Surely you aren't that bad John.
Nick,
News has already been broken, and he has admitted to everything, and I am about to make him a happy chappie by putting it right for him.
It is a very easy job if you know what you are doing. Unfortunately for him, he doesn't.
This sort of thing is a very common occurance, when people in the know tell newbies that they should start off with a casting set. I think personally, people who do that should be castrated, and have to pay the poor newbie the cost of the castings. They would think twice about it before recommending it again.
To me, it is always better to start with barstock, at least then you can obtain a datum very easily, and work from there. Castings invariably have no fixed datums, and can be almost any shape, so as soon as a newbie does his first cut, the project is doomed to failure. Some do get away with it, but a great many more are put off model engineering for life, because they had a complete failure on their first attempt.
John