The Home Machinist!

I would have like to gone but I have to stay at home with the wife who broke her leg last month.
-Kevin S.

Matt, it is not a wash primer. The best way to describe the fluidity of the primer is as follows for a primer surfacer. Mixed as per instructions should have the consistancey of a liquid milk shake. Primer thinned to allow penatration into wood: roughly chocolate milk. Wash primer to get a light coa...

Ben, before you mount the aluminimum, I would sand and apply etch primer before you attach it to the box. Also I found for applying automotive paint to wood. Start off with automotive primer and over reduce it a little and spray a couple of coats over the wood. After it dries sand it down lightly th...

Hi all, at my current club we are looking into maybe doing an operational run day. What are other clubs doing to run these type of runs? Any and all information will be helpful.
-Kevin S.

Actually, with stainless steel bolts going into stainless holes you want to put on anti sieze. Otherwise the stainless will gall and the only way to remove it is to cut and drill. We did this all the time when I worked for a boat manufacture. We did have have a few sieze up and we had to cut them ou...

Mike, for tape, I see that Jack is using is 3M 233+ which is the green tape on the paint edge. This stuff is not flexiable enough to bend around the wheel, it was more than likely cut with a razor blade or x-acto knife. A tape that would work for this task would be a vinyl tape, this tape is used to...

Lookinig nice Mike
-Kevin S.

Mattaniah, by epoxy harding I am assuming that you mean adding a hardener to the primer. Most primers take two components that are mixed, some have a very short pot life while others have quite a long pot life. There are different types of primers for different reasons. The etching primer has a litt...

Charlie, if you can sandblasting would be the best for preping the metal, if not buy some metal prep and scrub the parts with it. After preping the metal, Get some etching primer, they sell it at auto paint stores, they do sell it in rattle cans. This primer will bite into the metal and allow for th...

Although, they might make some nice wheels for some rolling stock for your Hudson to pull when you are done.
-Kevin S.

Mike, by chance do you have some bad pieces you can do some paint testing on, as some paint does not do well with plastic unless it is properly prepaired first.
-Kevin S.

I would agree with what others have said about at least try and fix it yourself first, but keep in the back of your mind that you might need a new boiler. This is what I did on my CP173. I tried to fix a leaky stay bolt on the side of the fire box ending up chasing a couple of more leaks and got to ...