olympic
Well-Known Member
I tend to be a lurker on this forum, and I thoroughly enjoy reading of the accomplishments of those talented enough to create such works of art as the models that are featured here. Though I have made a few scratch-built engines in the past, they have been pretty rudimentary, and have not been particularly noteworthy.
I have now actually managed to build something from castings, and I am so pleasantly surprised by it that I have to show it to someone, even though it is not yet complete. No one I know has even a passing interest in what I have done, so I'm posting it here.
I am not a machinist by trade, and have never worked at anything even remotely technical in nature, so anything I have learned has been the result of self-tuition. That being said, I have made numerous horrible blunders while building this, but have managed to recover from them, often, I swear, due more to luck than to ability. Though I will not enumerate them here, the sharp-eyed among you will see some of them.
One of the biggest problems I encountered during the build was a casting-kit-supplied cast bronze connecting rod so twisted that I was completely unable to make it work. I ultimately had to scrap it and make one of my own from scratch.
I was both surprised and delighted when I applied air to the engine and it started to run immediately. You can see that it runs pretty smoothly at low pressure, and you can even see the slide valve moving through the plexiglass cover I made for the steam chest.
I'll now have to take it all apart to clean and paint it. At that time, I can try to repair the rest of my blunders and make this a truly worthwhile project.
Thanks for reading this.
I have now actually managed to build something from castings, and I am so pleasantly surprised by it that I have to show it to someone, even though it is not yet complete. No one I know has even a passing interest in what I have done, so I'm posting it here.
I am not a machinist by trade, and have never worked at anything even remotely technical in nature, so anything I have learned has been the result of self-tuition. That being said, I have made numerous horrible blunders while building this, but have managed to recover from them, often, I swear, due more to luck than to ability. Though I will not enumerate them here, the sharp-eyed among you will see some of them.
One of the biggest problems I encountered during the build was a casting-kit-supplied cast bronze connecting rod so twisted that I was completely unable to make it work. I ultimately had to scrap it and make one of my own from scratch.
I was both surprised and delighted when I applied air to the engine and it started to run immediately. You can see that it runs pretty smoothly at low pressure, and you can even see the slide valve moving through the plexiglass cover I made for the steam chest.
I'll now have to take it all apart to clean and paint it. At that time, I can try to repair the rest of my blunders and make this a truly worthwhile project.
Thanks for reading this.