# Excellent customer service from Stuart



## mwilkes (Apr 25, 2013)

Last week I discovered a nasty slag inclusion in the casting for an eccentric for a Twin Launch. I emailed Stuart Models and 2 days later I received two replacement castings free of charge. 

Thank you Stuart Models! (Andy Meakin in particular)


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## GWRdriver (Apr 25, 2013)

Was this transaction with the "new" Stuart owners in Dorset?  If so that bodes well for the future ( . . maybe.)


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## mwilkes (Apr 25, 2013)

@gwr - yep - Definitely an improvement from the guernsey days, I think


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## KBC (Apr 25, 2013)

mwilkes said:


> @gwr - yep - Definitely an improvement from the guernsey days, I think



Mark,
I do wish that you would stop whinging about Staurts in Guernsey, after all your post is only an assumption.( You think )

I and others have been dealing with Guernsay for years and have found no complaints against Roy at Stuarts, yes castings have been reported as being poor and have been replaced without cost and within 4- 5 working days so please give us a break.

Geo.


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## mwilkes (Apr 26, 2013)

I don't think describing something as an improvement counts as a whinge...


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## KBC (Apr 26, 2013)

mwilkes said:


> @gwr - yep - Definitely an improvement from the guernsey days, I think



Mark,
Of course you posted praise for the quick replacement from Bridport but why do you need to take a swipe at the Guernsay days and cast aspersions at the service when you only " think "it was poor. 
You have already been chastised on your other thread , so give us a break and get on with your engine build.
This is a Forum where experienced machinists, off which I am not one ,  who pass on  information on "how to do things "which has been of great help but not to have a moaning session.

George.

George.


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## GWRdriver (Apr 27, 2013)

KBC said:


> This is a Forum where experienced machinists, off which I am not one ,  who pass on  information on "how to do things" - George.


George,
Firstly, I think you are coming down unnecessarily hard on Mark who IMHO has passed along a valuable and encouraging bit of information.   If you were both an experienced machinist AND a Stuart stockist, as I was during the 1990s-2000s, you might have a better understanding of the circumstances and that there were and are sufficient reasons for criticism.

The "old" Stuarts (Henley) poured their castings in large batches of one selected casting, for instance 100s of #9 cylinder castings, 100s of #10 flywheels, etc, and all went into bins from which castings for sets or to supply a one-off replacement were pulled.  The efficiency and economy of this approach certainly might be debated, and in the end of course it didn't survive, but replacement castings were always quickly and easily available.  That spoiled us I suppose.

Jones & Bradburn, on the other hand, took the opposite approach.  They tooled up to produce castings automatically in full sets which left very few, if any, orphaned castings to lay about gathering dust.    While they claimed replacement castings were readily available, my personal experience was that unless I was extremely lucky, they were not.

My personal experience with Stuart Models (under Jones & Bradburn) could not have been more pleasant.  They were always responsive and helpful, however the reality of delivery of anything other than a complete engine set was something else.     I once ordered the beam alone for the Major Beam engine and when it had not been shipped after over 14 months I gave up.   This was not down to unwillingness or indifference on the part of the  staff or any one person but was the result of their manufacturing  process which made loose parts a rarity if not non-existent.

The new situation appears, for the moment, to be an improvement but the question I must ask myself is, if the castings quality had declined under J&B, and the new owners are old founders, what promise is there that the castings will improve?  IMHO, the reasons for the decline in castings quality, specifically the machinability, is that in the process of automating the manufacture of the castings J&B "value-engineered" the patterns to remove as much metal as possible, including minimizing machining allowances, yet still retain full appearance and function.  In doing so many castings were thinned to the point that chilling and other flaws were inevitable.  I could be wrong about this, but that's my assessment, from a long distance away.


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## mwilkes (Apr 27, 2013)

Harry - thanks for the support. It's interesting you mention the chilling of castings. I'm trying to decide whether it's my fault or the castings' fault that I cannot, no matter what I do, machine the things! The plans ask for a 1/32 ridge in the centre of the eccentrics to act as a guide for the sheaves - but cutting the inner portion, which requires a sort of parting/grooving tool, seems to be impossible. The iron appears to be ROCK HARD around the edges, to the extent that I now have 3 or 4 HSS cutters waiting for re-sharpening, and 4 indexable bits in the bin....

Am I being stupid? Is there a clever way of annealing cast iron? 

I've heard leaving them in a wood fire overnight can help...


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## aonemarine (Apr 27, 2013)

To anneal a cast iron casting that is destroying your tools, take a soft fire brick, like the ones people are cutting alcohol wicks out of, and cut a cavity large enough to hold your casting with about 1 inch all around.

Pack the casting in the cavity totally covered and completely surrounded with black manganese and use a thin slice of the firebrick as a lid. Heat in a ceramic kiln to 1600 degrees. After it has heat soaked enough for the entire brick, manganese and casting to reached 1600 let slowly cool overnight.

I had to use this on several Stuart castings in the past, and it worked very well.

If you do not have a ceramic kiln available you can contact the local ceramics craft shop and have them put it in the next time they fire a load. Just tell them that you need a temperature of 1600 degrees or cone 10.

For small castings I have also used a torch to heat it up. Instead of a firebrick container I used a steel box ( 4 sides and a bottom ) tack welded together and a separate lid. The material was 3/32 sheet steel. Pack the item in the box in the black manganese, lay the lid on, place it on a fire brick and heat with a torch until it is all cherry red and hold it cherry red for at least 30 minutes. Remove the torch and cover it with a lot of fireplace ashes to insulate it from the air so it will cool slowly.

Torry

I copied this from another forum....DavidF


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## KBC (Apr 27, 2013)

GWRdriver said:


> George,
> Firstly, I think you are coming down unnecessarily hard on Mark who IMHO has passed along a valuable and encouraging bit of information.   If you were both an experienced machinist AND a Stuart stockist, as I was during the 1990s-2000s, you might have a better understanding of the circumstances and that there were and are sufficient reasons for criticism.
> 
> The "old" Stuarts (Henley) poured their castings in large batches of one selected casting, for instance 100s of #9 cylinder castings, 100s of #10 flywheels, etc, and all went into bins from which castings for sets or to supply a one-off replacement were pulled.  The efficiency and economy of this approach certainly might be debated, and in the end of course it didn't survive, but replacement castings were always quickly and easily available.  That spoiled us I suppose.
> ...



Harry, 

Thanks for the history lesson on Stuarts Past, I may not be an experienced machinist but at 74 years of age I have spent my working life as a time served engineer who for 20 odd years was a design engineer in textile machinery.
I may not be experienced as some but have been designing and building high speed flash steam engines of unknown temperatures and 15,000 rpm on the bench, coil steam generators driving model boats at up to 45 mph and other types of Marine steam engines and boilers for the past 20 odd years.

However you seam to have missed the point of my comments, I have had sterling service from Roy at Stuarts over the past years and comments were directed at Mark  on his assumption that he " thought " that the past service was poor  , so Harry I feel that my comments were just, lets deal with known facts and not assumptions.
I don't have much more to say on the matter, I have no personal connection to Stuarts, Roy in particular, but I will continue to defend somebody's reputation if it has been unjustly maligned, 

George.

P.S.  Harry, forgot to ask you " how is good old Rocky Top at this time of year.


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