The Home Machinist!

Some shots of the parts we got this weekend. We are building a passenger car trucks so are making parts for that along with boxcar detail parts. The bottom pic is spring cups for the equalizer and the lump at the left is swing link blocks. They will be cut apart and drilled. Those funny things on the right are coupler cut levver brackets.

The top one is brake shoes and draft gear stop brackets, the spring that hangs out on the truck, box car door guides and body bolster center castings.

Tom C.

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tom_at_srclry_com
Lost somewhere in Michigan!

Well, it finally happened. We made cores and they turned out usable the first time. The core boxes and the finally parts.

Tom C.

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tom_at_srclry_com
Lost somewhere in Michigan!

We made more parts over the weekend. Cores are going pretty good. I found they would warp if placed on a tub cover that wasn't flat. Will get a firmer surface to store them on before use.

Tom C.

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tom_at_srclry_com
Lost somewhere in Michigan!

Tom,
Your castings are great! Makes me want to get my foundry going again. First I have to clear out the "honeydew" backlog...

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Dan Watson
Building IC mikado in 1.5" scale

Dan, thanks for the kind note. I understand the honey-do thing. Get HOT!

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tom_at_srclry_com
Lost somewhere in Michigan!

Tom
You did a nice on your muller ,And IT WORKS,Good show
Mine doesn't work I tried to get a llittle too far out and I have to go back to the drawing board. I always mixed my sand by hand thirty years ago and it worked fine as I was young and dumb now I am old and dumb (ha, I tried to make a couple of rollers out of wood that was spring loaded and my little 3/4 h/p motor keeps breaking the drive train ( which is almost like yours)But of course yours does not break! I have lost interest for a while BUT I will get back to it sooner or later. keep up the good work
chaz

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Still hanging in there
chaz

Hi all,

We are making the same parts over and over again. Very boring! When you plan on making 3 pair of passenger trucks, you need a large amt of pieces to make them. Here is some shots from a work session.

Tom C.

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tom_at_srclry_com
Lost somewhere in Michigan!

Here are a couple of pics of the many parts we need. They both need to be cut from the sprue and extra metal on the heads,

Tom C.

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tom_at_srclry_com
Lost somewhere in Michigan!

It has been nearly 4 months since I was over to pound sand as I had to take care of wifes medical needs. She is better, so off I went. We need stake pockets for the new flat cars we are finishing up. Mel took home one of our last remaining ones and made a pattern from it to make more from resin so he could put 8 on a match plate. I rammed up some sand and got some goods one out. Some of them still have the core in them as we didn't clean them all up at first. I also tested some other ones he did and found I couldn't get the pattern to extract without breaking it up on the edges. Either needs more draft or schellac. Back to the pattern shop with those. The patterns for our marker lites came out good (lower left one). We need a bunch of those.

Tom C.

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tom_at_srclry_com
Lost somewhere in Michigan!

Tom,
That's a good report on your wife.

You're turning out some very nice looking castings. Leads me to ask----what are you pouring? Are you buying ingot, or are you melting random aluminum pieces?

Harold

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Wise people talk because they have something to say. Fools talk because they have to say something.

Harold, more random, we mix extruded and cast together, try to do more cast as extruded isn't as good, and then flux the mixture. Seems to work for us.

Tom C.

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tom_at_srclry_com
Lost somewhere in Michigan!

Ya, mixing the two, cast and extrdued seems to work best for me. All cast is brittle, and all extruded shrinks bad with misruns. Possibly not enough silicon left in the metal. Buying bar is more expensive, but not as much fun. I have not experienced breakage of the castings, or any such weekness.

Glad to hear of the improvement for the wife. Wishes!

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Big Dave

Be Alert! The world needs more Lerts.