A mechanical interlude.

In emergencies the washer can sometimes be turned over to present a new face, as the working face does wear out

Phil Collins

Graphite is really neat as a lubricant, lasts forever, only wears with actual use.

Adam Robinson

Sounds cool mate, throw us a link to your work.

Chris Talbot

I dig this stuff too. Since i started building lamps out of industrial scrap one of the things I've wanted to try is retrofitting a rotary switch into a valve spigot or faucet. Folks do it a lot and you can see the instructions on youtube, but I haven't tried it yet. Always good stuff here! (side note) Never knew that the middle part of the compression fitting was called an olive. Regardless I've always loved that shape and chose a titanium wedding band based on the same design. Not 100% certain how it wold work as a compression fitting...poorly i'd think. Still it's done it's job. ;)

Michael Thompson

Also, I like that Clive's nut-rounder has "Heavy Duty" stamped into the handle, it's a bit like those good old "Heavy Duty" chinesium carbon-zinc batteries you can buy for cents per unit, which die in minutes when you try to drag any decent current out of them. I wonder what the Canuck's torque-struct-o-matic would make of it? :D Incidentally, I had a 12"/300mm Chinesium-grade shifter that I bought for about 20 Aussie conch shells back around the year 2000... served me faithfully until just the other day when I lent it to a scaffold worker on the site... what scaffold worker doesn't have his own nut-fucker?! Anyway, sure enough he broke it, even after I told him it was a cheap piece of crap and wouldn't bear much abuse so please don't break it. FFS, I'm surrounded by meatheads sometimes.

Chris Talbot

Not a plumber, but I'd generically refer to those compression-fit parts as the "collar" and the "insert". I enjoy the "crossover video" moments when the interests of my various favourite creators align. Let's face it... we've all been using that old chestnut "water flow/pressure as electric current/voltage" analogy for years when trying to explain this stuff to laypeople. And the only thing better than burning your fingers trying to desolder components from a PCB is getting covered in grease and muck while trying to pull some recalcitrant mechanical component apart. "Tappy tap tap... aw fuck".

Chris Talbot

hehe. "Cock". hehehe.

Chris Talbot

Graphite-impregnated plastic seal maybe? As far as automated/manual, it's my impression that even before the era of CNC equipment a lot of mass-produced stuff was made by specialized milling or lathe machines that were designed for semi-automated manufacture of one type of part.

Jamie Magin

He said "stopcock" (giggle). We can't all be adults.