Old Bike Mart Magazine January 2014 Back Issue

Happy New Year! Yes 2014 will be here when you’re reading this, though there is a chance it will still be Christmas. In any case, all the best from all of us here at OBM, that’s Tracey the designer, Jo, Lee and Ben
on advertising, Mike Worthington-Williams, David Davies, Steve Cooper, Mick Payne and Charlie Waters without whose contribution OBM would be the poorer and me.
Christmas is a time of peaceful reflection, or riotous excitement, depending on the age of those in the household and their reaction to the lad in red’s dishing out of presents. In my case this meant Santa struck a contra deal with the other occupant of the house so, into the living room came a sideboard while The Basement received a small model engineer’s type lathe – a Hobbymat MD65 to be precise.
In true recycling form this useful bit of kit had been residing in the boiler room of a house near me for years. While it is quite an old version, it is still in excellent condition and ready for action... or it will be once we locate the manual. I know it’s supposedly a ‘man thing’ to treat any handbook or instructions with disdain, looking down one’s nose with a haughty expression as if to say ‘instructions? Me? Hah!’ However, there’s a reason for instructions, be they for flat packed furniture or a machine tool that can cause injury if you forget to tighten something, or tighten something that should be left slack.
The Hobbymat lathe isn’t the biggest of metal working machines and the tool enthusiast in me would dearly like a fully equipped workshop with all sorts of kit in there but the truth is I’d not be able to use it to its full advantage. The lathe will allow the speedy manufacture of spacers, distance pieces and the alteration of fasteners and cutting screw threads on parts which are more than capable of fitting in a machine of this size.
Tim