The Home Machinist!

When you have the pipe mounted securely, mount a DTI in the spindle of the machine (holding it in a drill chuck makes it easy to sweep the pipe), then move the pipe under the quill. Drop the quill enough for the indicator to make contact with the OD of the pipe, then rotate the indicator around the...

More boiler work with much help from Rich D. and fellow CSPPRY member Don Fite. The main tube has nearly all the holes it needs (we forgot to drill for the pressure gauge bushing the other day!) so I took it to a do-it-yourself-car wash place and used the engine degreaser on it to get all the cuttin...

After much searching around and book reading I've not found a good, solid explanation of how to quickly and accurately find the center of a pipe clamped vertically on a milling machine table. For example, I needed to drill a bolt hole pattern in the end of a piece of 3 1/2" schedule 80 pipe (4&...

kvom wrote:Next I CNC milled a radius on the end of the coupler shank and drilled a hole for the pin:

http://www.pbase.com/kvom/image/136672660/large.jpg

Kirk, that's a lot of work for the coupler shank. I radius mine with the bench grinder

Kirk,

Your work is fantastic and you're making great progress! I'm thinking you'll be putting a fire in your loco before I do.

Progress is being made on my boiler. I've been getting welding lessons from my friend Richard (also a member here) and he's taught me well. He's been at my side watching, helping, examining, ... and grinding out my mistakes. He's been a great teacher and I feel completely comfortable doing all of th...

Almost all local sign making shops have the ability to cut vinyl stick-on lettering. It is pretty inexpensive if you do the drawing yourself; any image software (Microsoft Paint, Gimp, Photoshop, etc.) that saves out to .BMP format will do. Just make a to-scale image with all the lettering and anyth...

When you recived the informaiton from Bob Harpur you just so happened to hit the jackpot. Many do not realize that the Allen Mogul was orginally designed by Bob way back in 1964-65 timeframe. I feel extremely fortunate that Bob lives just a few miles from me and have been able to go and visit him. ...

Been busy the past few weeks, unfortunately mostly outside the shop. Lots of work done on the the smokebox, including fabricating my own smokebox door. I just didn't like the aluminum casting from Gene Allen so I decided to build one up from some leftover boiler 1/4" and 1/2" material. htt...

I live in a plain old, regular subdivision and both my mill and lathe came from Grizzly. There was no way to unload at my driveway -- they would have been delivered on a full size flatbed trailer -- so I had to pick both up at the freight depot myself. They loaded both machines into my pickup with a...

Jim Schulz wrote:Any photos of what others have done in 1.5" scale? Pencil holders?

Technically 2 1/2" scale, but here's two examples:

Don Fite's #12
Kevin Doe's #453

So now just a lot of holes to tap. Did I ever mention I hate tapping? Kirk, be glad you're not doing Allen cylinders. Each one has 47 drilled & tapped holes. 49 if you count the cylinder drain cocks. I don't have any special tapping equipment such as Harold mentioned. I just do it all in the mi...