# "World Renown" Steam Roller



## shred (Dec 6, 2009)

After my experiments in wheelmaking (http://www.homemodelenginemachinist.com/index.php?topic=6989.0), it's time to do something useful fun with them.







The old Australian Renowntm steam roller toys Tmuir's rebuilding (http://www.homemodelenginemachinist.com/index.php?topic=6764.0) are the inspiration-- they look like lots of fun and got me wanting to try making one, so with not much more than some pictures and sheet steel, I started playing around. 

If all goes well, I'll clean up the drawings and open source them out for everyone-- The ides is to make a project that people with one or two wobblers under their belt could have a shot at building and having fun with. I'm going to try and use hardware-store materials whenever practical, though that won't work for everything.

The motto for this build is "_Making toys, not finescale models_" ;D ;D 

After a little plotting and measuring, I drilled a bunch of holes in some 16ga steel. The originals were brass; I think it looks much better, but I'm guessing this project is going to get a lot of tweaking and part changes and extra holes as I design and re-design things, so steel, being considerably cheaper, is the prototype material for now. Once the design is good, I may go back and do a brass one.

Drilled a bunch of holes for the sideplate (fastening and stacking them and drilling through both at once if possible):





Check out the disposable parallel since so many holes are right on the edges. 

These holes are mostly drilled 3/32". 3/32" is a convenient size since it's both a clearance fit for #2-56 and also a standard rivet size. I think you can even get 3/32" pop-rivets, though I don't think they're at my local hardware store. The axle holes are drilled 3/8" for bushings later.

Again for the proto and I expect lots of disassembly and rebuilds, I chose to make the frame spacers from solid and drill and tap the ends. The original toy was riveted with bent flat spacers, and that would be much less tedious once the design is solid and it won't need to be disassembled all the time. If you look at the pictures, you can see the raw stock I made the spacers from is a little wider than the 1/2" planned for, but except for needing to trim one, the rest have tons of clearance.

Here's tapping the ends of one of the frame spacers. I use this little chuck for hand-tapping 2-56. I only turn it with my fingers and use the little tapping block which can get into pretty small spaces (in normal use my other hand is holding the block squarely against the material being tapped, rather than running the camera)






And both frames and spacers assembled with the wheels just passed through the axle bushing holes for show. There's more frame to go up front. Making the frame in two parts means smaller pieces of raw stock are needed and it'll fit in the work envelope of more machines.






The other two 3/8" holes are for the flywheel and reduction wheel axles (I'm going to try and go with a Renown-style gearless reduction). On the original I think they're just drilled straight into the brass frame. I decided to put bronze bushings in the frame for the axles. It might be a toy, but it should last a while. Since the rear wheels were already drilled for 1/4" axles, the bushing hole got chosen to be 3/8". That's way overkill for the flywheel and reduction wheel axles, which I think will be 1/8" and 3/16" respectively, but it's the drill that was in the machine...

Made of 16ga steel and bolted spacers, this thing is as solid as a brick-[expletive]-house.. Should be no problem using much lighter gauge material.


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## Powder keg (Dec 6, 2009)

I'll be watching this ne for sure ;D I like the wood under your plate for drilling.


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## shred (Dec 7, 2009)

Oh yeah, since I'm learning on the fly on lots of this one too, questions comments and suggestions on why/how/when/where to do things are invited.
If you see a safety concern, please jump in-- eventually we'll get to boilermaking and burners where such things can be critical.


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## vlmarshall (Dec 7, 2009)

shred  said:
			
		

> The idea is to make a project that people with one or two wobblers under their belt could have a shot at building and having fun with...
> 
> ...The motto for this build is "_Making toys, not finescale models_"
> 
> ...


Oh yeah, it looks like I'm going to be playing Follow-The-Shred on _another_ project in the future. ;D :bow:
Great work!


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## shred (Dec 7, 2009)

Well, the cat strenuously objected to being hitched up to a chariot, so nothing to do but make the front clip and roller.  

I had a day off today and some time to play in the shop.

First up the front side plates. Simple rectangles with 4 tapped holes; this time 1/8" hot-roll for no other reason than I had a length of 1.5" wide x 1/8 thick from some long ago hardware store purchase and one of the plate dimensions is... 1.5" . These are clamped together, drilled and tapped right through all as one block. That lets them be screwed together easily for finish sanding and gives some flexibility down the road since I've not sorted the rest of the front yet. At this point they're on the inside of the main frame, but that could change.

