Recycled model Steam Engine.

Home Model Engine Machinist Forum

Help Support Home Model Engine Machinist Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Tony Bird

Senior Member
Joined
Feb 20, 2011
Messages
822
Reaction score
895
Location
Cardiff, South Wales, UK
Hi,

The weekend before last I visited a model show and bought some 'Come in useful Bits'; consisting of a pair of teaching aids used in a school's laboratory each consisting of; a pulley and axle in a couple of bearing blocks mounted on a wooden board.




Another useful bit bought at the same time was a cast iron bracket which would have been at least one of a pair. This bracket with others would have had wooden rods going through the holes in them that would possibly been used for drying clothes. It has 'Gourmet Rack' cast into it.



The third major component is a I. P. Engineering cylinder from a model locomotive that someone had given me several of. This cylinder is similar to the type used by Mamod on their model locomotives.



The only major part that wasn't recycled is the port block. The only other 'new' parts were K&S products; tubes and some flat stock. The construction as such went like this.

A bearing was removed from one of bearing blocks and with the help of aluminium washers fitted into one of the holes in the bracket.



One of the pulleys had its boss removed and was glued to a section of axle. The boss removed was made into a small pulley.



The bracket was screwed to one of the wooden bases that the bearing blocks had been removed from. This board was later covered with some vinyl sheet left over from our bathroom floor.



The other pulley had a groove turned on its boss to make into a compound pulley and was fitted on to a spigot fitted to the newly made port block that went through the other hole in the casting.



A new longer trunnion rod was fitted to the cylinder; the original spring being used with a spacing tube. The photograph shows the piston rod at its original length.



A longer piston rod was needed so the cylinder was taken apart. The original piston which was glued to a plain shaft was reused just being glued to a longer shaft.



When assembled the engine looks like this:






Video I hope!


https://youtu.be/0mbQXqebztQ



The belt is an old square section leather shoelace joined with thread. I am rather pleased with the result, I think it turned out quite an attractive model. The casting and the two pulley units altogether cost £6. I hope to try the model on steam this afternoon.

Regards Tony.
 
Last edited:
Tony,

That is very interesting. Pretty Cool. Somehow that bracket adds an elegant touch to a simple wobbler. Too bad you don't have more of those brackets.

Thanks for posting

--ShopShoe
 
Tony, another hit out of the park! It took me some time to find this on HMEM but it was well worth the effort. You Sir, are the master of repurposing - beautiful work.
 
Back
Top