# GEA, a 3.5'' live steam narrow gauge locomotive



## Henk (Dec 13, 2010)

A few months ago, I purchased the plans for a narrow gauge live steam locomotive. 

I have to disappoint you - I am in no hurry. I intend to occasionally update my build status. The main use however will be that whenever I have a problem I can demonstrate what I am actually doing. Also, I have been helped here. I don't have much help to offer (hopefully that will change though), so I thought at least I can add some pictures of what I am producing. 

So the "GEA" is a model that is built quite a lot here in the Netherlands. You may want to look at the movie, the first locomotive is a GEA at 1:02. 
http://www.youtube.com/v/QmZu3O8Oa9A&hl=nl_NL&feature=player_embedded&version=3

The reasons for me to choose this loco are relative simplicity, it is not an exact model of a full sized loco (but very much modeled after this one : http://www.smalspoormuseum.nl/Materieel/Stoomlocs/stloc1.htm) so it is OK to deviate. Also it is a small size, so my machines should be big enough for it. 

I will start off with the wheels. I get most of my raw material from the dump -recycling. It is in biking distance and I wouldn't know where else to get some of the stuff. For the wheels I found some ends of bar stock. Three lumps of various diameters (95 to 110 / wheel diameter appr. 72 mm), one of which was thick enough for two wheels. This meant that I know understand why you all love your bandsaw so much! However, for the amount of serious sawing that I need to do, I cant afford to use up the space. Anyway, being ends of barstock, it still had a material code on in, suggesting it was hot rolled steel. I have no idea whether it is relevant for the wheels yes or no so I use it. BTW, when I do finalize this project, I never expect to use it much /so I guess I should be all right. 







It took me quite long to get the wheel turned to looking like almost real wheels. It seems that I did find out that the ends are not the nicest parts of a bar.... I am also not realy satisfied with the surface quality of the recess, or at least where I had to blend the two directions going in, an going out. Of course I tried to make this not that visible in the photographs!





I kept the rolling surface still straight and the axle hole 1 mm smaller. I left that for after milling the spokes. My reasoning was that I want the axle hole and the rolling surface (i do not know the proper englich word, but I guess you understand) to be turned in one setup. And for that I needed the spokes. I will make up a fixture so that I can screw the wheels to a plate through the spoke holes, and then mount the plate in the 4 jaw. 

This is BTW, also the first time that I used the RT, other than making the adapter plate to hold the 4 jaw. . 





. 
Somewhere I hope that I would have figured out how to use the RT efficiently, but without a shadow of a doubt Bogs flywheel course helped me a lot. 

After getting it off the RT, this is what I have (three more to go). 




As said, it still needs accurate sizing and angle of the flange and surface. 

For the very obervant: the drive pin hole (again I am open to suggestion for the regular English word!) is off by half a mm. As I kept this hole also still undersize (1 mm) I may be able to correct it. I have every intention not to remake this wheel! Also I need to try whether using the dremel to smooth the edges of the spokes results in nice looking spokes. Luckily no-one will pay close attention to the inside of the wheel, so I know where to test this. 

I have prodcued some parts of the frame, which I will show later on, but this is it for now. 

Henk


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## kvom (Dec 13, 2010)

The English term for that is crank pin. The offsets from the axle bore needs to be quite identical on all wheels, or else you will get binding on the drive/side rods. I can think of several fixes depending on how far off you are.

1) Bore (not drill) the proper size hole in the proper location if the bad hole is completely enclosed by the good one.

2) Bore a hole in the proper location but larger than spec. In order to enclose the wrong hole. Then turn the crank pin with one diameter for the hole and another for the rod ends.

3) Use the hole as-is and machine an eccentric crank pin.

4) Make all the other wheels the same as this one and adjust the length of the side rods to fit. This solution affects the stroke of the piston as well as possible the timing of the valve gear, but that may not be a problem if the difference is small.

The problem with using mystery metal for wheels, as I have been told, is that they will wear differently. You definitely want the wheels on each side of an axle to be made from the same material.


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## Henk (Dec 14, 2010)

Kvom (assuming that's the way I should address you)

Thanks for taking a look and commenting / educating me on some English terms and machining. 

Indeed I will start of with 1 (which should just be possible), but thee is not real issue with ending up with 2. The problem is mainly cosmetic, as I got the distance crank pin to the axle right, the hole is offcentre w.r.t. the spoke. I don't know how I managed to do that. I will do final boring probably on the lathe, as I do not have a boring bar for the mill, and preferable having each set of wheels that will be coupled together also mounted together. 

On the material of the wheels: what I forgot to mention is that all wheel lumps had the same number and colorcoding on them, though the size varied. I liked this in general - at least that machining would be the same, so I did not have to learn for each wheel separately how to machine it. But indeed wheel wear is an additional bonus.


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## kvom (Dec 14, 2010)

Given that the crank pin is attached to the side rod, it's highly unlikely that the off-center spoke would even be visible.


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## bentprop (Dec 14, 2010)

Hallo,Henk.You have already found out that material from the "lompenboer" can be hit or miss.But usually there's enough there to get rid of the rubbish content,and have a reasonable item.
Not being familiar with the material code on your steel,it sounds like it will easily take the little wear you'll put on it.
I like the spoke layout on your wheel.Normally,the "counterweight" area is completely blank,but yours with the 2 little holes looks nicely different.
Please be sure to post further progress,I for one am always interested in loco's.


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## MachineTom (Dec 16, 2010)

That a great looking wheel. Since you did so well with the RT, get yourself a corner rounding cutter and follow the edges around just as you did when you milled them. The results will surpass anything a dremel can do.


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## Henk (Dec 20, 2010)

Hans, I hadn't figured you as being of dutch origin, but still I will use mostly English, or at least my version of it. 

