2-1/2" NG class A shay.

[Brian Hilgert]

Thanks Larry and Marty,
It was a pleasure talked with both of you and I really appreciate the words of encouragement!

I have been working on the shay but we are expecting our second child in about a month, so process has been slowed due to "getting ready" activities.

Mostly, I have been working on all the frame detail parts; Running board brackets, Truss rod brackets, brake beams, etc.

Below is a photo of the frame parts that I have finished or close to finishing. Sorry for the blurry photo.

I still have quite a few mounts, supports, an brackets to make but I am making progress.

[Brian Hilgert]

I was able to get a couple more nick nacks made for the shay. First is these little eye bolts. I found some nice 4-40 eyebolts that is used with RC airplanes at the hobby shop. I started with those, soldered a washer and then turned the washer down to the correct diameter. My goal was to make them look like casted eyebolts.

The next photo shows the truss rod plates. (not sure what they are call) These are the parts that transfers the tension from the two truss rods from the frame to the one larger truss rod that goes under the queen posts.

The next parts are the brake lever mounts that are riveted to the bottom side of the frame.

Not shown are the matching scale nuts that I made for the brake lever mounts and the truss rods. I usually buy the scale nuts and there is a good reason... It took me 3 nights to make 20 nuts! I was having a heck of a time with the cut off tool in the lathe. I tried different tools, sharping it different ways, tried adjusting the tool height too many times to count, etc., etc. It would either rub, sing, or dig in and stop the lathe. There seemed to be a lot of vertical movement of the tool during the cutting operation. I made sure everything was tight but maybe the old 9" south bend is just too worn.

Anyways, more brake links.

[Brian Hilgert]

Still working on the frame nick nacks, the following parts are the End timber angle braces.

The originals are one piece of steel all bent up as shown in the following drawing.

end timber supports.JPG (22.82 KiB) Viewed 5973 times

I started with .25" x 1" CRS and milled it down to .22" I figured that I would just use 2 pieces, bend it up in my bending fixture, weld it, and be done with it. Well, that didn't work as planned. The CRS cracked way too easily even when I relieve cut it half way through. The funny thing is that all the bending that I did with the arch bars on the trucks, only once did I have a problem with a small crack starting to form. So I tried heating it red hot and bending it. I didn't like the results, even after I made a die to bend the bar over. So on to plan C. The L pieces, I made out of x 2"x3" Angle 1/4" thick, and the C pieces I machined out of a 1"x1" bar stock.
This picture is before I machined the inside radius with a ball end mill.

Machining the inside corners.

I was trying a indexable milling cutter that was given to me by someone at work. It can really hog out the material but I do not care for the surface finish. I might go back and try filing or stoning out the machining marks.

[Brian Hilgert]

The End timber angle braces are finished,

With the frame Nic nacks on hold until I do more research, I decided to start on the axle pumps. The eccentrics are already mounted onto the axles. I made them out of the steel blanks that I cut off of the ring gears. I wish that I had made them out of Bronze or Cast Iron. With them being steel, this leaves me with making the eccentric straps out of Bronze or Steel with thin bronze split bearings. After talking to my Dad, he mentioned that he had a cut-off chunk of 660 bronze that is 6" dia and .625 thick. Because of this, I decided to make the complete straps out of 660. The straps are only .25 thick so I am hoping to cut the profile and then splice them with a slitting saw. I only have about .1" of material window to use a .0625" slitting saw. hopefully, if everything goes right, I'll split them down the middle and still have .020 to clean up. My slitting saw is not deep enough to cut all the way through, I'm hoping to make numerous cuts around the outside using the slitting saw and the mill, then finish the inside with the band saw. The slots from the slitting saw should keep the bad saw blade from wandering off center. we will see.

The first picture is roughing out the profile on the band saw.

Second picture is truing up the eccentric end where the mating strap mounts to. I left the middle .070" high so that I can put a small center drill mark on the centerline. This will help me locate it when I center it on the rotary table and the lathe.

