1/6 Marine engine

[TonyM]

Hi Everyone. I just joined recently. So a bit of background first. I am retired engineer living in the Czech Republic. A few years ago I decided to scratch build a steam launch based loosely on pic 1. It ended up looking like Pic 2, shown during early trials. The engine is a working engine similar to a Stuart but its actually electric powered with a dummy boiler hiding a smoke generator.

That project led me to looking at something a bit different and started investigating something of a similar era but with a working engine. I ended up buying a small lathe, drill grinder and the usual tooling and decided to build a Monterey clipper with a working engine. Pic 3 gives you an idea of what the engine looks like. Mine wont be an accurate scale as everything has to be done on a very tight budget. Materials and equipment are ridiculously priced here so most stuff has to be bought online. There must be 1001 easier engines to make but the masochistic side of me takes some pleasure in doing things the hard way.
I have already got a long way down the road before joining so i will post pics in some sort of order so you can see where the project is heading (albeit slowly now the nice weather is here)

 

[TonyM]

The Boat should look something like this.
The engine is on display in the open cabin which is why I chose this to model.

 

[TonyM]

First came the base.
I dont have any casting facilities or a mill so for this engine I fabricated the base from brass parts silver soldered together. Just getting firebricks was a task in itself:wall:
The main bearing caps are 16mm finished dia. They were made undersize and held inline with piece of machined tube during assembly. They were then finish reamed to size later.
The pic is at a slightly later stage when setting up the camshaft.

 

[TonyM]

The base after a bit of filling and fettling

 

[TonyM]

Main bearings and bearingcaps. Still to be finished and polished. They have been drilled to take 2mm O/d brass tube which will locate the bearings as well as providing oil feed from manzel oiler. Sorry for the pic quality.

 

[TonyM]

The crankshaft was machined from a piece of 1 1/4 bar all on the lathe. The timing gear is separate and was being fitted in this pic.

 

[TonyM]

Next was the conrod and split bearing.

 

[TonyM]

Piston, rings and gudgeon pin. The rings are ASP bought from justengines.

 

[TonyM]

So far I have used a variety if jigs and fixtures to enable the machining of everything on the lathe. I have a Warco 240 variable. I do not have a milling slide for it so I used an angle plate and good quality drilling vice for milling out the piston. The crank was fully machined on the lathe from bar stock. using a couple of split bushes to get the correct throw on the crank. Unfortunately I dont have any pics of the methods I used. I usually get so absorbed in what I am doing I hardly ever take pics. Here are the camshaft pillars and the camshaft. The camshaft is also ASP from justengines with the gear teeth turned off and a bored out cross helix matching the crank gear has been brazed on.

 

[apointofview]

Looks great keep the pictures coming !
Pete

 

[TonyM]

Cam followers and pushrods first attempt. These were fabricated but now I have some material to machine some up from solid.

 

[TonyM]

Basic cylinder liner and base. The cylinder needs quite a bit more work to finish.

 

[TonyM]

Flywheel. The brass wheel is part of the clutch unit and will hold the magnet for the Hall sensor.

 

[TonyM]

Cylinder head with integral valve guides and seats. Lots more work to do on this for waterways and rocker gear. Awaiting some tooling before the head progresses.

 

[TonyM]

Parts loosely assembled to give an idea of progress to date. There is a lot of work to do to the cylinder and the head but I am hoping a cheap mill will find its way into the workshop during the summer. Unfortunately second hand machines are like hens teeth here and command ridiculous prices so it will probably be a new one and that will take a while to save up for.

 

[Cogsy]

Very nice so far!

 

[TonyM]

Managed to get a few hours in this week. Roughed out the rocker shaft pedestals and rockers and made the eccentric shafts for the variable intake valve.

 

[TonyM]

Rocker pedestals and rockers assembled to head to check for fit and function.

 

[Nicolas]

Looking very good, that base is a very impressive piece of work. Look forward to seeing more of this build

 

[SilverSanJuan]

Amazing work, Tony. :thumbup: It is very impressive that you've done all of this with the lathe and fixtures. Keep it up and thanks for sharing your work!