afterwards and recoup much of the cost.

In article ,
Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
John Cartmell wrote:
So does such a survey exist? Not cost of repairs or dissatisfaction -
but a simple "has the car had to go back to the garage for non-accident
repair within the first three years?".

The annual Which survey gives such details - if you read the whole thing
rather than just the generally published headlines. The part of it which
is of real interest (to me) is whether you'd recommend your car to a
friend. And this seems very independant of actual reliability. After all,
it's possible to have a supremely reliable car that you just hate
driving...

But I'd be most surprised if *nothing* went wrong on any car in 3 years
and say 35,000 miles. Of course, many slight faults will be left until the
next service. And what may be a slight 'fault' to some ignored by others.

There's a real problem with surveys. Getting a good cross section of car
users.

I'd say that any fault that stopped you getting from A to B or required the
car to be in dock for more than a day at a chosen date (ie booked service) or
cost you more than a service, should be counted as a major fault. And you
shouldn't get any in your first year.

--
John Cartmell john@ followed by finnybank.com 0845 006 8822
Qercus magazine FAX +44 (0)8700-519-527 www.finnybank.com
Qercus - the best guide to RISC OS computing

In article ,
John Cartmell wrote:
I'd say that any fault that stopped you getting from A to B or required
the car to be in dock for more than a day at a chosen date (ie booked
service) or cost you more than a service, should be counted as a major
fault. And you shouldn't get any in your first year.

I'd expect rather longer than that - three years at least.

But of course how long any fault takes to fix is often down to the dealer
- and most are just simply dreadful.

--
*Stable Relationships Are For Horses. *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

In article ,
Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
John Cartmell wrote:
I'd say that any fault that stopped you getting from A to B or required
the car to be in dock for more than a day at a chosen date (ie booked
service) or cost you more than a service, should be counted as a major
fault. And you shouldn't get any in your first year.

I'd expect rather longer than that - three years at least.

I don't know how that version escaped. I'm sure I wrote three years! ;-)

But of course how long any fault takes to fix is often down to the dealer
- and most are just simply dreadful.

Choose your own if it's better but the main dealer is part of the vehicle
quality.

--
John Cartmell john@ followed by finnybank.com 0845 006 8822
Qercus magazine FAX +44 (0)8700-519-527 www.finnybank.com
Qercus - the best guide to RISC OS computing