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Rob, That's an interesting theory. I hope it isn't the case, but I'll have to check it. The bed is fine, that much I can see for certain. It's a hardened bed, no ridges and no measurable wear, and very little use. The screw could be bent, however. It has covers over the ball leadscrew to...

I'm just getting going on my CNC-converted South Bend "Fourteen" 14x40 lathe. It's was factory converted to ballscrews and servomotors in the late 80's or early 90's, and recently the control was swapped out for a PMDx board and gecko drivers and I'm running Mach3. I'm having some strange...

Gabby, it's funny but to tackle this (and presumably future builds) I've had to buy things to make smaller parts. Smaller end-mills, smaller reamers, collets to grip material under 1/4", etc. All I've done til now is full size parts for my motorcycles and gas engines and such.

All I managed to get done the rest of the weekend was the flywheel hubs. I cut some slugs of random 1/2" brass rod I had laying around. It was too hard to be 360 but it didn't machine too badly. Then I turned the profile of each and bored/reamed it. Note that I turned a .005" relief...

I had a very nice South Bend Heavy 10, a late model from the 1980's with the extra wide-range gearbox, flame-hardened ways, and camlock spindle. Recently, however, I sold it and decided to start "cheating" by buying a CNC lathe. Here's my 14"x40" South Bend CNC: South Bend never made a CNC...

I planned to make the flywheels out of a piece of 1144 steel I had, because brass is prohibitively expensive. Unfortunately the 1144 proved to be way too difficult to work with. I couldn't even get it cut into sections with my portaband. Fortunately I came across a piece of 2.5" x 1/2"...

Gotta love holiday weekends. I made a ton of progress today on the Poppin. Last weekend I started work on the "standards". Unfortunately part way through I discovered I don't have all the reamers I need. I got the outline of both roughed out (one at each end of the same bar of aluminum)...

I assume you're talking about the graphite rods available on Amazon? I hope they are suitable, because I ordered a .625" diameter rod from them for this project. It should be delivered any day now, and I'll see if it is machinable and smooth/strong enough to hold up as a piston.

I didn't build this myself, so I hope it's ok to post it up here. My grandfather built this a long time ago. I dug out a few models I inherited from him today before I started my own first engine build (inspiration I guess). This is my favorite. It's a solenoid engine built from a car...

OK, so based on my materials/tools on hand and my timeframe I'm going with the Poppin build. Many thanks to rleete for a copy of Jans' flame-licker plans, I do still intend to build one of those. I got a small start today. I had to make atleast a few chips for this to qualify as "under way"...

I contacted Jan for a copy of his plans to review, and unfortunately his computer has been hacked and he says it will be 1-2 weeks before he'll be able to send me plans. That would put me thoroughly behind schedule and I would have to pick one of the other engines. Would another member be able...

Seems to be a popular theme, judging by some old threads, but I'm thinking of diving into my first engine project. I never finish anything if I don't set a deadline, so here's the deal. I want to make my Dad a model engine for Christmas. This is my first post, so for a bit of background I am...