MachineTom : Thanks. However of course I tried to photograph flatteringly. On the subject of rounding bits: First of all I haven't got one, but also I haven't figured out how then to nicely blend in from the spoke to the rim in that case. Also specifically on the hub side, I do not see how a rounding bit can come sufficiently close, so there would always be a part where I need to do filing / sanding. Putting the wheel back in the RT resulting in a not very nice angular spoke position is something I do not look forward to - but I could get over that rather easily. 

On the subject of progress, wheel #2 came out rather OK (left). So probably that is why I apparently became less concentrated, leading to a minor nuisance on wheel #3 (right). 




As you can see, there are a few too many holes on the counterweight area. What happened is that I drilled the holes around the crank pin hole to close together, so the width of the spoke there was 9 iso 11 mm. Luckily for me the counterweight size is sufficiently big to cover this up. So I simply swapped the crank pin position with the counterweight. I can simply plug the holes and no-one will know (not counting any of you).


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## MachineTom (Dec 20, 2010)

Do those wheels get tires, or they just run as is.


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## Henk (Dec 21, 2010)

MachineTom, 

They will be run as is, after machining the taper to the rim. My impression was that it is not very common to use separate tires on model locomotive. This is mainly based on the fact that I have not seen any reference to it on the internet. Also my build manual (predating internet by almost 2 decades) assumes single wheels. 

Reasons that I could think for this of are:
1) Very limited wear due to little usage anyway (not many model locomotives will run the same amount of time as the originals). 
2) The load on the wheels is smaller than prototypical due to the weight being a third power (volume) and surface area a square power. 
3) The tolerance in mm (or whatever your favorite unit) for a shrink fit (note: I have never tried one) for small wheels is more difficult than when the wheel is more than a meter. 
4) no one will ever see the difference. 

I am definitely no expert, so feel free to add / correct. 
So I'd say doing separate tires makes sense when you expect a lot of wear, and / or are very concerned with being as close to the original as possible, and are willing to go to great lengths. The former I do not expect, and the latter I am not. BTW, if I see have a lot of wear, I can still turn down the wheels some more, and retrofit tires.


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## kvom (Dec 21, 2010)

For small steel wheels such as these, there is little/no need for tires. If the center section were to be machined from aluminum or brass, then steel tires would be appropriate. As I understand it, the tread profile is important. The flange width/depth needs to be able to pass through switch frogs, the tread angle helps keep the wheels on the rails through curves, and any sharp edges need to be chamfered to avoid injuries when rerailing or carrying.


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## MachineTom (Dec 23, 2010)

The reason I asked about the tires was that the wheel profile was so square. My experience with model trains showed the need for taper on the flanges, to avoid derailing on turns. This loco is just a bit larger than the 80 year old standard gauge now running around my grandsons xmas tree. There is good amount of taper on the flanges of that loco.


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## Henk (Dec 25, 2010)

It not only looks square - it is. 



			
				Henk  said:
			
		

> I kept the rolling surface still straight and the axle hole 1 mm smaller. I left that for after milling the spokes.



I don't know yet how much taper I will put in. If I combine the taper on drawing with how I understand how a train behaves, the turning radius (with the flanges just touching the rail) is ~ 30 meter, less if the track is widened in the curve.

Data: 3 degrees angle on tread, diameter of center tread 72 mm, nominal track width 89 mm, and max sideways displacement of the wheels on the track of +/- 1 mm (so 87 mm width on the flanges). 

My, your grandson does have a large house to boast more or less this size track inside....


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## Royal Viking (Dec 25, 2010)

Sounds like a great project.    I'm looking forward to seeing more as you go.


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## kvom (Dec 25, 2010)

For my 7.5" build the flange taper is 10 degrees and the tread taper is 3 degrees.


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## Henk (Jan 2, 2011)

Some progress, but it looks like more than I really achieved since y last post, as I did the frame plates before the wheels. The fourth wheel was milled without much to tell about it - no mayor errors. 
So now I have four wheels in a shape that look like locomotive wheels, but still need the essential stuff finalized. As I do not want to rush that part, I decided to get back to the frame. 

The frame size is such that it just matches with the mill travel. Or rather the other way around as I bought the mill after deciding for this project. Still I had to figure quite a bit to set it all up. Somewhere on HMEM I read that 1-2-3 blocks will be used more than you imagined : From my recent experience I can confirm that. I also did not regret buying the clamping kit. 




Maybe next time I would try putting the frame plate horizontal - probably a stiffer setup - but at least this worked. I sort of forgot why I did not. Probably because this was the first more or less serious milling I attempted, and I did not know how well one can clamp that way, and vertically I could use the vice. 

The sides I did do sideways. 




I don't have a ruler this long (just measuring tape), but overall length tolerance is not that important. I did learn that the measurement tape has an error close to a mm for this length (450 mm). I guess I have the length right within a mm. BTW, the frame is 3 mm thick and feels a bit flimsy to me, so I hope that when it is all put together it is indeed sufficiently stiff. 

Milling the recesses for the bearings is straightforward:




The frame looks very tilted, but it is just a bad photographer not keeping the camera level. 

Now in the drawing the connections between the frame plates is described as: "rivet together with 2 mm rivets and 2 mm angle iron". No actual patterns were supplied. As I wanted to keep going, I just went ahead. Now I think that I should have put more though into rivet placement on the corners. I also need to practice riveting before actually doing that. 

Transferring the holes to the angle iron worked like a charm. Clamping using the machinist clamps was indeed very convenient - sure beat trying to depend on my limited tolerances to put the holes on two parts in matching positions.  





The full frame is now looking like this (front is on the right): 








It is bolted with M2 screws. It will riveted rather late in the build as it needs to be taken apart quite a lot (mainly after cylinders have been positioned correctly). 	

