2024 Indiana model engine show

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Hmm. I was there Friday to set up and I went around to all the cars. You just had to make your way through the exhibitor tables to the far wall and come at them from the back. Maybe they changed something. I never went down to the lower two levels where apparently there were trucks. Someone said they were all accessible. Can't say.
I think someone said they wanted this car (Henry J) :)
I want to chop that Henry J into a gasser soooooo bad.....the museum curator warned me, we will not be cutting HIS Henry J......
 
I showed on both Saturday and Sunday and enjoyed seeing many exhibitors that I haven’t seen since NAMES. Traffic was light on Sunday, but this show is just getting started. Didn’t try looking at the cars and trucks on Saturday, but there was nothing keeping us from seeing them on Sunday. There were many interesting vehicles. Hopefully the show will grow, a few bugs to work out, but I sure enjoyed it.
Karl
 
I really enjoyed this show. It was small, but the models were good and some very unique projects were on display. I'll post some pics of the show within a few days. This show had the fun good vibe feeling of the first few cabin fever shows way back when it was in Leesport. It wasn't a vendor feeding frenzy show, which was fine by me. No fudge, trinket, hot dog and pretzel vendors, or junk dealers cluttering things up. :)

Several folks whose work I admire were there and the smaller show size meant that you could look closely and take time talking with the person who made the model. Very different from the elbow to ribs crowd of Cabin Fever, and the show wasn't all about massive auctions and radio control construction equipment. This was the first time I got to really look at Rich Carlstedt's Monitor engine in good light without being jostled by people trying to shove in. Talking with George Britnell and seeing his engines getting fired up in such a relaxed venue was a real pleasure, along with seeing other folks whose work I admire like Joe RIchmond, Dave Sage, and others who I'm just not coming up with tonight. The last week+ has been five days of travel to and staying in Lansing followed by two days at the show and then getting back to tidewater Virginia today. I'm a tad crisp around the edges.

*** Edit 10/17/2024 to correct Dave Sage's name, I'd gotten it wrong. Sorry! ***

Everyone was running their engines for folks all though the show, very few static displays.

Some very nice miniature firearms and tools were displayed by several folks. Some of the exhibitors were actually NOT gray beards! There's hope for the future.

Willy Demis is doing some really excellent work that combines electronics and machining as key parts of the projects. Exotic materials (crystallized titanium, Mokume-gane, tungsten, timascus, damascus, something fun I've missed no doubt) plus magic eyes, bargraphs, components arranged on circuit boards to be aesthetically part of the presentation, an exciting and different approach I would have never considered. I would have just buried an arduino or ESP32 under the base rather than doing a complete discrete component layout to be part of the show. Just doing the electronics so they work well is tough enough, doing the board design as art is fascinating to see. Willy made his fan / flywheel using tilted rotary table setups to cut blades rather than doing a 3D CNC job of it. He even has one top made with an outer rim from metallic meteorite remains. Not everyday material selections OR everyday model engineering sorts of projects eh?

Gary Martin put on a superb pattern making presentation Saturday afternoon, darn glad I made it.

It felt as though the museum and the show organizers has a few disconnects about what had been arranged on Saturday, I was very disappointed to not get to see a lot of the cars and trucks that day. Fortunately my wife humored me and I got to come back for a few hours on Sunday and all seemed to have been sorted, basement was open, all the tape was down. The museum folks I spoke with were all friendly and helpful. There are things in that basement I'd never seen or in some cases even heard of.

My apologies to those who I failed to mention by name, all the exhibitors were great and welcoming and all the club members were working hard and went out of their way to encourage everyone's interest and to be helpful.

For those who haven't ever met him, 55fairlane is a really good guy, lots of fun to talk with.

Thanks to everyone who put this show together, and thanks to all who displayed at the show. I hope to get back next year.

Cheers,
Stan
 
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I attended on Saturday and enjoyed it. I flew to Indianapolis Friday morning and spent a couple of hours at the Indiana State Museum. Lots of info on people born there and things made. Of course I knew about South Bend tools, but the gamut of Norden Bombsights to TokHeim gas pumps was fascinating. One exhibit there puts us current model makers to shame.
photo_2024-10-15_05-02-45.jpg
 
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I attended on Saturday and enjoyed it. I flew to Indianapolis Friday morning and spent a couple of hours at the Indiana State Museum. Lots of info on people born there and things made. Of course I knew about South Bend tools, but the gamut of Norden Bombsights to TokHeim gas pumps was fascinating. One exhibit there puts us current model makers to shame.View attachment 160319
Norden bombsights? surely you're joking!
 
I really enjoyed this show. It was small, but the models were good and some very unique projects were on display. I'll post some pics of the show within a few days. This show had the fun good vibe feeling of the first few cabin fever shows way back when it was in Leesport. It wasn't a vendor feeding frenzy show, which was fine by me. No fudge, trinket, hot dog and pretzel vendors, or junk dealers cluttering things up. :)

Several folks whose work I admire were there and the smaller show size meant that you could look closely and take time talking with the person who made the model. Very different from the elbow to ribs crowd of Cabin Fever, and the show wasn't all about massive auctions and radio control construction equipment. This was the first time I got to really look at Rich Carlstedt's Monitor engine in good light without being jostled by people trying to shove in. Talking with George Britnell and seeing his engines getting fired up in such a relaxed venue was a real pleasure, along with seeing other folks whose work I admire like Joe RIchmond, Dennis Sage, and others who I'm just not coming up with tonight. The last week+ has been five days of travel to and staying in Lansing followed by two days at the show and then getting back to tidewater Virginia today. I'm a tad crisp around the edges.