The little 1" belt sander works great for this kind of thing.






After the front side plates are bolted on, time for the U-bracket that will hold the roller assembly. Bent up out of more of the 16ga flat stock cut into a .75" strip (the 4x6 bandsaw is great for cutting strips off 6" wide flat sheet), then clamped, drilled, tapped and bolted. I did this one hole at a time to make sure everything was where I wanted it to be. You can see in the below pic my bend wasn't quite straight, so there's a little pulling and tweaking to get everything lined up.






Here I'm drilling the 2nd hole; the first bolt is barely visible together behind the clamp. Again for a refined design this could easily be riveted. I got by the specialty bolt store at lunchtime and scored some 3/32" pop rivets to play with later, along with another few hundred #2-56's of various sizes.






Front view with the front side plates and roller support in. Obviously this was before I'd gone by the bolt store and was still using whatever SHCS I had lying around. . I'm leaving the extra tabs on the top for maybe some sort of boiler support later.






Then on to the roller and roller fork. I think I painted myself into a bit of a corner with the roller and fork. The Renown steering mechanism is a long rod from the back that connects to one side of the roller fork and exits the rear through a little bracket. Very basic and simple, but it looks like I don't quite have enough length on the fork for that and anything but the shallowest curves. No matter, I think the roller could be a larger diameter as well. If not, the curved chain steering used on full-size steam rollers is also interesting to consider. It was convenient being made from another 6" length of 16ga though.   

The axle bushings are also made and installed in this pic. The front roll axle being a couple of SHCS is temporary.


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## tmuir (Dec 7, 2009)

Wow!!

Thats coming along great.
Sorry I haven't got any of those measurements to you. I worked both days and nights for the first half of last week and have been struck down by the dreaded cold since last Wednesday and haven't felt up to playing in my workshop where all my notes are.
Are there any critical dimensions you want?

Just to give you all a bit more history of the Renown roller.
It was made in Australia just after the end of WWII and there were no toys being imported into Australia, so lots of local companies sprang up to fill the gap.
Brass was cheap as there was a lot of war surplus brass still about which is why they used on a lot of it.

It was made purely as a toy. A company called Crank in New Zealand made a similar one around the same time too, although they used more tinplate and less brass.
I ran the rollers a week ago and grabbed it by the front to move it, forgetting the flame is not in what would be classed as the 'firebox' in a real roller but up front and gave myself a nice burn. All part of the live steam experience. :big:

I hope you don't mind but I'm going to put a link to this build on TUM&OST forum that I'm a member of that is about toy steam as I'm sure there will be a number of members interested in your build.


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## tmuir (Dec 7, 2009)

Just remembered one important bit of info on the friction drive that isn't obvious when you look at the roller.

The axle of the rear wheels acually sit in a slot which lets the axles slide up and down. This way the friction roller doesn't have to be a precise fit to the wheels.
When you sit the roller on the ground the wheels slide up the slot until the friction roller is resting on them and the weight of the roller itself provides the required force to stop the friction rollers slipping on the wheels.

Remember this was made as a toy, to be made in the quickest and cheapest way possible.

Though saying that they are now approaching 60 years old and still servicable, how many toys made in 2009 will still work in 2069?


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## shred (Dec 7, 2009)

tmuir  said:
			
		

> Wow!!
> 
> Thats coming along great.
> Sorry I haven't got any of those measurements to you. I worked both days and nights for the first half of last week and have been struck down by the dreaded cold since last Wednesday and haven't felt up to playing in my workshop where all my notes are.
> ...


No problem. I decided to start with the wheels I had and sort of scale everything from there and what materials are handy. It'll be different for sure. Hopefully it won't end up as a total hodgepodge. . I may pester you for some more photos later on, but it looks like I'll have to park this project for a few days to get some x-mas presents built & shipped.

That's a very clever trick with the friction roller. I had thought of doing an offset bushing on that could be rotated, but that's not near as neat. I'm hopeful my current scheme will work. If not; that's why it's not riveted together 

Thanks.