Now all of a sudden it looks like something, where before it was only a bunch of plates. And I do admit to having put the wheels in the generally correct area using some pencils for axles, and feeling all warm inside. I actually may even finish this project before the end of the next decade!


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## doubletop (Jan 2, 2011)

Henk

Another loco to follow, thanks. You've made a great start

Pete


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## Henk (Jan 15, 2013)

So finally some progress after 2 years.

I kind of stalled at the thought of doing the rivets. For some reason I wanted to be able to press them. And this would them mean making tooling to guide the anvils across a rather large distance. This put me off. Just hammering the rivets into shape also did not prove to be very satisfactory. 

I remembered reading about riveting somewhere and the various anvils/mandrils/dies (any native speaker around that can confirm that the latter is the right word?) that would be needed.

So on an afternoon a few weeks ago, i just made a few of those dies. It worked relatively good. One of the things that I did do this time was to really anneal the rivets. I think that was a key step. You can see the result below. As a matter of fact I think that the picture looks better than reality. The heads are too high, and still displaced laterally-leading to irregular visual head position.


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## Henk (Jan 15, 2013)

A detailed view of some rivetson the back end:





As you may notice, the frame is not yet fully riveted. It can still be taken apart by loosening the M2 bolts.All pieces of angle iron are riveted on one side, and the other side is bolted. Final riveting is done later in the build. But at least now I do have the confidence that I will be able to manage that when I get there.


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## thayer (Jan 15, 2013)

This looks like a grand project and the video is wonderful. It will be fun to watch your progress over time. I wish I had tools large enough to build a project of that size.

Thayer


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## Henk (Feb 3, 2013)

Thayer, 
Actually the size of the mill and lathe was defined by wanting to make a locomotive of approximate this size. I consider them the right size for me. Bigger would eat up too much space for my liking - I still need to put bicycles in my garage.

I the mean time I made footplates. 









Nothing spectacular, but progress happens one piece at the time. I will try to make some more shots of actual machining and set-ups, as that is what I look for in other threads / posts as well.

Btw, I can't seem to find the spellchecker anymore. Is that just me, or is that option no longer present?

Henk


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## Henk (Feb 7, 2013)

So on to the hornblocks guides. Machined from 10x10 mm, with a length such that there are two from each length. 





And in the vice: 




I was a bit worried that there was not enough meat held in the vice, but I could do 0.75 mm depth, which was OK I guess. I am still a bit squeezy about getting too much smoke from the cutting oil. I do not want to ruin my cutter. 

And there are 8 sufficiently equal parts. 




And before rivetting onto the frame plates: 




And after:




I did find that (not unexpectedly), the tolerance of drilling and riveting is not really 0. The actual slot inner dimension between 24.80 and 25.00 with the nominal size 25 mm. Parallelism of each slot is OK I guess (say .03 mm max). As I have not made the hornblocks themselves yet, I may end up making the dimentions of those slot specific. But then again, that is of course less satisfying. So probably what I will do is target the hornblocks a bit under 25, and see whether the natural variation will suggest to assign them to a specific spot, or that I need to skim the guides.


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## kvom (Feb 9, 2013)

Locomotives can't be machined too precisely as you undoubtedly know.  I've been advised on my build that they should be made "halfway worn out".  The axle boxes will need room to flex.


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## Henk (Feb 20, 2013)

kvom, 

Sorry, I missed your reply. Actually I did not know about the halfway worn part for locomotives. Thanks for that piece of info. In the mean time I have fitted the hornblocks (before finishing them fully though), see next post.  BTW, this happened to me before, getting good advice, which I only digested after already having continued. I should probably improve there... 

I have wondered about the amount of play one should built in for sideways movement of the hornblocks. When there is not play at all, then the axle does not have the freedom to have the left hand side higher / lower than the right hand side. So I indeed targeter for a not so tight fit sideways (0.2 mm). I hope that is sufficient, otherwise I need to increase play there. 

Henk


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## Henk (Feb 20, 2013)

The hornblocks themselves were machined from a single bar of "some steel". Sorry, I do not know how to distinguish hot rollled from cold rolled. I guess it is just st-37 (and I do not know the international term for that other than just plain iron). It machined nicely. 

Flycutting: 




I was not really happy with the surface finish, but at least there were some marks form both sides of the cutter -though there was a clear dominance from one side. So tramming was not too bad.

No pictures from milling the side recess, but nothing spectacular. 

Sawing of the individual pieces: 




Yes, I would like to have a bandsaw, but I cannot afford to reserve the space it would need. And to be honest, it only takes 5-10 minutes to cutoff (each), and it almost feel like doing honest work!






Finishing off in length + smoothing some edges:





Though of course this is not visible, I was quite happy with the tolerance on the length, they were all within +/- 0.02 mm. This dimension is completely uncritical, but I try anyway - and only throw away stuff when it is not usable.

Henk


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## Henk (Feb 20, 2013)

So I stil had the problem of fitting the hornblocks to the guides. I considered milling the guides, and started making a milling setup: 




The round bar between the frame plates and the glue clamp are there to improve rigidity. However, after making this setup, it dit not feel anywhere near stiff enough to do decent milling. Surface finish would be horrible, and I really needed to take off just a few 0.01 of a mm. 

So I decided to use a file instead, and put some tape around the other end. 




Because there is the guide on the other side, one cannot accidentally file under the wrong angle. I was very glad with this, as I do not consider myself brilliant on filing. I did notice that because one cannot really put any pressure, the metal removal rate was very low. This suited me fine - I only wanted to remove a little material. 

So now I have the four hornblocks fitted (in this picture they are still a tight fit, but afterwards I did some more carefull filing, and now they are all a nice sliding fit) 





I also got to use the engineering blue (not on any picture) to show the high spots. That tube had been waiting for two years to be used, but it really was helpfull.

