Recent content by Jonathan Coates

Well disaster was very narrowly avoided. After I put a bigger cutter in and trimmed off the offending parts, the dovetail was 0.5mm too small. But it works anyway. If I can devise a way to attach a steel wear strip I'll ruin the dovetail even more and fix it with a steel shim so that the locking...

Thanks Jason, I hadn't realised that the H section was so modern. I was going by steam trains from my youth of the OO gauge sort, not real ones and adding in that the plans maybe didn't think they should cater for equipment past the minimum lathe.. I'll do it as per the drawing if that's more...

Well my dog had a big birthday, 15 years young, so she got a steak for lunch and a nice roast beef dinner later. Somebody, mentioning no names, was kind enough to buy her a D bit grinder in very used condition and we have an agreement that if I fix it up I can play with it. I, oops they...

The last few days have been quite busy with home and work stuff but I got a chance to do a bit more with the cylinder casting. I've had to rebuild the lathe topslide as it was getting far too loose and I found that the gib screws can't do anything as the gib is locked by more screws from...

I couldn't get the measurement over the pins to go down. Cut after cut there was always a little still to come off. Now I know why, I messed it up due to incompetence and old eyes.

Like this, perhaps? You could make it even spicier if you got some hydrogen peroxide as well...

Thanks Andy, I've got a 10" one. Never thought I'd say that line. I found online an old newspaper advertisement where it's advertised with a 3/4hp motor. The associated web page tells me that a 1 1/2hp motor was an option as well. I've decided to go with a 1 1/2hp 3 phase and run it through a...

Today I found a spare hour and spent it finishing the flywheel turning. All it needed was one chamfer on the rim and the centre reaming so that went quickly. Then I decided to bore the cylinder. It's not obvious where the centre line is relative to the outside but there are two surfaces which...

Luckily, our excellent government have found a way to grow hydrogen on trees so that it doesn't need to be made from natural gas, but there is another factor that needs to be considered. The density of liquid hydrogen is very low, so if your motorcycle has a 2 gallon / 10 litre fuel tank, you'll...

Well yesterday turned out to be a long day, dragged out of bed by a work phone call and didn't get back until eating time, so I didn't get anything productive done except paying the bills. I was watching a young man by the name of Keith Appleton, who has been known to mess with this kind of...

One problem that you will face is that the lighter fractions will evaporate off the WMO leaving the heavier more tarry bits. The exact composition of the fuel is very much unknown and you need to proceed with caution. You risk ending up with a whole lot more fuel in your vapouriser than you...

I'll get some this morning. Thank you.

Today's playing has been with the flywheel. I stuck it in the 3 jaw to start, facing the boss. then that got centre drilled and a live centre backed it all up to hold it securely. The OD wouldn't get a good finish and at first I put it down to not being through the skin yet. It turned out that...

Yesterday's progress was a bit less than I'd expected but the casting has more fiddly bits than it appears from a quick glance. After I'd got the casting "fastened" to the jig plate I used my edge finder to determine half way between the crosshead slideways for my Y zero and half way between the...

The start can be found here:- https://www.homemodelenginemachinist.com/threads/stuart-s50-my-first-engine-build.36094/ I thought that that place was where it was best but it has been kindly pointed out to me that comments etc can't be posted so I'll never know how much of a mess I'm making of...