The Home Machinist!

As much of a pain it seems to make, they could be made relatively simply. The tricky part would come with the latch - the little nub that engages the latch. You could easily form the two plates using the method shown in the following thread: http://www.mylargescale.com/Community/Forums/tabid/56/afv/...

Another thing to be on the lookout for is buildup of soot, oil, grime, etc in the petticoat/smokestack - over time it will build up, especially if you have more oil going into your cylinders than really needed. This will interfere with your draft and give you all kinds of problems unless you keep th...

Dave, How often do you experience the differences in Coefficients of expansion with the two unlike materials (wood and steel/metal)? I would imagine that the wood would expand/shrink more with the humidity and temperature changes whereas the steel would be affected more by heat. I've seen some peopl...

Hudson Honey wrote:with not much of a grade on the layout only way to make this beast work would be to make the train longer....but then ya run into siding length issues. anyway......it's fun.

Thats when you become the main train and everyone has to go into the hole for ya...

Just use sterno camping fuel... Use a spoon to scoop it out of the canister, put it in the pan and light it up.

The BAGRS project uses Sterno camping gel fuel to fire their G scale homebuilt engines. Seems to procure enough heat....

Just befriend someone who works at an EDM shop and have them cut the tool for you out of tool steel. Make sure it is already full-hardened before it goes to them. You will have to provide them with the profile you want - you can make it the EXACT profile - you don't have to do any compensation for &...

Bill, I'm not understanding what you mean by your post. I have also wondered about these cylinder cocks and such. For instance... Let's say I run a locomotive at 150psi operating pressure. Cylinders are ~3" bore x 6" stroke. I want to install these cylinders on the locomotive. I know you w...

You're doing a great job. This is an example of the type of locomotive I'd like to build, just for a putter-around-er... While I'm working on my steamer.

If your journal boxes are of an enclosed design, why do you need sealed bearings? I can see the appeal of no lubrication, but non-sealed bearings just need a squirt now and then...

Mike

Let's say you have a 3/4" 4-flute endmill (most of us have the basic 4-flute 3/4" endmill in our arsenal). Take your 6" scale and put it across the very tip of the 12:00 and 6:00 flutes and look at the gap in the light. You will see a taper towards the middle on the very bottom. That ...

For future reference, if you have a DRO and want to make things easier, there's no reason you can't use an endmill slightly larger than the diameter of the SHCS to counterbore. Yes, you might have a bit of a tapered bottom, but I don't see the stresses being such a big problem anyway. This is someth...

Best of luck! I have tried to keep folks updated on my 2-8-0 via my blog, but progress is sporadic and I usually forget the camera. I can't wait until I start my NEXT project. Whether it be a freight car or a passenger car or a locomotive, I intend to start a brand new chapter on it and go from the ...