Henk


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## Henk (Jun 2, 2013)

One hornblock bored:



The instructions proposed a production method I did not really like. It involved first boring, slit-sawing out the inner block, inserting a piece of brass with the same thickness as the saw. I choose to make a little block inside first - I felt it was then easier to retain accuracy between inner and outer block. The position of the inner block is maintained by a little pin that is barely visible (left hand side of left block). Were I to do it again, I would probably increase the size of the inner block. It is now nominally equal in size as the hole itself. This leads to a very sharp edge internally. After it has been fully assembled, this will not be a bother, as there will also be bronze bearing shells anyway. But still, it does not look right when it is disassembled.


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## Henk (Jun 8, 2013)

Then the bearing shells,, two bars of bronze soldered together: 




Turned with parting line on center.




Then a minor mishap: After boring and reaming of the last shell, I noticed after I took it out of the collet, that one side of the solder joint came loose. I turned the OD down a bit, and press-fitted thin ring on both ends. 
That is how the following ugly duckling came to be: 




Turning dow the center part on a spigot posed no problem. I had a little sweat when turning down the edge, but that was also no problem. The reatining nut put in enough pressure to stabilize it. You can see the remnants of the two rings hanging there. 



Which makes current frame status as follows:


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## napoleonb (Jun 10, 2013)

Dat ziet er vreselijk mooi uit Henk, petje af.

Really nice solution for that riveting. I'm awaiting the parts for my Decauville 020 to arrive from the laser-cutter and was thinking what to do with the rivets as I want to be able to dissassemble it.


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## Henk (Jun 12, 2013)

Thanks. For the rivetting I would love to take credit, but must admit that I am just following the instructions. 

Also for some reason sometimes the photos look better than reality. And you probably understand for some reason that these photos have a higher likelyhood of ending up over here!


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## Herbiev (Jun 12, 2013)

Coming along nicely Henk. Great work. Great pictures.


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## Henk (Oct 27, 2013)

Now back to the wheels. They needed the profile of 3 degrees and the axle hole bored. I had already beveled the spokes. For the latter I had to rechuck the wheels in the rotary table and 4 jaw. This was easier than I had anticipated. As a side note, apparently it is possible to align stuff in the rotary table by ~ 1 deg.

Profiling:*



This is done in a single setup on a simple jig in the 4-jaw. Nothing spectacular - just rather time consuming. The radius of 1 mm I did with 'manual cnc' with steps of 15 degrees.

There was the issue of one of the wheels with a few holes drilled on the wrong (i.e. The counterweight side) places. I want to really press fit the wheels onto the axles - this is a new operation (and level of accuracy) for me. So I thought it was a good idea to get some practice and also press fit some rods in there.*



This was a good practice, which reinforced my intent of indeed press fitting the wheels.Then some cleaning up of this wheel. You can still see the four former holes.*


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## kvom (Oct 27, 2013)

As you likely know, opposite-side wheels need to be accurately quartered to prevent the side rods from binding.  For a press fit this will require some sort of jig to align the second wheel on the axle.


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## Henk (Oct 28, 2013)

Kvom,

I am aware of that. I really do appreciate any feedback such as your help. The jig is already done, see below.*





It's built-up and I opened up the axle holes opposite from the cranks. This should ensure maximum accuracy in that direction I think, while still allowing taking the finished axle from the jig. The biggish holes on the left are non functional- they happened to be present in the scrap I had lying around.

The axles I did not turn between centers.*My experience in turning between centers is that after a while, there was always a significant play on the tail end.

I dialed them into the 4 jaw to less then 10 um tir, turned one end, end then flipped it (and of course dialed in the other end).*
With a succes rate per side of close to 50% you can imagine there is quite a number of 110 mm pieces of silversteel in my scrap bin.*The diameter on the axles side I targeted 10.04 mm with at most 5 micron deviation. The axle holes are 10.02 mm.*

But before using the quartering jig, first I need to get the crank pin holes to size and in correct position on the wheels.

Henk
P.S. Apologies for the stars with each return character i typed this message in my email program and the stars appear after copying.*


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## RonGinger (Oct 28, 2013)

I missed this thread when it started, great job and nice photos.

I am in Boothbay Maine, and we have a narrow gauge museum here that has 4 engines that look exactly like your model- They were made by Henschel in Germany. Here is a link to a page that shows some of the activity there. http://plsntcov.8m.com/BRV/Railroad1.htm 

Are there plans for this engine? I have often thought of modeling one, but the work of measuring and drawing plans has put me off..


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## kvom (Oct 29, 2013)

On my loco I used Loctite 620 with a slip fit to fasten the wheels to the axle, rather than pressing.  I felt more comfortable with that, and it was easier to have a do-over (heat joint with torch and press out).


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## Henk (Nov 15, 2015)

Hi all, 

Long time no posting - mainly due to slow progress. Life and stuff.

I will pick up where I left off - I just have to dig into my memory for some parts. And also now progress will be slow, but I am not in a huge hurry. 

So pressing the wheels onto the axles, using the jig I showed above. 





Minor issue is that there is a small wobble. I do not know yet whether this will turn out to be a problem. I'll see after I tested the frame on its wheels on a track. As to the why of the wobble, The vice is not perfect to keep the pressing force perpendicular to the axle. BTW: long time ago I did get a small press for exactly this action... I just forgot to take into account that the full axle AND the wheel thickness needed to fit in. Bummer. So I considered myself lucky not having to get a bigger one and had this vice lying around to do the job. Maybe I should have gotten the larger press after all.