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## vlmarshall (Dec 7, 2009)

The sliding axle is a great idea. Maybe make sliding bearing blocks, locomotive-style?


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## zeeprogrammer (Dec 7, 2009)

Neat project and thread! Very interesting.

I missed something. How did you make the roller?


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## shred (Dec 7, 2009)

Vernon  said:
			
		

> The sliding axle is a great idea. Maybe make sliding bearing blocks, locomotive-style?


That might work-- it would be easy to do, but I'm thinking if one wheel got higher than the other, it could cause binding in a traditional sliding bearing block setup (not a problem trains usually have). I'm guessing it won't take much play to engage the friction drive, so the answer may be a fixed block with a short slot. There's already a bit of room there and more can be made in no time.

It would be fairly easy to make a forward/stop lever that way too-- make a little cam jack that pushes the axles away from the friction drive. Must consider further.



			
				Zee said:
			
		

> I missed something. How did you make the roller?


I sort of skipped the details on the front roller.. it's just a chunk of 1.75" Aluminum cleaned up and faced with some dimples in the ends, tapped #5-40 for now. I'm plotting to replace it with a slightly larger one made from 1.5" pipe (actual OD: 1.9") later on. There is one trick-- full-size 3-wheel rollers often had two front rolls, side by side with the smallest of gaps between them as that makes turning corners somewhat less ponderous. Copying that lets me get away with turning the OD in two chuckings of the 3-jaw without indicating it in perfectly-- cut a tiny notch in the center, then turn the OD up to the tiny notch, flip and turn again to the notch. As long as your 3 jaw is repeatable to a few thou, nobody will notice. Toymaking, not finescale modeling


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## shred (Dec 29, 2009)

X-mas presents are done and I've got a little time to play, so onwards with the boiler. Normally this isn't the order I'd do things, but as I'm making this up as I go along, I needed a pretty good idea of what shape and size it was going to be before I work out how to mount it...

Start by obtaining a 2" copper pipe coupling at the hardware store. Much cheaper than a stick of 2" pipe, and if you get two, you can make the end plates out of one of them (note, get L-type or K-type so you have 0.070"+ thick material unless you want to stay the ends). Hack it in half and flatten the halves-- in this case I'm squashing them flat in my Kurt vise. The book says it'll go upwards of 6000 lbs of force if I lean on it and that's way better than my little 1/2 ton arbor press will do. Worked great, especially after annealing.






Then cut the resulting rectangles into rough circles and make a former. Since this material is thick enough to avoid stays if we radius the flange a little, put a nice radius on the former. Not having a radius form tool handy, I pressed a corner rounding bit into service. Worked fine. You can't see it in this pic, but there's a stub on the end of the former in the chuck through-hole with two flats for vise work. 






Here you can see the vise stub in use and how to hold the flat circle of copper before forming since there aren't any through holes. After a couple rounds of whacking and annealing, the clamp isn't needed anymore.






After lots of whacking, annealing and some friction-turning on the former to clean up the sides and ends (no pics, sorry), we have nice end plates, one of which needs to be drilled for the filler plug. Copper is a pain to machine in general, but superglued to the former, it went ok. A little torch work and it's free.






Drill out the boiler barrel for the bushings and chimney. Step drills work great in copper since they don't seem to grab like other drills. Since the chimney goes all the way through, you have to get a little creative there as the step-drill won't cut it, but at least it's easier to drill a concave surface than a convex one.






Next make up the bushings. Nothing special here except the ersatz collet chuck to clean up the parted ends of the bushings. It's not very accurate like this, but works well to hold small pieces for things like facing off that aren't critical.






Here we are all mocked up and ready to silver solder.. As soon as I decide if I want to put a bushing in the rear end plate or not.. 
The smokestack will probably get shortened later on.






and just sitting in the chassis pretending to be at home


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## SBWHART (Dec 29, 2009)

Very interesting project and nice work.

I'll watch with great interest. 

This roller would make a great present for a grandchild.

Have fun

Stew


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## zeeprogrammer (Dec 29, 2009)

Nice!

Keep up the detail. There's a boiler in my future and this thread as well as a few others are very helpful.

Diet Dr. Pepper? Ew.


