Here's a little story that will hopefully make newcomers feel a bit better.
After I got my Unimat back in '72, I started casting about for an engine project that would be a bit beyond my talents so that I would be forced to learn as I built it.
I bought plans for Rudy Kouhoupt's two cylinder, double acting marine engine because I liked its looks and thought it was something I just might be able to finish some day.
[Aside: In retrospect, this was a bad decision. I should have picked a simpler project and worked my way up to more complex engines.]
I set about making parts for the engine. This entailed learning to work within the limited work envelope of the Unimat as well as designing and building various accessories for the machine and workholding fixtures.
[Another aside: One of the big difficulties with small machines like the Unimat is that commercially available machining accessories are often oversized and thus unusable. Plus, one quickly learns just how much time is eaten up switching what is basically a 3-in-1 machine from one configuration to another.]
Job requirements, two children and a two year stint in France and Germany as a consultant intervened. I finally consigned the Unimat to its present role as a dedicated high-speed miniature milling machine and bought myself a full-size lathe and milling machine. Now I could really get to work and finish that engine.
Problem was, as soon as I decided to start work, I'd look at the last part I'd made and say, "What junk! I can do better than that now." and set to work remaking the part.
There are parts on that engine that have been remade as often as six times.
While the box of engine parts occasionally grew by one, my motivation was flagging badly so I gave it up as a lost cause and set to work building a simple oscillator. I managed to finish that in a few months and was over the moon when it finally ran. Even my wife remarked about how excited I was about the "little machine that rattles".
One day my wife came out to the shop with some knives that needed sharpening and spied the box of engine parts. "What's that?" "Parts for that engine I gave up on." "Gee, it looks like you have a lot of parts. Why don't you finish it?" Suitably shamed, I got back to work and quickly discovered that I'd learned a lot since I started that engine. In a few weeks the engine was finished and ran nicely first time out.
I sat down and did a bit of arithmetic and discovered that it had taken me FIFTEEN YEARS to finish my 'first' engine. [When I said above that I was slow, I wasn't joking.]
I offer this story not to advertise my patience (I'm as impatient as the next guy and it's a real trial to keep it under control) or my (stubborn German) persistence but rather to point out to the newcomers here that even those of us who have a bit of time in on this hobby once had to fight the frustration of things seeming to take just too long to get finished.
Try to remember that you'll soon forget how long it took to build that special model but the glow of having something unique made with your own hands will last forever.
- Try making the paper steam engine that I uploaded into the Downloads area here. 8)
