Hi Ben,
Welcome to the forum 
When you say the Jaycar board has a 514 resistor that would usually be a 510,000 Ohm resistor. Since the last digit tells you how many zeros come after the first two numbers.
These variable resistors are usually arranged to form a voltage divider circuit, by using two similarly sized resistors, so your 510 Ohm resistor may be too small to work effectively as a voltage divider.