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## bazmak (Nov 15, 2015)

Nice work,i will be following this post with interest,it brings back happy memories.I would like to add comments
1 Making the wheels from solid i assume without CNC is not easy and i think you are doing an excerlent job
2 I assume you predrilled a couple or more suitable holes and bolted the frames together before drilling and machining completely as a pair ?
3 One of my big problems was drilling the crankpins accurately and great care care with quartering the wheels.I made a drilling fixture and a jig but found way down the line tight spots in the connecting rods.Very difficult to overcome
without great accuracy
4.I made a tapered mandrel,mounted the wheel between collet and tailstock centre and final turned the outside of the wheels/treads at the same setting
My congratulations so far and i will be following this thread with great interest
If you read up on other models no matter how different, setups jigs and fixtures
are very similar in showing the best/easiest methods to make different items
Regards Barry


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## Henk (Nov 16, 2015)

> >Making the wheels from solid i assume without CNC is not easy and i think you are doing an excerlent job


Thanks - admittedly I think the wheels look better in photos than in real life. Given the amount of work I guess it would have been wiser to not do spokes. but then again those spokes were my main excuse for getting the turn table in the first place.  



> I assume you predrilled a couple or more suitable holes and bolted the frames together before drilling and machining completely as a pair ?


yep



> 3 One of my big problems was drilling the crankpins accurately and great care care with quartering the wheels.I made a drilling fixture and a jig but found way down the line tight spots in the connecting rods.Very difficult to overcome


 
Though I have progressed somewhat, I am still not 100% sure that the quartering is good enough - so I keep my fingers crossed. 

Henk


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## Henk (Nov 16, 2015)

Here's a pic with the frame on its wheels. 





With a lot of imagination there is a resemblence to a loco. I do think I need to loosen up the hornblocks somewhat to have a nice springing action. Specifically the allowed tilt of the axles needs to be increased.

Henk


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## Henk (Nov 21, 2015)

The very rustig start of two connection and two coupling rods :



For one rod ( in the front) the thickness has already been reduced from 6 to 5 mm.
They would take an incredibly long time to finish. I think this picture is 20 months old.

Henk


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## Henk (Dec 11, 2015)

Intermediate state: 
	

	
	
		
		

		
			





And a near finished one with a very bad camera



I had quite a lot of headaches on the radii - specifically on de long side. I did not want to make a specific setup tool. I thinned down the center part and tried to blend in the radius while having the rod 'head' in the vice. Sorry no pics. Due to this not very stiff setup i had quite a lot of work to remove the machining marks. 
But all in all it came out sufficiently ok. 
Henk


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## Henk (Jun 1, 2016)

So these three pieces of mystery bronze need to be converted to two cilinders. 



They will be in three pieces. The thick bar is 55 mm and will be used for the cilinder itself. Btw it is long enough to support redoing both cilinders. Not that I look forward to it, but it does ease my mind.


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## Henk (Jun 1, 2016)

Short piece reduced to a bar and the other bit to partly round/ rectangular. 


The length is still for two cilinders.  

Here you can see how they will be used together ( for a single cilinder)


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## bazmak (Jun 1, 2016)

I am following this post with great interest and can say you are doing an excerlent job.A previous comment was to not build too tight but halfworn
condition.This should be held in good stead.The hornblocks need to be radiused on the inside of all 4 edges to allow the axle to move up and down out of level or to rock to suit track conditions and avoid binding


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## Henk (Jun 4, 2016)

I will take that into account but only after trial on an actual track. I want to see whether the track width seems ok and the wobble not too bad. This means only reworking once. 

Boring the hole in which the actual cilinder is mounted requires a jig: 



The pieces are longer to enable screwing them to the jig from behind. The actual boring is interupted, but sufficiently rigid. The two pieces to be bored are screwed together.


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## Henk (Jun 4, 2016)

And after boring, now need to remove the lower part:


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## Henk (Jun 5, 2016)

The actual cilinder is an easy job done on a mandrel. Accuracy is not really important as final dimensioning is done after soldering the assembly. 



Trial fit of all components:



The two non cilinder parts are screwed together with bronze screws thereby keeping the cilinder in its place.


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## Henk (Jun 9, 2016)

To hopefully help the proces later on I drilled/milled the steam ports before brazing. 

. Main reason for doing so was to mill the channels as well. 

. Turned out to be a stupid idea. What I did not realize was that the cilinder flange is smaller than the depth of the channel that I just made. Marginally so, but too much to fill with solder. So therefor i filled up the channel with a piece of bronze, screwed into position with a bronze screw. Should be totally invisible. But at least I captured it before doing the same for all channels.


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## Henk (Jun 10, 2016)

Even though I filled up the hole, the seams were apparently too big- as you can see below:


Not leaktight. You can also see that the screw was not properly soldered - I had hoped that it would wick up. I also learned that it took longer than I expected to get it up to temp. So apparantly the mass is really relevant- not just the heat loss due to bad insulation/ Large surface area. I forgot to take pics after the second try of soldering. In this second try I made sure that gravity helped the flow of solder instead of orienting the cilinder such that I had a good view of the seam. I know my place now... Also now the screw is well covered.


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## Henk (Jun 11, 2016)

After boring to size and some cleanup it start looking usable again: 


 You can see the tapped hole in the right hand side, that will be plugged, just prior to soft soldering, and the cilinder caps in progress. The 'R' is for the right hand side , and the flange where it is written is the one faced in the same setup as the bore.


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## Henk (Jun 12, 2016)

Btw minor problem is that on one side, the cilinder is 0.03 mm larger (at the end closer to the chuck). I still do not understand why. One possibility is that due to flex where the tailstock side ( due to the large distance to the chuck) is deflected. But then it would be deflected by the  cutter, but then it should be touching the workpiece. And what I noticed is that the boring bar kept cutting at the chuck end. It no longer touched the tailstock end! And I did between 5 and ten spring cuts. The other option could be misalignment of the headstock, but I did a test ( external turning ) afterwards to exclude that. Anyway, fact is as is, but I would like to understand to be able to prevent it from happening next time.


