The Home Machinist!

Just make it 8 weeks. When you get it in 4, you will talk about the great service!

Unrelated to trains and machining, I discovered this the other day:
I figure there are a few others like me here that might appreciate it.
One more thing for the bucket list.
SteveR.

Harold,
Thank you for your wisdom and your time you take to share it.
Much appreciated!
SteveR

This was briefly mentioned in this recent thread,viewtopic.php?t=112908 but I think it deserves it's own topic.

From the Little Engines Facebook page(https://www.facebook.com/littleenginessteam/)
SteveR

How about looking at plastic car ends.
There are a lot of materials out there that can readily processed that can take more of a beating
than out of aluminum

Cast polyurethane resin in a silicone mold?
SteveR

What about copper sheet? Easy to anneal and work hardens after you press it. Nice and bendy when annealed.
SteveR

Yep - In progress.
Good idea to get way ahead of disassembly.
Thanks for the reminder!
SteveR

Not original to me, but these are helpful to me.

I thought twice about posting, and then thought; "what the heck, it's the Junk Drawer"!
SteveR

Seems to me like the drivers don't turn as freely as they might. So I decided to build a rotator to make it easier to work on the underside where the pedestal binders are. This is similar to the one ChuckHacket-844 describes here: https://www.chaski.org/homemachinist/viewtopic.php?t=106643 . Since I...

Couple of thoughts: 1) Your test piece is not like the spherical part - the test piece is a big block connecting to a thin tube. Perhaps the block didn't heat up enough. You could put a thermocouple directly on the parts to make sure it's at the temperature you think it is. 2) Ask the manufacturer f...

I was wondering though if anyone had a good photo or drawing of how they did the articulated connections between the engines and boiler chassis/carriage assembly. The Wikipedia article has a drawing (for a similar locomotive) by Peter Manning showing the pivot points and here it is: Manning Garratt...

Martin Lewis said that castings were a big time saver, but I think this is only true if you are used to working with castings! I haven't seen anyone ask the question of "how close the casting is to the final dimensions?" This will have a big impact on which features are machined in which o...