The Home Machinist!

Jack, Lurking behind the sliding door found on the larger later high speed steamers was a steam cylinder lube oil line to supply oil mid stroke of the piston. Often times there was a choke type of valve that could be adjusted as needed for the correct flow of of steam oil. Not very often does one se...

And a big thank you to Dick Morris for providing a set of prints for the Holt 75 model motor. It will be a great help in completion of the long dormant project.

McMaster-Carr offers an 1/8 inch square graphite packing that can be unraveled into individual strings with good results. Lubricate all of the parts with some of the silver anti-sieze high temp grease and pack with the graphite packing. Things will work well for a long time if the moving part are we...

With most of the model hex nuts and bolts being scaled down from the standard sizes of hex nuts and bolts, the appearance is OK for most but not all models. What many do not realize is the major locomotive builders for years used only heavy or extra heavy hex nuts and bolts from one end of a steamer...

It seems that injectors were custom builds at the factory long ago. Some guy had a rack full of parts and hand picked the parts that best fit together when building up a new injector. I thought the custom fit situation was just with Nathan Monitor style injectors. Now I find that Anthony has reveale...

Bearings can always be interesting as they slowly wear out. Long ago a friend had a well used lathe that had developed a slight chatter in the turned finish of parts. He tried all possible methods to resolve the chatter and decided that the spindle bearings were suspect. He purchased new spindle bea...

A century ago, threads were still not standardized real well. Many companies developed and used proprietary threads just insure you bought their parts if you needed spares for repairs. The singer sewing machine company was notorious for such activity. The Nathan Manufacturing Co often included some ...

The sliding doors of many box cars and even passenger baggage cars were hung from above with what was called a door trolley on a railing. The bottom of the door was usually riding in a guide bar with perhaps what was called a slide to help stabilize the door during movement. Most of the baggage car ...

I work with brass and bronze all of the time at the local railroad museum. Sure, the new fresh turned metal looks nice but the curator likes to see the patina of age on new parts. I now use sulfurized cutting oil during the final turning and finish work of the parts in bronze and brass. It is like m...

Forgot to mention that in working on a 1922 Baldwin steamer recently, I found use of hairpin cotters. We removed the pilot truck grease cellars for cleaning and inspection. Two long 1/2 inch diameter pins secured the grease cellars. Security was provided by hairpin cotters in perfect formed rectangu...

Nice work on recreation of the rectangular holes for the hairpin cotters. Never an easy task in full size. Long ago I saw an unfinished model live steamer in 1.5 scale that had some incredible craftsmanship up until the original builder passed on. One of the most stunning achievements was scale hair...

Can you make a nice looking cover for the gears and submerge them in a light grease?