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## Henk (Jun 18, 2016)

I intended to try chaindrilling the passage from cilinder to steam ports with 4 drill locations. The drawing called for 2.5 mm by 8. I started with 1.8 mm or so. First hole : drill broken ( just a small bit , rather deep) . Second hole same story (1.9 mm). I really am a slow learner. Stepped up again in drill size. Bummer. So now I had 4 half holes with bits of drills of various sizes. Sorry - no pics. That was definitely the point in time to stop. And think. Next shop time milled using a 2 mm mill from a deep hole towards a hole where the broken drill was not very deep. I hoped that joining the two holes would enable me to acces the broken drill. Of course the cutter broke as well. But it was easily retrieved.
Next thinking and googling. Found the references to alum to remove broken bits. The fact that it could take long did not bother me at all. As long as I can do other usefull stuff it does not really cost me time. And I really don t want to remake this thing. So I bought some alum and put the cilinder in, on and off boiling it to speed up the process. 


I think the main reason for the broken drills was that due to the partial channels I made before, that when the drill broke through, half of the drill was still seeing material and the other half not. This caused the drill to bend and break. If so, I had no way to change the internals of the cilinders. The only way I could see is use bitter drills. If I recall correctly stifness is proportional with size^4. So I wanted to go in with the biggest drill that still leaves sufficient meat. It also meant that I will not open up the holes. And also that I would stick to holes only. I settled for two 3 mm holes.


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## Henk (Jun 18, 2016)

Did not want to post yet...



Look: no broken drills!


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## Herbiev (Jun 18, 2016)

So the alum worked ?


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## Henk (Jun 19, 2016)

That last picture was just to show my happiness at not ruining the second cilinder after choosing the bigger drill. Not wanting to redo a cilinder means I really really don't want to redo a pair!

Some stuff to keep me occupied while the alum was simmering/ just waiting cold. 




The front cilinder covers are a bit loose to my liking, but i'll see later on.


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## Henk (Jun 22, 2016)

So I left the cilinder in the alum for say 2 weeks or so. I tried feeling with a needle whether it worked or not. I was sure about the first and second hole, but not 100% sure about the last. Plan: start with milling with 3 mm mill on first ( left) hole to make a clear start for the 3 mm drill. This proved to work. But by blowing through it I really sensed a lot of flow resistance, so thatwas clearly not enough. But the second hole I wanted to stay clear of the location I was not sure about. This meant milling and drilling overlapping the hole I just made. Boy that was a bit nerve wrecking.

End result is far from beatifull, but it'll do for me. Glad to have finished this phase. 





Btw: I read that alum leave aluminium unaffected. Therefor it seemed ok to use an aluminium pan. However the surface of that is now very very pitted. This may not happen if you only have aluminium and no bronze (my chemistry is very rusty). Here a close up of the pan:


 
The surface of the bronze seems to have a very thin layer of something, but nothing seems to have affected the surface finish.


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## Henk (Jul 27, 2016)

The drawings called for bronze for the steam chest covers: 3 mm thick ( x 36 mm x40mm). I happened to have a 9 mm thick piece. So with moderately careful sawing this should produce 2 pieces.




And it actually worked out ok, with 0.5 mm on one side and 1 mm on the other side. And it does not take that much time after all. But I admit that I am a bit more apprehensive in drilling holes in the part than if it been from a piece of 3 mm brass


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## Henk (Jul 27, 2016)

Speaking about drilling holes: steam chest, cover, cilinder=3x8 holes. On each cilinder equals 48 accurately placed holes. And that equals a personal business case for a dro. I Postponed for 5 years mainly because it seemed out of balance in price (800 ) compared to the mill itself (1300 ). And maybe because it feels a bit like cheating. But if I am ever going to finish this project, I need all the speed gain I can get. 

So buying it was easy. The seller advertises the set as directly fitting on the mill (hbm bf 25). This is very much not true. As an exemple I would have expected a part or directions to make the angled spacer as seen below:





 It did come with the usual set of brackets. So as I realized that I had to regard it as a set of raw material then it was workable within a few evenings. One of the puzzels is that you need to plan machining a bit more with a partially disassbled mill. 

I also spoiled myself with power feed. I go to that shop every few years- it only makers sense to make the most of a single trip right?  There I misjudged the weight impact. I used to have the vice on the right hand side of the table. That way I had most of the table out of the way of my workbench. Now with the weight of the power feed all the way over there, dials feel sluggish. So therefor I move the vice such that for normal usage, the center of gravity is centered. Which means I lost more space on my workbench than I anticipated ( which was nothing). Still not going to remove it though. I'll give it some time.


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## Henk (Jan 18, 2020)

Long time since last update. And a lot less progress than i had expected. But at least the old posts have the images visible - although with the pb watermark.

So below full cilinder assembly with crosshead and guiding. Draincocks are shopmade - i’ll see how they perform at full pressure. No piston rings yet.


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## Henk (Jan 21, 2020)

At some point also tried the frame on wheels on an actual track:




Seemed not a problem. Got some advice as well from local enthousiasts.


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## Henk (Jan 22, 2020)

Cilinder assembly mounted on frame.




That was an operation I had postponed quite a while. Crosshead guide still hanging     loose.


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## Henk (Feb 7, 2020)

Bracket for the expansion link



Silver solderend together. In reality the seams are less pronounced than in this image. And considerable effort to remove. The bearings are loctited in place


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## Henk (Feb 8, 2020)

Medium fast forward: expansion link included and installed onto frame: 



Btw: I am getting photobucket warnings that I am over my free bandwidth + some warning that the images will be blurred + watermarked. The good news of that is that     someone might actually be looking. I can also see the watermark when I view these posts. They do not really bother me. Please do let me know if the images do not show up at all.


