The Home Machinist!

Marty Knox; you gave us some great advice recently in answer to these questions so maybe you will reiterate? The 'new place' is on a well and we are certain that it will need 'treatment' too... It has been tested as safe for humans - but probably not safe for our locomotive to 'drink'.
BC

OK, i saw that at Ridge club last Feb. Beautiful engine. She's a sweetie. Marty brought her to Chesapeake & Allegheny Live Steamers track in Baltimore, MD (what a track!) where we ran the #17 for the demonstration - introduction/indoctrination - familiarization run. The 'sweet little' (1/2 ton) eng...

There is an excellent article in Live Steam Magazine on the construction and tuning of steam whistles. I built a four chime one from the article and it sounds pretty nice. It is made using 1 1/2" brass tubing - it's about 10 - 11 inches long.... There is one on the Green Goddess that does that gurg...

Would it be OK to copy and post that article from LS? I ask because because of the magazine being out of print for a while. BC Considering copyright, it likely wouldn't be acceptable. However, there are exceptions to the "rule". Perhaps one of the attorney's who frequent this board could offer a pr...

Would it be OK to copy and post that article from LS? I ask because because of the magazine being out of print for a while.
BC

Carl,
The whistle on the GG is under the firemans side cab - it trys to resemble an air tank. I'll try giving it a slight slant and see what happens next time we're steamed up.
Thanks, BC

I would be afraid of sand - it can melt. Then you'll have a glass coated casting. BC Oddly enough common sand and iron melt at about the same temperature, so if you haven't melted your casting you won't melt the sand. That depends on the sand, oddly enough.... Glass is still molten even as it hangs...

Fred, Sometimes an iron casting is cooled too quickly and the result is a 'chilled' casting. That is about as hard as Gray Iron will ever be but that doesn't make it ductile iron - it will become 'chilled' iron. As H_V explains; the conversion from Gray Iron to Ductile Iron is a high temperature pro...

You will never melt iron in a pottery kiln - so you could go for maximum temperature that the kiln is able to produce for a time period, then do a slow graduated cool down. The maximum temperature and 'soak' time will be variable accordingly with mass of the crystallized casting and max temperature ...

Thanks. I've been reading about super conducting; very interesting study. Are you any closer to having it work at room temp? The portion of science that we are involved with at the accelerator uses niobium for its cryogenic superconductivity characteristic because it is basically a perfect material...

Fred, I had a friend that had the same problem with a pile of castings and he fired up his wife's pottery kiln and left them in there for a period of time and then brought them down slowly with the timer and they were able to be machined. This was an electric system that could be controlled well. T...

So one follow up question. I have a bunch of misc iron castings of unknown origin. How can you tell ductile from gray iron with these existing castings, - E.G. do the two materials look different after machining? Is there some kind of scratch test, or spark test, I could do?? OK, two questions :) T...