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## MikeR C (Dec 29, 2009)

Replace the roller with a couple of wheels and PRESTO! you have a tractor! I am very interested in the drawings when you are done.

Thx for the time invested in showing us your project,
MikeR C


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## shred (Dec 29, 2009)

MikeR C  said:
			
		

> Replace the roller with a couple of wheels and PRESTO! you have a tractor! I am very interested in the drawings when you are done.
> 
> Thx for the time invested in showing us your project,
> MikeR C


Yeah.. I have a book somewhere of 'Classic American Steam Rollers' that has pictures and specs for most all of them. Pretty much every company's first version was to slap a set of front rolls on a traction engine and take the cleats off the rears. Some, like Case, pretty much stayed that way. Others like Buffalo Springfield (originally separate companies) changed the designs considerably as time went on.

Assuming this thing doesn't end up as an ugly duck, I expect people to take the plans and get creative with them.

I spent part of the day boilermaking today, so expect some photos and videos, Zee.


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## vlmarshall (Dec 29, 2009)

Great work, again. ;D


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## shred (Dec 29, 2009)

Ok Zee, here's a simple sped-up demo of silver soldering one of the boiler bushings. Normally I don't have all the stuff that close together, but it was too hard to film otherwise. This is by no means the best or only way to do this, but works for me.

You have to get your own 'Yakkety Sax' background music... ;D

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEtUJQuK-z8[/ame]

[youtube=425,350]WEtUJQuK-z8[/youtube]


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## Powder keg (Dec 29, 2009)

Good show Shred!!!


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## Deanofid (Dec 30, 2009)

Looking good, Shred! You do a nice job of the sheet metal parts.
Good vid, too.

Dean


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## 1hand (Dec 30, 2009)

Nice video. Whats the Pickel?


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## 4156df (Dec 30, 2009)

Shred,
Very useful video. Thank you.
Dennis


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## tmuir (Dec 30, 2009)

Thats coming along nicely and more more solid than the one that inspired you.

I must invest in one of those step drills.
Anyone know where they can be had for a reasonable price?
My local shop wants about $100 for one.


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## gbritnell (Dec 30, 2009)

Great work Shred. The silver solder video is very helpful to the fellows who haven't tried it. What type of video editing program do you use to put the text and information into it?
gbritnell


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## tmuir (Dec 30, 2009)

1hand  said:
			
		

> Nice video. Whats the Pickel?



A mild acid to dissolve the oxidisation and spent flux.
Citric Acid will do the job and can be bought in 1KG tubs from brewing shops or places that sell bulk cleaning agents. Best of all it is safe to your skin if you splash a bit on you unlike some of the other harsher (and quicker acting) pickles.


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## shred (Dec 30, 2009)

The pickle I'm using is a SparexTM solution, obtained from a jewelry supply store. It's basically sulfuric acid in granule form, same as pool acid. When that gets old I'm going to replace it with citric acid. The upside is the Sparex can pickle a part clean in 15 minutes and re-solderable in 5.

The step drills I have are some cheap imports ($10 for 2) from Harbor Freight. They work so well I'm considering in investing in a better one someday.

The video editor is Windows Movie Maker from Windows XP. To get the text onto the video, use the "make titles and credits" tool but select the "on the selected clip" option.


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## zeeprogrammer (Dec 30, 2009)

Excellent video Shred. Excellent.
Always better to see what people are talking about.
Thank you very much.

Amongst the learnings was the use of the rod. I don't think people ever talk about seating the part when soldering.


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## tmuir (Dec 30, 2009)

shred  said:
			
		

> The pickle I'm using is a SparexTM solution, obtained from a jewelry supply store.



I actually use that too.
I bought it for my jewellery making and keep 2 jars of it.
My good jar for gold and silver and my old jar for small copper and brass parts.

Basically when the solution gets so old it starts silver plating my gold parts it gets downgraded for copper and brass. I only ever have about 300mls of the stuff mixed up so I can only use it on small parts but agree it works very quickly.
For large parts I use citric acid.


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## shred (Dec 30, 2009)

zeeprogrammer  said:
			
		

> Excellent video Shred. Excellent.
> Always better to see what people are talking about.
> Thank you very much.
> 
> Amongst the learnings was the use of the rod. I don't think people ever talk about seating the part when soldering.