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## Henk (Apr 5, 2021)

So lots of little things to make. Excentric rod and radius link during creation:


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## Henk (Apr 5, 2021)

And then a lot of fiddling to get the motion bracket in place, and the holes tranferred to the frame. I find drilling in the frame a bit scary so i spend quite a lot of time in setting up. Innthe case that means making a large size machinist clamp and glueing a 2 mm drill into an extension: 



The ancient hand held drill is ready. The wood beam should be transferring the forces to the wall. Happy to observe that the glue held.


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## Henk (Apr 5, 2021)

BTW: happy to see that one can now directly paste images iso having to rely on photobucket. Is there some limit on size or number of images?

I will spare you the occasions where i had to remake stuff due to either errors on my side, or on the drawing. Most annoyingly there was an item where the actual drawing was ok, but without an actual dimension. The build instructions were ambiguous, but someone added a wrongly dimensioned drawing there. Took quite a while - and parts and time before figuring out where the error actually was.

On a related note- there are some parts where i can’t help but think that i am fabricating parts to a drawing that inherited its dimensions from a piece of scrap that happened to be in the designer’s bin. I suppose i am neither the first nor last one to notice that. But this being a freelance model anyway - i bother less with the nonfunctional shape of a part.


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## Henk (Apr 7, 2021)

BTW: the motion bracket mounting 2 posts ago was a redo where it needed it to be shifted 3 mm due to the aforementioned instruction ambiguity. The bracket is mounted using 2 mm holes so luckily this is possible without major work.

Remounting also meant that the crosshead guide needed to be realigned. So here I mounted a straightish bar on the slide valve steamports, pressed into place by the steamchest cover. Then the crosshead guide needs to be shimmed until parallel to this bar. 




And another job done.
As an aside- probably obvious, I am posting through last years’s progress. Day to day progress is not that fast


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## Henk (Apr 9, 2021)

After trying to assemble the complete valve gear, I found that it would foul. On multiple spots. I did two quick and dirty modifications- namely putting 2 shims of 0.5 mm beneath the steamchest and putting the union link inside out (so it is not grabbing the combination lever on both sides if you understand what i mean). Also all the pins are still just screws. Also no packing - nor packing retainer (whatever the proper word is). See below:




 I tried to find whether in this case the drawings were in error, or whether I was. I could not pinpoint it. To actually find the root cause would probably require putting the drawings into a cad model. And that is learning curve I don’t want to get into now. But now ready for compressed air testing!


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## Henk (Apr 10, 2021)

yes!


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## RReid (Apr 11, 2021)

"nor packing retainer (whatever the proper word is)."

I think the word you are looking for here is packing _*gland*_. Very nice project!


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## Henk (Apr 12, 2021)

Rreid- thanks. I might have known- but as I was aware of the term gland nut, I assumed the gland was an equivalent of packing.

After this milestone, i did quite an overhaul. First disassemble until bearings as these did not have oil passages yet. Also the bearings still needed the clearance to allow the axles to rock. After making some sketches I concluded that this means the bearing blocks need to be triangular shaped. I achieved this by tilting the blocks in the vice:



After refitting the amount of ‘rocking clearance’ was smaller than I had planned for, but it will have to do for now.

other items were : oil channels in the connection rods, adding the 1 mm to the steam chest, replacing ( where applicable) the screws with pins , making a crown nut for usage with a split pen, remaking the union links.

Then a bummer: the packing gland would foul the union link. Again I could not find an error in neither the drawings nor the parts. Solved it by reducing the length of nuts, packing gland and studs.


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## Henk (Apr 14, 2021)

As a bit of an intermezzo- but still very related to this build; I gave casting a try. I have had some delft clay for ages and did some on and off casting of tin. But it is hard to imagine casting something useful in tin. So i started reading and gathering materials. The most essential of course being a crucible.
As an exercise i built a very small furnace. After drying i told myself to gently heat it.
That proved to be too difficult : I had to go on.



So it could quite easily get to bronze melting temp (see the undefined lump in the bowl on the left). I also found it quite amazing how much moisture came out of the furnace even after drying for a few days ( also clearly visible in the image as dark stains on the floor)


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## Henk (Apr 15, 2021)

So encouraged by molten bronze, made my first split pattern. 



And after what felt was a good pour the results below: 



Pattern on the left, trial in tin in the centre, bronze on the right. It looks ok, but on close inspection you can see it did not fully fill. Also the bottom plate seemed to have frozen before filling up. Still was quite satisfied with the result of this first bronze pour.

btw: this is supposed to become the boiler axle pump.

The biggest problem was actually that I my crucible was made of graphite. What I could have known, but had not realized is that at these temperatures, the graphite also just slowly burns off/ evaporates...
So this means I had to make a larger furnace supporting a clay/graphic crucible. This was my intent anyway, but hoped to get a few more trials out of the small setup. Anyway: clear what to do.


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## Henk (Apr 16, 2021)

So off to fabricate a furnace. The outside shell is an ikea waste paper bucket. The inside mold I sized to be the middle ground between the two sizes of crucibles I got from bangood. The refractory was done in two layers/ the inside rather high temp (1100 degC), and the outside 800 degC mixed with perlite. The rationale was was that it made sense and I had used too much of the high temp stuff to completely fill the mold. 



