Tony Bird
Senior Member
Hi,
I suppose this could be classed as a finished project but it is about cleaning up rather than making a model steam engine. As a Christmas gift I was given some USB memory sticks and decided over the break to try and sort out my collection of photographs. Among several small projects that I had forgot that I had taken photographs was this one.
I belong to a model engineering club that several times a year has a 'Bring & Buy' event. Mostly the articles on offer are machine tools. Sometimes there are part built models and occasionally completed ones. I usually wouldn't buy a model as I have enough projects that I am involved in but this model intrigued me. Nothing was known about it the guy selling it had bought it with other bits and pieces with the intension of cleaning it up and hadn't done so. Anyway I bought it and cleaned it up.
The engine I think must be a one off using material, bits and pieces that were available. It is quite a complex design using a slip eccentric valve gear and a Scotch crank drive so I expect some sort of drawings were involved. The flywheel looks as if it came from a Sewing Machine, the gears and small pulleys are Meccanno, the large brass pulley with large holes in it obviously had a previous life. The wood work also had previous uses, holes being plugged in it and no two pieces the same originally they had been painted. There were only a couple of photographs during the clean up. I still have the engine which works very well as can be seen by the video, Who ever made it must have been at least reasonable skilled but with limited access to machine tools as most of the model has been filed. With quite a lot of the parts being aluminium I wonder if it was made during WWII by someone working with aircraft? I enjoy this engine a lot.
VIDEO.
Regards Tony.
I suppose this could be classed as a finished project but it is about cleaning up rather than making a model steam engine. As a Christmas gift I was given some USB memory sticks and decided over the break to try and sort out my collection of photographs. Among several small projects that I had forgot that I had taken photographs was this one.
I belong to a model engineering club that several times a year has a 'Bring & Buy' event. Mostly the articles on offer are machine tools. Sometimes there are part built models and occasionally completed ones. I usually wouldn't buy a model as I have enough projects that I am involved in but this model intrigued me. Nothing was known about it the guy selling it had bought it with other bits and pieces with the intension of cleaning it up and hadn't done so. Anyway I bought it and cleaned it up.
The engine I think must be a one off using material, bits and pieces that were available. It is quite a complex design using a slip eccentric valve gear and a Scotch crank drive so I expect some sort of drawings were involved. The flywheel looks as if it came from a Sewing Machine, the gears and small pulleys are Meccanno, the large brass pulley with large holes in it obviously had a previous life. The wood work also had previous uses, holes being plugged in it and no two pieces the same originally they had been painted. There were only a couple of photographs during the clean up. I still have the engine which works very well as can be seen by the video, Who ever made it must have been at least reasonable skilled but with limited access to machine tools as most of the model has been filed. With quite a lot of the parts being aluminium I wonder if it was made during WWII by someone working with aircraft? I enjoy this engine a lot.
VIDEO.
Regards Tony.
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