My slow progress has been slowed even more with the addition of our second healthy baby Boy!

Introducing:
Kyle Arthur Hilgert
7lb 4oz
20" long

[boaterri]

Congrats on your new fireman apprentice!!

Rick

[Pontiacguy1]

Awesome! Congrats!

One thing you might want to do is something I learned from Gene Allen Himself: He put a 0.008" to 0.010" piece of shim stock cut and bolted between the two halves of the eccentric strap before he machined them. He then assembled them on the eccentrics with the shims in place so that they would be round.

Why did he do this? To account for future wear. When the eccentric straps got worn and loose in the future, he would be able to simply remove the thin shims, bolt the two eccentric halves back together, and then most, if not all of the slop would be gone. It worked really great on the locomotive I was rebuilding, which was built by Gene himself. It had about 0.012" slop or so on the forward eccentric when I took it apart. Put it back together and you could barely feel any looseness in it at all.

[jcbrock]

That's great Brian! My 3 boy projects are done and they all turned out well. They do slow a Shay project down, I would say we are about even on those but now I'm waiting for new shop space.

[Brian Hilgert]

Thanks everyone. I hope my 2 boys turn out ok. A whole new world of joys and worries pop up as soon as you find out you are going to be a daddy.

Good idea on the shims. Thank you.
B

[Brian Hilgert]

I was able to get some more work done on the eccentric straps. The next photo shows the center drill marks that will aid in machining on the rotary table and the reamed hole for the rams.

Setting up the rotary table

Machining the outside profile.

Outside profiles are finished

[Brian Hilgert]

Once the outside profile was complete. The two haves where spot drilled, drilled, tapped and bolted together to bore the eccentric hole.

Mounted in the lathe with the eccentric hole bored to size.

Everything was going surprisingly smooth until I tried to part the two halves using a slitting saw.

Mounted on the rotary table, I was able to work the saw around and move the clamps as needed. I was using a 1/16 saw and I had .100" of material to work with. As I moved the clamps, I would insert 1/16 stock into the slot if I needed to clamp at a previous cut position.

At this point, I'm thinking to myself: man this is going great! Until I took the part off the rotary table and noticed that the slitting saw wandered and cut too deep on the one side. With only a .100 window to work with, the one side was undersize in several places. Luckily, those places were not critical areas that would be a bearing surface. If I had it over again. I would try marking it out and carefully use the band saw.

To cosmetically fix the problem, I filled the low areas with Staybrite solder before fly cutting to the proper thickness.

It worked out ok and once it is painted black, no one will ever know.

The last picture is the semi-finish straps mounted on the eccentrics within the truck, I still want to round the corners where the bolts are and drill for an oil passage.

[Brian Hilgert]

I'm still making slow progress on the shay. I drilled the oil hole and rounded the corners to finish the eccentric cranks.

Next task was the pump body that holds the check valves. Just some simple machining operations.

The next picture shows the relief slots milled. This is so the water will pass around the check ball when it is lifted.

The pump bodies are finished I need to take a couple more pictures to show them completed. By the time I get down to the shop at around 9PM, My cell phone is usually dead and I don't always get to take pictures.

The next picture shows the machining of the pump cylinder.

[Brian Hilgert]

The pump rams are ground stainless steel. I machined two X-ring grooves on the one end and a slot and hole on the other end.

The next photo shows the finished rams, cylinders, mounting nut and X-ring retaining nut. I decided to put an X-ring on the eccentric side of the ram. I might replace this with a ring of felt to help with lubricating the rams. I'm not sure what will work better and X-ring or felt.

I just finished the top and bottom caps for the pump body last night. Once again, my cell phone / camera was dead so I didn't get any pictures. I'll try to take some photos tonight. The only thing left to do is to silver solder the pump cylinders to the bodies. After that, it's mounting the pumps and back onto the frame.