The Home Machinist!

I'd love it. I have 80 acres here in TN since 1986, rough mountainside with springs and timber, very little level, been harvesting timber ever since at a rate of $4,000-10,000 per year. Starts a half mile off the main road and is almost a mile long with thousands of acres of rough land beyond, caves...

finally got a camera, need to figure out how to use it and move digital pictures around. I've done a little with pictures but not enough to get proficient at it. Been working on the project steady. Boiler is finished and got the truck frame lengthened by 18" this afternoon so everything will fi...

Find a sturdy form with the right curve to it, piece of heavy curved metal. A little tighter curve than the boiler if working it cold. clamp the edge of the form in a strong vise along with the metal to be formed, and hammer it down to match the form. Heating the work piece to forging temp would hel...

they call them lorries over the pond. But this one aint no lorrie. My original idea was to build my own engine, and almost had everything done, but it got shelved for awhile. In the mean time I ran into an engine on ebay and got it, so that takes precedence. An Acme built Westinghouse design, vertic...

Some think they have to exactly duplicate the original full size versions to be happy. Others are perfectly happy being their own design engineer and changing things as they go along. Just like antique car rebuilders, some have to replicate the originals as close as they possibly can. Others take th...

OK, great. I was hunting but didn't think to look there. In the mean time I've reconfigured the piping a bit to take the potential strain off the fittings, and set it up with ordinary steel fittings. They've done OK for me at hydraulic pressures before so I suppose they'd be OK for 200 psi steam. I ...

I've used a lot of balls with wallowed out holes, long as they stay tight they work fine. But for the heavy duty gooseneck hitch I put on a one ton truck, I welded the ball flange in just to be sure it wouldn't work loose. It was in a one inch thick transformer base plate I found at the scrap yard. ...

on the steam stuff. Making all the boiler parts, about ready to weld er up. I'm modifying the design slightly to fit the stuff I have to work with. It's the ofeldt style water tube boiler. 10" steel pipe in the middle with lots of coiled boiler tubing welded in the sides. Instead of the round e...

I just use whatever good steel I can find at a scrap yard locally, however with something as potentially hazardous as a boiler I like overbuilding them. I have a 1/2" thick x 14" pipe section I plan on turning into a small welded fire tube boiler, with tubes that have working pressures of ...

Full lineshaft machine shop with small foundry and several narrow gauge locomotives. Ceased business in the 50's, Whole place sold to salvage company, Info at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Broa ... al_Company

It would be interesting to get a steam tractor or truck going, install radios and go steam mobile. Go camping and keep batteries charged with the wood fired steam engine.

I wouldn't need the certified boiler, long as I run it privately. But I do believe in super safe, and in my opinion ASME standards are a bit low. I like them over built. I did about 2.5-1 belt drive reduction to get the 3 L V6 auto engine speed down to equal the diesel. But have some slippage under ...