The Home Machinist!

My girlfriend and I were at the Soule Steam festival in Meridian MS a few weeks ago, and we're both into photography, so she brought her DSLR. I had no idea that Soule was such a great place to take photos - between the two of us we ended up with some pretty unique shots. I'm personally thinking abo...

After drilling a couple dozen through holes in stock an inch and a half long, I can definitely see some benefit in this. I can't see how it could be made as rigid as the original ts, though. I wish the ts on my 10ee didn't weigh five million tons.i would be more inclined to build a dedicated ts jus...

If you could take the ram out and take some pictures of that mechanism, that would be awesome. I'm trying to figure out exactly how they did that without sacrificing rigidity. I would've thought they'd have a "telescoping" sort of design, with the outermost part lever-operated and the trad...

Anyone have a parts diagram for this lever/handwheel combo type of headstock? I know they made these for South Bends, but I'm wanting to copy the design for another lathe.

https://www.kenosha-reuse.com/WAUKEEGAN ... lstock.cfm

I have a PM Research #3 (little 1/2" bore horizontal engine) that I've fitted with a centrifugal governor. The governor is like the photo below, it came premade from Microcosm Engine. It works beautifully, but the gears on the governor are ridiculously noisy. I've tried using washers to shim th...

a member of the NJ Live Steamers suggested I post my questions on this forum -- "PhD's who have written and studied these subjects" i'm an electric model railroader (HO gauge) working on an electronic controller having both a reverser lever with multiple notches for cutoff and a throttle ...

I tested it to about 100psi, but I usually run it around 30. The safety pops about 40 and drops it down to about 25, which is more loss than I'd like, but that's what I get for using a $7 safety meant for an air compressor. It works though, can't complain too much. That little engine will run happil...

I've been building this up over the last few months. I started with a PMR #3 machined kit (my first steam engine) and really enjoyed it. I don't have machine tools, so while I'd like to learn to machine an engine from castings eventually, in the short term, I had to get creative to have a steam plan...

Sorry to revive an old thread, but one more question. What is the best way to store this boiler? It's impossible to ensure the whole thing is perfectly dry for storage, so I thought maybe filling it completely with distilled water would be the best option (no air = no rust, or very little). It seems...

Thank you all for the advice! I guess my boiler is steel, not iron (it is quite literally hardware-store "black iron" pipe) so it sounds like distilled water and some kind of treatment is necessary. It's a very small boiler so it's not an issue to use distilled water. Should I just put som...

Hi again, As some may have seen, I recently finished building the Popular Mechanics boiler, which is a combination of a copper water-tube coil and a chunk of black iron pipe as the reservoir/steam dome. All the fittings are brass. I have been using distilled water (local water is extremely hard) wit...

Here are some higher quality scans. I increased the contrast and played with the image a little to try to make the pencil marks more readable. You can click on each image for the full quality version (it was too big to post on the forum). https://i.postimg.cc/v4yHYbGs/1899-Indicator-Card-AULibrary-S...