Everyone was running their engines for folks all though the show, very few static displays.

Some very nice miniature firearms and tools were displayed by several folks. Some of the exhibitors were actually NOT gray beards! There's hope for the future.

Willy Demis is doing some really excellent work that combines electronics and machining as key parts of the projects. Exotic materials (crystallized titanium, Mokume-gane, tungsten, timascus, damascus, something fun I've missed no doubt) plus magic eyes, bargraphs, components arranged on circuit boards to be aesthetically part of the presentation, an exciting and different approach I would have never considered. I would have just buried an arduino or ESP32 under the base rather than doing a complete discrete component layout to be part of the show. Just doing the electronics so they work well is tough enough, doing the board design as art is fascinating to see. Willy made his fan / flywheel using tilted rotary table setups to cut blades rather than doing a 3D CNC job of it. He even has one top made with an outer rim from metallic meteorite remains. Not everyday material selections OR everyday model engineering sorts of projects eh?

Gary Martin put on a superb pattern making presentation Saturday afternoon, darn glad I made it.

It felt as though the museum and the show organizers has a few disconnects about what had been arranged on Saturday, I was very disappointed to not get to see a lot of the cars and trucks that day. Fortunately my wife humored me and I got to come back for a few hours on Sunday and all seemed to have been sorted, basement was open, all the tape was down. The museum folks I spoke with were all friendly and helpful. There are things in that basement I'd never seen or in some cases even heard of.

My apologies to those who I failed to mention by name, all the exhibitors were great and welcoming and all the club members were working hard and went out of their way to encourage everyone's interest and to be helpful.

For those who haven't ever met him, 55fairlane is a really good guy, lots of fun to talk with.

Thanks to everyone who put this show together, and thanks to all who displayed at the show. I hope to get back next year.

Cheers,
Stan
It was a great pleasure speaking to you as well my friend
 
Green Twin;
I saw your Green Twin at NAMES in 2019. It was all alone on a table and no one was there. Didn't connect it until I saw it here.
Detroit is a long way from Vermont, but we had been to a quilt show in Kentucky as part of the trip, and NAMES on the way back.
Until 2019, the American Precision Museum (Windsor VT) had had a Model Engineering Show every year for twenty years or so. They keep listing it in Home Shop Machinist calendar, but it didn't happen at all this year. It sort of turned into a robot show, for high school kids. Last time I went, there were only a couple of model exhibitors, and for the first time in years, I didn't exhibit.
I hope it comes back. Next year I'll start asking about it early. It was a fall show, and near foliage season which should be an additional draw.
The other show I hear about in New England is in Massachusetts, but it's in (NEMES) but it's in February and travel can be unpredictable.
Same for Cabin Fever (Jan. 17-18). We went a couple of times when they had Iron Fever, a summer show.
Doug
 
Green Twin;
I saw your Green Twin at NAMES in 2019.
That really makes my day Doug, I am really glad someone saw it / remembers it.

The story is that the green twin engine was not complete, and I did not want to show an incomplete engine at NAMES.
NAMES was very intimidating to me; being in an arena with the best-of-the-best model folks.
When I was checking into the hotel the day before the show, two guys behind me were discussing NAMES, so I chatted with them, and told them I had an engine, but did not intend to display it.
They asked to see it, so we walked out to my car, and I showed them the green twin, and they said "You should show it", so I put it out on the table, with some ad hoc hand-written descriptions of how I cast the engine.
I idea was to illustrate how to cast engine parts, not to impress anyone with that particular engine build.
I did not expect it to garner much attention, and it didn't, but at least I can say "I displayed at NAMES".

I sat for a long time at the table with the green twin, and nobody was looking at the green twin, or they would give it a sideways glance for 1/2 a second, and then move on; so I went roving around the show, and ran into my buddy from Louisiana, who does replica jumbo coin castings at the Soule show.

One of the big highlights of the NAMES show was the 1/2 scale tractor, with many of the patterns displayed.
I had a great chat with that fellow.

I really enjoyed the 2019 NAMES show, and learned more in a hour chatting with engine builders, backyard foundry folks, and commercial kit folks, than I would learn in perhaps several years otherwise.

I showed the jumbo Cretors flywheel that I cast to one of the vendors, and he said "Looks like you have purchased one of our flywheel castings.".
I said "No, I made my own casting". He was very surprised.

So perhaps I can attend the Indiana model engine show next year.
We need to rebuild a new show that is analogous to the NAMES show in size and scope.
I have quite a few of my dad's engines I could display, and a large amount of mis-castings that I think would be educational for those trying to learn how to cast their own engine parts.
I would also like to do an iron pour demonstration at the Indiana show, like they do at the Soule show.

.
 

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This is a demonstration I did for the local Metal Museum, pouring gray iron, for art-iron folks who gathered for that show from around the country.
This would be the same demonstration I would do at the Indiana show, if we can get it organized/set up.
It does not get much more fun than playing with molten iron.
My wife thought I was crazy, but she got use to it (got use to the fact that I am crazy, the hot iron still worries her).

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This is a buddy of mine running his iron furnace at the Soule Museum in Merridian Mississippi (this show is coming up first weekend of November).
It does not require much space to set up a furnace, and the fuel is diesel, so even if you have a fuel spill, the fuel will not burn on the ground.
Kerosene is significantly more flamable than diesel, but kerosene prices here are very high, so I use diesel.

And my table of 3D printed patterns, some of which my buddy cast at the Soule show.
There is a lot I could display at a show, for those interested in the backyard foundry process.

.
 

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