The Home Machinist!

I've never thought very much of the idea of plating a boiler interior in any way for protection. All it would take would be one inaccessible or "dirty" place where the plating doesn't take, and protective shield would be chemically or electrolytically penetrated and then you might as well not have i...

I have a dome to cast also (brass), but I haven't begun pattern making yet. Since 3D technology seems to be advancing faster that I can get a "round tuit", maybe I won't need to. Still, there's a part of me that says "You've made everything else, might as well make the pattern too."

FWIW, the formula (for L = 24") gives an ID range of .565" to .660".

What James said, mostly. The formula is D² = L/55~75, where D is the flue ID and L is the effective flue length. Plugging in a factor of between 55 & 75 will give a flue ID (D) which will be optimized (so far we're able to optimize such things) for the best combination of gas flow against rate of he...

Bell bronze is 80% Copper, 20% Tin, nothing else. Some people think that adding Silver makes for a sweeter tone, nonsense! Actually, many people, or so it was believed. An ancient tradition was to toss a silver coin into the flask for just that reason. It probably made little actual difference.

This week I've been cleaning up a few remains I inherited from a former mentor's workshop and in a box of odd bits was this little indexer. In 30+ years I never saw him use it, or even mention it, so I don't know anything about it. It's unmarked in any way (except for divisions & numerals) and I've ...

I'd think you'd want to change lanes and start looking at watchmaking and horologist suppliers.

IMHO a lot of it has to do with the proportions of the spring. My first leaf sprung project used 1/4"x .032" in a relatively short (in height) stack but relatively long from hanger to hanger. Those springs were a bit stiff but worked OK. The second used 1/2"x .062" (plumber's snake) of relatively sh...

I used plumber's snake material on a couple of projects years ago, and I still have some 1/4"x.032". 30-40 years ago they were real blue spring steel, no telling what it is now.

Harbor Freight has its uses. I always try to buy quality lifetime tools, but things aren't always needed for a lifetime. I recently bought a HF air trim nail gun for dead cheap. If I expected to do trim work regularly for many years to come I would have bought the best. But if the HF gun lasts throu...

I suspect that "mix" is the troublesome part here. Let's throw out that term because it's a chemical fact that oil and water don't "mix." We all know that. What it does (in a hydrostatic lubricator), as I said earlier, is form an emulsion. An Emulsion is a mixture of two immiscible (non-mutually sol...

Might be bad, might not. There's no way for us to tell what you mean by "mixing" exactly, but a proper steam oil (usually labelled by petroleum companies as "steam cylinder oil") will mix, or specifically, form an emulsion with steam and condensate. If you use a proper steam cylinder oil of around I...