Recent content by kye

when i first started experimenting with casting, my very first source of bronze was about 2kgs of shavings that had come from a machine shop somewhere. the good thing about copper alloys especially bronze is that they are very slow to oxidize as opposed to aluminium for example, this means that...

hi jerry, im just wondering if you could give some information regarding where and if you dont mind how much that casting set cost?? it looks like a good set of casting to work with.

hi kd i cant really give you any info regarding locating a clay crucible on the internet, however i can in regards to the use of a graphite crucible and iron. any form of iron alloy cant be used in a graphite crucible as the iron at melting temps dissolves the free carbon out of the crucible...

hi drysdam, this completely based off of a purely theoretical knowledge, and a liitle bit of not knowing too many of the details. is it that the steam only being "wet steam" doesnt have enough heat stored in it to to maintain a gaseous form once it reaches the engine itself? theres quite a...

in terms of using both perlite and grog for the refractory, a better approach would be to use a mix with a high proportion of perlite since its very insulative but cant handle high temps as an insulation layer. then have another layer protecting the perlite layer, which would be in direct...

hi hayden, yeah there was, just didnt wont to show it :P. it did take quite a few tries to get it to the point in that photo and the photo below shows it still wasnt perfect. i have however since then changed the pattern and tested it in aluminium without any shinkage, i just hadnt had time...

hi all, im by no means an expert, this is just what ive found to be the case from my experiences casting things. when i first stated out casting my supply was about 5kg of an unknown bronze alloy made up of 5mm in size chips from machine turning. ive never had any problems with melting it...

hi all, i have made some progress with the casting of the base, i recast and whilst im still not 100% happy with the alloy, its now at least workable and the casting itself came out nicely. i took some photos of the sand molds used but didnt end up taking any photos post cast and during the...

hi all, bez, i can happily say that the cast iron machined very nicely!! there didnt seem to be any hard spots and all the chips were a very nice dark grey colour. today i intended to cast the base for the engine, things didnt end up going quite so well as id hoped :-. firstly when i was...

hi dave, the photos dont really show it but there is a nice radius at the tip. it did cut steel beautifully but it was a bit of beginners luck and i ended up butchering it when i tried resharpening it >:(. bez, i havnt really done anything to see whether there are hard spots or not, as i sanded...

ohh i almost forgot about some of the other stuff ive done here and there most will end up being practise peices. piston and piston rod a mostly sucsessful crank shaft silver soldered together this is a conrod and the slider thing some bronze bearings the eccentric cam, this ill be using...

hi all!! so its been quite some time since I've posted anything in here, but i have been busy working on the steam engine whenever Ive had time. since the last time you heard from me i have made some trastic changes to my workshop :) with the purchasing of a lathe, a heap of tooliing for it...

Will the toothed belt you use to drive the cams cause any problems when it comes time to properly time the thing? id imagine the teeth would mean you can only rotate the cams X degrees at a time and if you need the position to be say 0.9X your going to run into trouble. how is this little...

hi Brian, did you have any problem when you were taking the final parting cut due to the off center hole???? the first time i made one(ive only really made one... haha) when i was doing the same final parting, when i reached the hole the tool grabbed and all manor of unpleasant things...

hello all, this is a question that ive pondered to myself on and off for quite a while, never really ever finding a reasonable answer. basically how was the first truly flat surface/edge made? ive come up many ways in which i COULD be done, but there always seem to be some small level of...