Search results

Part of the secret to long life of old equipment is the massive babbitt bearing surfaces, and the shape of the front of the bearing which was designed to push a layer of oil between the wear surfaces. I have seen a book somewhere (I forget the source) detailing exactly how the old large babbitt...

Welcome, glad to have you. Its a great hobby, and there are many new modern tools that can be used to build model engines. Jump right in and lets get building. Pat J. .

I think joint strength is directly related to joint thickness, if I am reading this article correctly. https://kaybrazing.com/brazing-articles/1000978-the-famous-joint-strength-vs-joint-clearance-chart/ .

I have had better luck with the Harris black flux (pics attached). When using the white flux, there seems to be a very fine line between getting the pieces hot enough to wick in the solder, but not so hot as to burn the flux. Once you overheat the flux, or keep it hot too long, then the silver...

Throw in the cost of gasoline for a 22 hour round trip, and it is game-over for me. I have been priced out of the hobby market. .

The discoloration sounds normal to me for steel. I can't comment on what to do about that though. Congrats on the silver soldering; you are on a roll ! .

From my limited experience with silver soldering steel parts together with high-temperature silver solder, there is a bit of an art to getting the two (or more) pieces hot enough to flow the silver solder, without overheating the flux at the joint line. The thing that really needs to happen (in...

To me, it is like when the monks or others take care of the ancient scripts/books, while civilization waxes and wanes. If the knowledge can be preserved somehow, then that would at least give the opportunity of a renaissance in the hobby one day. If every model engine that has ever been built is...

Without deepdiving into a lot of quasi-political/economic ideas about why society is changing, suffice it to say that technology has changed society very dramatically in the last 200 years, and there has been an exponential change since the advent of modern 3-phase electrical systems were...

Sorry to hear that. Hope you recover soon. .

So nice.............. .

Welcome Peter, glad to have you here. Almost anything can be achieved with the right amount of time and effort (in my opinion). Sounds like a very interesting project. Please keep us up to date with your progress. Pat J. .

The 30/60 (approximate) gear ratio gives you the 2:1 speed ratio for gears that have the same diameter. If you go with 45 degree gears, then for a 2:1 speed ratio, you would need one gear with twice the number of teeth as the other one. .

I use a standard oxy-acetylene torch, with the heating tip. The larger the piece to silver solder (braze to be exact, but silver solder is the term I have always heard), the larger the tip, and the higher gas flows required. The term "silver solder" gets confusing because there are low...

Harris also makes a brown flux with a higher temperature rating, and it will take more heat than the white flux before it burns off. The flux will dry out, and you can mix it with a little water to get it like puddy again. It takes a surprising amount of heat to reach the temperature where the...

How did you set it up ? .

Brian does his own thing, for his own reasons. I guess we all do to some extent. .

Outstanding work ! Looks great. .

Some weights are not standard gray iron. .

Welcome, glad to have you. I found the following information, which may or may not be exactly what you are looking for. To get high qualilty castings like Paul Knapp made, you need eithe investment castings, or lost PLA type. I think the engine could be 3D modeled, and then patterns 3D printed...