ah found him
https://www.youtube.com/@Photonicinduction
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jinx
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My PhD and then working life for 15-20 years. Weâd probably have put some of it on Youtube if only it had been available back then.
Sandia have loaded at least one video though. This is the first shot of PBFA II
Itâs guff until about 1:40 then you can watch the control crew looking at screens and meters and, mentally, biting their fingernails. The bang happens at 3:53 (which is when they found out whether anyone left a spanner somewhere inside the machine, or made a mistake in any of the high-voltage tracking distance calculations - spoiler: they didnât).
I was in the building once when PBFA II was fired. It was loud. Very, very loud.
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He neednât have worried. It wasnât microsieverts. It was microsieverts per hour. He only ran it for a few seconds.
Sometimes units matter.
That said, I wouldnât necessarily have trusted an electronic device that close to a biggish air arc. It could just as easily have been being swamped by electromagnetic noise. I used to love these
No sensitive electronics at all. They were never affected by EM interference. They only mis-read if you dropped them and even then they failed safe.
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Nice Starrett DTI, 10mm range, 0.01mm graduations, movable tolerance markers, switchable magnetic base and single locking for the arms and all ball joints. .
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Nice piece of kit, what will you use that for?
For Land Rovers measuring runout probably just needs one calibrated in cm 
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Taper hub bearing end float, axle end float etc.
Just used it to set. 03mm end float, adjusted with shims, beats guesswork.
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Thanks to Miriamâs great idea to sort out an early birthday present i have been mainly in the shed sorting stuff out, another day should do it.
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Exciting? No. But very useful.
Finally bought myself a very straight edge, just shy of 460mm long (18 inches) and straight to 0.085mm per meter.
Made in the UK too.
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This here is a Dixon #900 graphite âTailors Crayonâ (merkins 
). Used for drawing curves freehand when drafting patterns. These days itâs like rocking horse shit. Iâm not sure when they stopped making it, eighties?
When I enrolled on an evening cutting class, at The London College of Fashion, I bought 2 x pieces of it. Flash forward 15 years and my then undercutter had lost one of them and broke the other.
A couple of years later, having finished his apprenticeship, the fucker then got himself a stash and wanted to charge me a fortune for a piece! I made him feel very guilty, got it for nothing but then some time later trapped it under a heavy iron and broke it! Fuck. I was forced to go back and negotiateâŚ
That was probably 15 years agoâŚ
Recently, I have been using it on little clips on Instagram, and every time I do, Iâll get messages. âWhere did you get that, how can I get some?â I send them to Ebay, where, if they are lucky enough to find some, itâll be 25-30 quid a piece, plus 25 quid postage from the U.S.
A couple of weeks ago, a mate of mine cracked and bought 2 pieces at this price. Then, another friend asked me if I knew where there was some, and because Iâd been looking at the auctions, I knew there was another bit on there, so sent him the link. I was just idly scrolling through the rest of the Dixon stuff on there, and I came across an auction for âDixon Tailorâs crayon box.â I flicked through the images and I could see that there were some black things in there in amongst sundry other colours and some cheap waxy shit. 12 dollars plus postage. Came to nearly 40 quid. I ummed and arred for a couple of hours but then in a fit of angsty, gotta find out, need it, want it fever, I bought it. Shit. Coulda wasted my dough⌠Felt dirty but excited.
2 days later in the middle of the night I got an email from ebay saying ârefundâ. Bollocks! I thought, I was right, there is some in there and the cunt has withdrawn the auction coz heâs discovered what it goes forâŚ
Not so! It turned out it was a refund on the postage, haha! I rolled over and drifted off into a deep contented sleep.
Yesterday, the box arrived. I opened it, and all you bitches need to know is that I am fuckin HOLDING!! 6 pieces and also 2 x pieces of the coloured stuff including a blue which I had wanted for a while. This coloured stuff is also expensive.
My mate who bought 2 pieces a couple of weeks ago is gutted, mostly because he saw the auction and assumed it was just for the box and didnât look at the images. 
A lifetime of worry has gone! No longer will I be nervous of losing, dropping, dropping something on it, etc, etc. Not only that. I get the pleasure of periodically taking each piece out of the box and caressing them individually!
Itâs the little thingsâŚ
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Hopefully you will be taunting them all on instagram for the next month
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Quite a haul. One happy 
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Whatâs the alternative for tailors who struggle to get hold of them?
Do you now have to spread them around a lot of different âsafeâ places to avoid a single-point failure (e.g. business premises fire) or do you sleep with them under your pillow knowing that if the alarms go off youâll just have to reach out for them ?
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AhâŚ
You ainât seen me, right?!
I do actually have a little planâŚ
I have a contact in the states who works in a factory in Rochester, NY State. He has a whole box of it! Heâs said that I can have it, but I have been trying to keep cool⌠If I get that, I can start selling it to young, needy people who want every litte edge to make themselves feel professionalâŚ
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There is actually an art product called Art Graf Tailors Shape. Portuguese I think. Its a bit softer and water soluble. Itâs not quite as good and it doesnât keep itâs edge so you go through it quickly, sharpening it regularly. Still about tenner a throw, so not cheap!
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Absolutely fascinated by this. There was a similar thing that happened in the world of university mathematics a while back when the go to Japanese factory for making chalk announced they were stopping production. Absolute flurry of purchasing from mathematicians. Itâs about the only area of university work where chalk and chalk boards is still the absolute gold standard.
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Pattern cutting in the traditional sense has more or less gone. Itâs all done on computers now. This is one of reasons why the majority of tailored clothing is shit. Everything is a version of something else. No one starts from scratch, and follows process. They have made chips so long, theyâve forgotten what potatoes look like.
So there is very little need for the supporting industries to make stuff. So much of American clothing manufacturing went to Central America, I think, that the graphite was early to go, even before the advert of sophisticated pattern cutting systems.
It is the best tool for the job. Although, a bit of standard tailorâs chalk, soaked in sewing machine oil for a month, then left in sawdust for a further month, is much cheaper and works well.
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Cartel the chalk market!
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