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Perfect, that's exactly it! Thanks so much. I got impatient and got stuck into trying to get it to run. The builder put the coil and battery in the wooden box underneath the engine, but the battery has been in there for almost 25 years and has split, leaking electrolyte. This has attacked the...

An old mate of mine built this in 1999 - he was a very capable modeller in his day but he struggles now and can't remember anything about this engine, or where he put the info about it. He's asked me to get it running for him. I need to ID it so I can research a bit about what fuel and oil is...

You guys are absolute legends, thank you so much! Cool that it shares the Starrett history, that's a great tie-in. Can't see myself rebuilding it as a food chopper but it may eventually turn again as a primitive beam engine. The internet wins again.

I like the way you think!

Thanks, that makes a lot of sense now that you say it. So it's very likely an engine. Edit - Also looks like you're active on two different forums ;)

I'd guess the same, but you'd want a crank handle if you were to do more than a couple of minutes' work with it, and there's no boss or tapped hole for one. It would be a good surface to grab onto if you had to knock an engine over centre. It's also too heavy to be a toy engine, but has simple...

Interesting to note that the flywheel has a round profile, so I don't think it would be useful for driving off of. And if the machine was designed to be driven by another power source, would it have a flywheel?

Was at a neighbour's today and spotted this in his garden. After seeing me drool over it, he gave it to me. Appears to be flywheel and beam of an old engine. Flywheel is about 210mm across (8 inches). Needless to say, there are no casting marks anywhere. Any ideas? EDIT - two photos added...

Mystery Machine

Mystery Machine

Possibly not even an engine

I figured out F/M just after I just l hit "send", it's free machining, which means there's lead in the alloy to lubricate the cutting tool.

Wow, epic undertaking. Certainly filing these away for the future. Happened to notice on drawing BE28 the 6mm dia is called out as 4mm. Nice work.

That's the very one! These plans are actually on site, but don't give assembly drawings or photos of completed model. With the Wells name, however, Google image search was able to come up with many photos of completed engines, so I now know what it's supposed to look like. Thanks...

About fifteen years ago I took a night course at a local high school on building a small live steam Traction Engine. We finished the term but not the engine. I've gotten it out to try to finish it off, but the drawings I have aren't complete (for example, the ports on the pivot plate aren't...

Tearing apart some equipment at work and have pulled out ten 1 metre sections of 1/8 copper line. I'd like to scavenge this for future steam use but it's been used as indicator line in a hydraulic power pack (to the pressure gauge) and consequently has hydraulic oil in it. What are the...

I have all four of the SW series but to date have only built a couple of small things. Fantastic books! Interesting to note some of the used book sellers on Amazon are asking stupid money for some of his books - though I've read that this has to do with automated pricing "bots". Rudy's...

That's an even better idea than mine, and why I asked! Charles, the image link on your own site gave me a 403 forbidden. In a perfect world, yes, I would buy another chuck. But as a Chinese one would run me nearly two days' pay (if I was working, which I'm not), AND I'd then get the...