(When I insert photos directly on my mobile somehow it forgets it needs to be rotated- I apologize and am open for suggestions. I hope most of you are watching on a mobile device.) You can see the inner mold in the bottom left. Best looking part is the stainless tuyere I think that in a previous life was a electric kettle that I hoarded for more than 15 years.
It took ages to dry a bit. As you can see below that after a full week of drying and firing it up- there was literally water dribbling from the lid as evidenced by the stains on the ground:



I also thought that with this amount of fire, it was better to move outside. Result was not better than with the small furnace: 






So obviously I need to pour hotter as even the large part was not fully filled. Next try better: 



Still I could not get the thin part to fill (on the bottom side so not visible here). So next step is to make that one really thick


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## skyline1 (Apr 17, 2021)

Hi Henk

I don't think that your furnace is the problem, it is more likely that you have insufficient "head" of metal to fill the mould completely before the metal "freezes".

There are a couple of ways to get around this.

1. Use a sprue extension, when you ram up the cope "the top moulding box" before you remove the sprue stick embed a piece of metal tube slightly into the sand around the sprue stick (empty drink cans are ideal), then fill and ram the tube with sand and make a pouring cup at the top.

2. Provide a " riser" a smaller sprue opposite the pouring sprue to allow escape of gasses and hold a little more molten metal.

3, Nice big ingates so as not to impede the flow and even use two or more in a ring.

And as you have already done "superheat" your metal a little above melting point before pouring.

I had similar problems to this myself when casting (many years ago) and these techniques worked well for me.

Best Regards Mark


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## Henk (Apr 17, 2021)

Mark, 

thank you for your kind , helpful remarks. Unforunately the steps I am describing ate beginning of december. So that is why in the next steps I seem to ignore your remark as I was not aware if them. But I really do appreciate your effort and intent to help!
I think that in the end after watching lot of myfordboy/ luckygen / windyhill / swbdeep / paul’s garage I used all your remarks.

i do agree that for bronze the furnace is good enough. I just have to wait some time after the bronze is molten to really get up to temp. I did get a thermocouple but using it also takes time in which the metal cools so I stopped using it actually.

So I added a video on the furnace in action. It looks a bit violent.








						17 april 2021
					






					youtube.com
				



Unfortunately, as I operate alone I can’t take videos when actually casting. But when cooling down I can: 

You can see two filled molds, one delft clay ( kind of petrobond I think, reddish and burning) one with bentonite ( cat litter) based. And a leftover bowl. Casting wise it was succesfull. 



The smooth looking one was the delft clay.
However when I then started machining I found that I made an error in the pattern. Bummer. The long rectangular part was 5 mm short on each side.
So then had to add to the pattern (also making the lettering more blurred). 



Two succesfull ( on the right side I simply ran out of material) with added pouring basin, and riser, and generous entrance into the mold. I also added a lid to the crucible to prevent charcoal into the melt. Still a bit too much in there. You may also notice there is no really smooth one as I ran out of unburnt delft clay.

 So after quite a lot of effort and a total expense of a bit over 200 eur, I managed somewhat. I am not short of money, but it did illustrate to me why castings are expensive. Included in that number is also some material for practice ( the small furnace and crucible) and some leftover refractory. But I now have gained some practical knowledge and have built some essential infrastructure.

 There is a visual shrink tear-  let’s see whether that’s an issue. There is also considerable shrinkage so if there needs to be a next time I would include a riser on the thick central part. But unless during machining I find the need to redo- I’m ok with what I have now.


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## Richard Hed (Apr 18, 2021)

Henk said:


> So off to fabricate a furnace. The outside shell is an ikea waste paper bucket. The inside mold I sized to be the middle ground between the two sizes of crucibles I got from bangood. The refractory was done in two layers/ the inside rather high temp (1100 degC), and the outside 800 degC mixed with perlite. The rationale was was that it made sense and I had used too much of the high temp stuff to completely fill the mold. View attachment 124531
> 
> (When I insert photos directly on my mobile somehow it forgets it needs to be rotated- I apologize and am open for suggestions. I hope most of you are watching on a mobile device.) You can see the inner mold in the bottom left. Best looking part is the stainless tuyere I think that in a previous life was a electric kettle that I hoarded for more than 15 years.
> It took ages to dry a bit. As you can see below that after a full week of drying and firing it up- there was literally water dribbling from the lid as evidenced by the stains on the ground:View attachment 124532
> ...


Whatever you have, there should be a rotate button.;  If you have a computer, you can download "GIMP" for free and use it tor rotate and crop.  Love ur stuff.


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## Henk (Apr 20, 2021)

Thanks Richard, 

I think the problem with the images is that when taking a landscape photo, my mobile just adds to the image metadata : ‘the camera was vertical when the image was taken’ but the actual image is still saved in landscape. And also editing does not help. However: copy, the slightly change cropping apparently does.
Anyway, enough non engineering content.

I was not yet ready to actually use the casting and did a side step to the reversing lever. I can’t get enough of the satisfying sound when it snaps in the center position:








						20 april 2021
					






					youtube.com
				



I was also quite happy with the spring and the way it is retained with just a 0.5 mm ridge in beneath the hexagon heads.
The large (rusty) vertical plate is probably not part of the final module. The drawing says to mount on the water tank, but I haven’t figured out how nor whether I will actually do so.
I did do a internet image survey whether the latch part should face the driver or not and found examples of both. I think this way around feels more natural to me.


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## Henk (Apr 25, 2021)

The buffers was an interesting choice- the easy and fast route was to just adhere to the drawings. Problem there was that I can’t believe these would actually work in real life. The buffers extend way too much compared to the hook. It seems that the buffers were placed close together to accommodate tight curves. But if so, the chain between the hooks would foul. The drawings do show some alternatives, but that would require more thinking on my part. And as in miniature practice, the hooks will never be used anyway, I just went along.



The buffer beam was milled from solid using manual numerical control for the rounded edges. 
Hook before manual filing 



And final assembly:



So there will be lots of parts on this loco that I might redo. And I probably won’t. 
On this one a big visual improvement would already to move the buffers out in this same buffer beam only exposing one tapped hole on each side.


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