To scrap or not to scrap?

[Bogstandard]

Phil,

Spot on.

John

 

[gilessim]

In my wood shop I used to have a big stack of offcuts in the corner that kept growing over the years, every piece had been picked up and measured at least a 1000 times to the point that I knew by heart the dimensions of each piece, only to find that they were always 1cm too short or too thin to use!, in the end most got chucked in the fire! but I still can't bring myself to throw anything away, even the tiniest bits of metal get put to one side, even if they end up becoming a little washer I really feel good about it afterwards!

Giles

 

[zeusrekning]

My theory is to start with larger model engines then work my way down in scale over a number of years. That whay I'll hopefully have large enough scrap to use over again.

 

[AlanHaisley]

I'm building an Upshur farm engine. Due to my initial problems with drilling holes accurately in my drill press (separate thread) my front plate has a bored hole which ended up .028" off center to the left as measured between the inside of the bore and the side of the plate on both sides.

If the part can be adjusted for then what to do really depends on why you are building the engine in the first place.

If your goal is to see how close you can come to making each part as defined by the drawings then you probably want to take this piece as a learning experience and make it over.

If your goal is to make the engine and see it run, then you should probably adapt and forge ahead.

By the way, if you need to adapt to this mistake but the adaptation doesn't force other changes you can have the best of both worlds by going ahead now but replacing this piece with a better one later.