Recent content by modelman1838

I have built a number of hot air engines with lapped cylinders and pistons in mild steel and cast iron, I make the cylinder lap out of brass because it is usually a silver soldered assembly, but always use aluminium for the piston lap and it works just fine, best of luck. Hugh

Hi I built a very similar engine to this many years ago from a book by Tubal Cain, named building simple model steam engines book 1. It is obtainable on ebay or Amazon and was part of a steam crane model with two cylinders, double acting, with foreward and reverse, nice little engine to make...

Hi Urbi Looking at the picture of your engine, I may be missing some point but I couldn't see how it would work with the additional pin jointed link between the crankshaft con rod and the beam. It looks to me that the beam could move down and the con rod pivot on the crank pin without turning...

This is a new one to me, it`s simple and I like it ,well done Hugh

Contrary to what I do myself which is about 1 1/2 threads above the nut, in old engine practice it was custom to leave the stud a little below the top of the nut which would be gradually filled with paint as the engines were repainted many times and this prevented the formation of rust in the...

I scratch built a hit and miss engine a few years ago and have shown it on this forum. I took a stab at the compression ratio and it started straight away but jumped about a bit, so I turned up a 1/2 inch spacer to fit between the head and the body and fitted this and it improved it no end. So I...

I bought one of these carbide insert parting off tools about 16 years ago when they were first available for the smaller lathe such as the Myford super seven. It does work really well and you can part off quite large diameters of about 2 ins at much higher speed even without coolant. I think...

Hi I don't seem to have much luck posting videos but will try again and hope this will work out ok. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uglBBREBdUw

Hi All Here is a video of my Denny hot air engine that I have just finished working on, and described yesterday in the finished project section. Hugh.

Hi All A while ago I came across an engine on Google which I had not seen before named a Denny improved hot air engine, I could see straight away that the working geometry was similar to that of the Rider-Ericsson engines that we often see, but that the mechanical configuration differed in that...

Lars No that will not work, you will still only drill a 24 mm hole on the axis of the lathe. As you are making a stirling engine cylinder you will need a great deal of precision so you will have to drill 24mm and then open up this hole with a boring bar until almost to size and then make an...

I would go for Loctite 603 every time, never known it to fail. Hugh

HI Just thought that I would add a video clip of my previous post showing the engine working https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xzzwJMsHL8

Hi All Back last year looking on Google I came across an engine that I had not previously heard of before namely the Bremen Caloric Pumping Engine. I don`t think that there are any full size working engines around these days, certainly not here in the UK, but a few model engine have been made...

Hi If the engine is comparatively slow running where a buzz coil would do as on the old model T Fords, then I have had success with a with a battery powered gas lighter which sends out a shower of sparks when pressed. You can get these on ebay for about £8 and use a small micro switch as...