The Home Machinist!

Mine were fabricated in three sections to fit through the firebox door. They are 1/4 x 3/4 stainless bar bolted up with stainless threaded rod and nuts. The rods on the center section are staggered from the sides to allow them to nest together and maintain an even spacing. These are several years ol...

Any of the weed killers you can spray on your track are hazardous to your health. Some are less hazardous but they all come with safety precautions. EVERYTHING has a health issue. You drink too much water and it can kill you. Steve The original posted asked weed killers were not dangerous to his he...

Any of the weed killers you can spray on your track are hazardous to your health. Some are less hazardous but they all come with safety precautions.

Model railroad suppliers carry Tuscan red though in 1-2 oz. bottles it would be expensive. It's enough to make a sample card and have some mixed. Most paint stores have a color analyzer. I wanted box car red to paint a gondola. The off the shelf paints are good but I wanted a slight variation in the...

So the core print to support the core can be incorporated into the pattern.

Seems like a very good idea to add a GPS tracker. Be interested in your experiences with it, after a few months... Having retired from law enforcement, I’ve always found keeping a low profile is a good compliment to building a high level of physical security. For example, parking your trailer in in...

A few years ago I moved from a utility trailer and fitted tarp to an enclosed trailer to haul my cars. I also moved from a trailer that might not have been given a passing glance to a nice shiny one more likely to catch the eye of a thief. I have a tongue lock and park so to make it more than a back...

I use a pump oil can with a rigid spout and a radius on the tip. I get a little dribble but not much. I've used a oil can with more of a chamfer and it was harder to get seated on the oiler.

Nice video. I remember some of those guys. Three seconds in is John Pugh on his J1 Hudson. This was a great sounding locomotive. At 0:037 I'm wondering if that is Fred Hanson from South Bend. He built a 4-4-0, then a Pacific and a Hudson. At 0:46 is Lee Wright on his box cab electric. This was the f...

Box car red though it's more a brown than a red. The brownish primers in a rattle can are pretty close and looked decent with a clear coat over them. In the Microscale color chart you can see some railroads had their own version. Tuscan red was a Pennsylvania color. https://www.microscale.com/Floqui...

Carl, It's been an interesting story. Looks like you'll get a few miles in before winter. What did the interior of the boiler look like? Back to the firebox corrosion this is the firebox on the coal fired boiler my dad and I built in 2005. Below the arch I reached in with a brush and cleaned it up a...

Nothing looks amiss in the brief description. Blacksmith's prefer a low smoke coal that clumps and cokes nicely. The dealer we got all our coal from had discovered blacksmiths like fines and live steamers did not. They screened their bagged coal and added fines to "blacksmith" coal. Coal d...