The Home Machinist!

Hey Bill, don't worry. I won't be running this little baby on anything other than air.

Jamie

I have this interesting little steam engine that I am trying to identify for a friend. It is about a 1/2" bore and 1" stroke with a 5" flywheel, and "Peerless" cast into the cylinder. The engine is all brass except for the red parts which appear to be white metal. There are ...

Has anyone added CNC capability to an import 6" rotary table? I like the idea of having a setup like the Sherline rotary table where you can enter data through a keypad device. I guess I could also interface the stepper motor with a PC and use software to control the table. Has anyone done this...

I would agree, I bought their cadmium free, 56% silver solder and their white flux and they both work great. It takes a little more heat to use this solder than Easyflow 45 but I had no trouble soldering parts with my mappgas torch. You can also get these products from http://www.fredparrcycledesign...

Thanks Fred, I guess I should have mentioned that the steps i'm looking for are going on a slope-back tender for my Pennsy A3. They are a bit hard to describe. Those Heavy Mikado steps are pretty darn close.

Thanks again

I have seen some cast iron or aluminum tender steps and several other detail parts on engines at the club. Does anyone know where to buy them? I haven't found anything on the web yet for 1-1/2" scale parts, only lots of HO and garden scale.

Thanks,
Jamie

I have been talking with Jim O'Connor over that past few weeks about starting something dedicated to building Kozo's engines. As you may have seen, I am building one and scaling it up to 1-1/2". Hopefully the new site will help others who are working on similar projects. Check it out.
Jamie

Hey Fred, I have gotten as far as starting to build the archbar trucks for the tender. I don't know if it's just me or what but it seems to be alittle harder than just doubling numbers. Obviously most dimensions are double sized but things like screws and clearances aren't exactly X 2. Also I am not...

Hey Charles, thanks for that post. I am looking for a suitable bearing to use in the arch bar trucks on my 1-1/2" Pennsy A3. I found some specs on those flange bearings but they don't look like they would allow any axial movement of the shaft. Does Jim elaborate on how he puts this together or ...

I am planning to install bearings into the journal boxes of my A3 tender instead of using barrel shaped bronze bushings. How do you guys allow for a few degrees of float (so the thing doesn't derail) when using regular bearings? I was going to use spherical bearings until I realized that they are on...

That's a good idea. That way I won't have to sketch all of the parts on beer coasters as I scale them up. Plus it will keep the greasy fingerprints out of my $50.00 book.

Jamie

I have read over the book a few times now. The chapter on scaling it up is a generalization at best. The good news is that he gives drawings for the bigger engine frame and boiler. The rest of it is guesswork. He mentions that you can double most dimensions but there is still alot of figuring to do.