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A couple more photos of the tappet guides: Lots of tiddlers.....

Here's a couple of photos I forgot to include, first one is a collection of parts, I made a couple more before work this morning: And I've established a process for the first procedure, adjust the material length in the chuck, set the DRO zero on both axes, reduce the diameter to 0.25" for a...

Oh, it's so slow sometimes - sometimes it seems like days of work produces only a few parts! Here's some more progress: A series of photos showing the front gear housing; first roughing out the mounting flange, then boring out the internal gear case, reducing the outer diameter and tapering for...

It's time I made an update, after several weeks of nothing but a little bit of machining here and there, a 12,000 mile round trip to visit family and sorting out another project that had a deadline..... I've been working on the front tappet rod housing which keeps the cam followers aligned with...

A little bit of progress, it's been a busy month and I've really only finished the crankcase, the rear bearing housing, made a small chuck for the cylinders so I can machine the cylinder heads, almost finished the commutator ring, that sort of thing. I was in the workshop one day and decided...

Some more work to show, it's the turn of the crankcase today - setting out and starting to bore, screwcut and fit the master cylinder. Here's the setting out, using the Myford dividing head and a scriber: Then it's onto marking the cylinder centres - I managed to mark them all slightly...

The tidal range in Bristol is between 12 to 14 metres (40 feet to 46 feet) so there's plenty of depth for even quite large ships. It's th second highest tidal range in the world - beaten only by the Bay of Fundy with up to 53 feet. The main navigational hazard was the bend between Avonmouth and...

Wonderful to see such joyous reviews of the museum in the town that’s been my home since 1996. The work that has gone into preserving the SS Great Britain is astonishing and gives us a real insight into the development of steam ships. Not far away is the replica Matthew, the small ship that took...

Some more photos from today, first making a master cylinder with correct dimensions to use as a gauge for the crankcase machining. The light chatter is due to using the 'wrong' edge of the tool...: And here's it's bored to something like the correct size. Les specified a bore of 0.745"but I...

A quick note about thread sizes. I hadn't previously heard of the "Model Engineer" thread specification but having found a chart covering ¹⁄₈" to ½" diameter threads of Whitworth form in both 32tpi and 40tpi, the thread sizes that Les Chenery uses make more sense. Richard

This day I decided upon making a piece that could pretty much be finished in one day, so the commutator ring was planned but Murphy got in the way and slowed the process..... The piece of Tufnol was available but square, so that had to be cut out, the corners sawn off and then turned to the...

Those Vevor units seem quite good, I fitted one on my Drummond Roundbed. I was a little wary of cutting the glass scale but it went perfectly well and has maintained the 0.0005" readout. I was disappointed with the iGaging ones, although they are small they only measure to 5 thou but I still...

Here is the rear bearing housing, finished but for the keyway and fitted to the crankcase which has been drilled and tapped 8BA for the fixings. I borrowed a Myford chuck to fit my dividing head and used the collet chuck in the Drummond lathe to bore each of the 18 holes: Here's the part with...

I'm glad you didn't keep the shaper, Andrew, it's done some great work over the years. I still haven't finished the feed bar though, never needed it! I chickened out and bought the gears for the Gnome but that was quite a shock to the bank balance. I figured it's going to take long enough...

I've been working on the main bearing housing at the rear of the crankcase. I bought a 90mm diameter piece of EN1 weighing over 4kg to make the front and rear and has taken a couple of days so far to reduce it to somewhat near the finished size. This is the first part, the flange is close to...

Today brings some very satisfying work. The keyway has been let into the camshaft bush, the small gear for the camshaft drive was machined and fitted to the bush and then screwed together. I started truing up the rear crankcase bearing housing, at over 3" diameter it really does test the...

After a brief pause to install the DRO on my lathe (seperate thread) I was back to making parts for the Gnome today. Not much, but I found that because the specified threads are all 32 tpi but on larger diameters, I was having to calculate the sizes..... Here's the crank bearing retaining nut...

Thank you! There's a couple small additions - I attached a piece of aluminium T bar to the X-slide to keep it a bit more rigid, and there's a small Teflon traveller on the X sensor to keep it level with the glass scale. I'm sure there'll be further modifications when I get to use the system more...

Today I finished the Y-axis installation. I celebrated by practising making some 24tpi screws. Here's the important bracket to allow the encoder to attach to the saddle while still allowing the saddle to rotate: And here's how it fits on the lathe - the aluminium brackets were helpfully...

I haven't been working on the Gnome engine for the past couple of weeks, I decided to bring my Drummond Roundbed lathe into the 21st Century. Adding a DRO is a fairly straight-forward project for ordinary lathes such as Myfords or similar, but the Roundbed had a clever rotating saddle and a...