Thank you all for the kind comments. It's been impossible to thank you all for joining (Tel's made a bonzer effort though, good onya mate <-- See, I speak Australian too! Is there no beginning to my talents
)
Picking out a couple of notes:
Sandy - setting up a forum is a damn site easier (for me, at least) than making something on a machine. The nice thing about bits & bytes is you can reshape them as many times as you like, and never get a piece of swarf stuck under your fingernail, or trail bits of aluminium across the lounge carpet...
Dan, I am currently making bits for my racing car, but they mostly look like metal tubes (because, mostly, that's what they are...), or brackets... There is, however, a Stirling engine in my future, and I hope to build it - warts and all - right here.
Thanks again!