I swapped to a different breadboard and its starting to look a little better. The metranome circuit worked. Ive put it back how i had it to start with and it seems to be oscillating but not properly.

The circuit ive been copying is the Infrared Emitter 555 Schematic.

The chips i have are NE555N. Aparently the ones that start with NE are good for driving LEDs etc directly