The Home Machinist!

Try Discover Live Steam's For Sale pages. discoverlivesteam.com (not a link)

The boiler sounds more like a 1" scale or small 1 1/2", may do better looking at those. My readings favor a 2 or 3 barrel pump to even out the loading. Ending up too big is easily covered by the bypass vale. Just a simple pump design that could be made a double or triple, look at Kozo's bo...

A push comes to shove solution! Use Evergreen styrene strips (hobby shops and online) and make a master pattern. Use Alumilite Casting materials (www.alumilite.com) and make a mold. These are flexible, so you do not any draft on the shallow patterns. The casting material is a resin plastic. Make a s...

Short sad story about Titan Trains. I ordered an engine in January with the understanding that I wanted it for the 2018 Triennial. Jim Humphrey promised delivery in May. Looking for a status report in early April, I could not get a response until I sent an Facebook Instant-gram. An employee told me ...

Try the actual battery manufacture's website. Just search for their names, Trojan, Empire etc.

The main questions about the PM pump are, what are the bore and stroke? Even with the relatively small boiler of the CliShay, a small 3/8 bore x 1/2 stroke pump would wear you out. Convert bore and stoke into millimeters and calculate the CC's per stroke. The above pump delivers a mere .36cc per str...

There have been several good replies. What I remember must have been a formula for a 2 axle loco. It involved the axles center-line spacing, the track gauge and some constant value number. The results would be minimum radius in feet. Unclear was the track gauge value to be the designed gauge (like 7...

Does anyone know the simple formula for calculating the minimum radius for a model steam locomotive?
I saw it someplace, naturally, I can not remember where.

Live Steam Magazine from Sept 1977 has a article by William S. Van Brocklin Jr. about fabricating cylinders. Good reference. Also was a story about a Niagara, where the gentleman built everything from blocks of aluminum. It had a good set of pictures on his cylinder fabrication. I do not remember th...

I have work in electronics for most of my adult life, so I finally have a little bit of experience. It does look like you just fried the trace on the top of the board. HOWEVER, there is one spot on the bottom that I do not like the looks of it. Between what looks like the number 120 and the M- symbo...

Uncle Jesse's Newbie boiler in Nov/Dec 2004 Live Steam. Very nice little fire tube boiler from 10" pipe, propane fired. Could be scaled down to 8" pipe, but no guarantees it will steam well enough, as the Newbie engine is about the same bore and stroke as the Clishay. Maybe Uncle will chim...

Sorry, that should be AJ Reeves for Lucky 7 castings. Other issues, the 3 1/2" gauge loco has plain spoke drivers and outside cranks, like most narrow gauge locos. You need new drivers with crank pin hubs to convert. Tread diameter is 5.12 inches. Also the design is (not start any fights) pre-I...