You don't have to do that very often, but in this case the bushing was being ornery about seating straight. I mostly use it as a 'scratch rod' to scratch in the melted solder to make sure it's all flowing and get rid of any flakes and globs of flux or dirt.


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## shred (Dec 31, 2009)

New Years Eve boiler testing.. 

I don't have more pictures of the actual boiler silver soldering. I had to switch to MAPP to get enough heat into the parts and the SS job isn't nearly as nice as others I've done as I had to reheat most of the joints a few times and was experimenting with different solders, fluxes and techniques, but it's all in one piece now.

Anyway... once it was soldered up, I turned up some plugs for the bushings, stuck some O-rings on them and chucked the whole thing into a bucket of water to check for major leaks. As you can tell, I did this outside.. neener, neener.. 68'F, sunny, warm and in the Northern hemisphere 







No bubbles (don't be tempted to pressurize at this step, pressure testing is next), so on to -- Hydro testing.

The basic setup is a pan of water and the piston pump from my Slightly Loco build, seen here assembled:





To set up, attach the pump outlet to one bushing, plug the other and leave the uppermost open. Pump water in until it entirely fills the boiler and overflows, then screw in the pressure gauge. The idea is to have no air at all in the boiler or plumbing.






Then pump the pressure up to 60 PSI (the boiler is designed for 30 PSI), looking for leaks. As you can see, I switched on the date/time feature of the camera to help tracking. Started out a little over 60 PSI.






A few minutes in, I noticed the pressure had dropped a little and noticed a tiny water spot on the plastic base






The leak was coming from one of the joints on the pump line, so I decided to ignore it for now and kept checking elsewhere for leaks, bulges and other issues.

After 30 minutes, the pressure was down to just over 50 PSI, and the water spot was a little larger, but no other leaks appeared, so we'll call it good.






I tried to make a video demonstrating what happens if it springs a leak and why water is used instead of compressed air for this test, but it was so unspectacular that I didn't bother editing up the video... 

Happy New Year everybody! 

- Roy


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## itowbig (Dec 31, 2009)

im following with much interest very nice . my skills are not that good but i sure do like to watch these builds. :bow:


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## Powder keg (Jan 1, 2010)

looking good!! I'll probably try a boiler in the future.


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## tel (Jan 1, 2010)

tmuir  said:
			
		

> Thats coming along nicely and more more solid than the one that inspired you.
> 
> I must invest in one of those step drills.
> Anyone know where they can be had for a reasonable price?
> My local shop wants about $100 for one.



I think I paid around $40 from my local Chindian Shoppe, but here's a set closer to you for reasonable money.

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/STEP-DRILLS-3-PIECE-M2-HIGH-SPEED-STEEL-BRAND-NEW_W0QQitemZ230398741206QQcmdZViewItemQQptZAU_Hand_Tools?hash=item35a4d5cad6

Should be fine for the occasional use they get.


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## shred (Jan 1, 2010)

tel  said:
			
		

> I think I paid around $40 from my local Chindian Shoppe, but here's a set closer to you for reasonable money.
> 
> http://cgi.ebay.com.au/STEP-DRILLS-3-PIECE-M2-HIGH-SPEED-STEEL-BRAND-NEW_W0QQitemZ230398741206QQcmdZViewItemQQptZAU_Hand_Tools?hash=item35a4d5cad6
> 
> Should be fine for the occasional use they get.


I think that's even the same brand name as the ones I have.


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## capjak (Jan 1, 2010)

Harbor Freight's latest mailer has a set of three stepless drills (#66463) for 6.99 and a two piece set od step drills (#96275) for 14.99.


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## tmuir (Jan 1, 2010)

tel  said:
			
		

> I think I paid around $40 from my local Chindian Shoppe, but here's a set closer to you for reasonable money.
> 
> http://cgi.ebay.com.au/STEP-DRILLS-3-PIECE-M2-HIGH-SPEED-STEEL-BRAND-NEW_W0QQitemZ230398741206QQcmdZViewItemQQptZAU_Hand_Tools?hash=item35a4d5cad6
> 
> Should be fine for the occasional use they get.



Thanks for the link.
Thats a more reasonable price.
Its my birthday in 3 days time and I haven't got myself anything yet so the wife can't complain if I buy a set.


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