Building one of Rudy's steamers

[Deanofid]

Thank you, Brian! Your comments are much appreciated.
Those little oilers will only hold a small drop of oil, but they will keep things nice and slippery. I needed three of them, and ended up making five. One you saw in the pic broke, and one rolled away to never-never land. Once a tiny part goes under the bench... well, you know. It's usually a goner.

Dean

 

[Twmaster]

My shop-vac is usually good at finding things. When something small is missing I check the shop-vac!

 

[Toyman01]

Deanofid, your work is amazing! I have had Taig lathe for almost 10 years and it has never turned (pun intended) out that kind of work. I shoved it out of the way when I got a Southbend 9a. I will have to uncover it and tune it back up. The big one is good for large items but I had forgotten how much fun I had with the Taig. Thank you for sharing your work with us.

 

[arnoldb]

Your build is coming along really well Dean and looking Great! :bow:

Arnold

 

[Deanofid]

Thanks again, Arnold!

Mike, those shop vacs can really get the stuff down their gullet. I have a little tap wrench that I made long ago. I've had to dig it out of the vac a few times.
I keep looking for money in there, but no luck yet..

Toyman, thanks very much for the nice comments!
Much appreciated.

Dean

 

[Deanofid]

Today was snow tire day at my house, which took up much of the afternoon, so only this little bit got done.

This will become the top of the cross head slipper. The slipper has two pieces, steel where
the con rod and the piston rod connect, and a brass foot that slips inside the cross head
guides. The two will be soldered together.

In the shot above, I have a piece of left over something in CRS. It looks like a mouse has
been gnawing on it! I'm taking an .050 d.o.c. about half the width of the 1/4" end mill to
square an end. That end mill is just about worn out, and I ended up replacing it after getting
this piece cut to shape. It still cuts well enough, but the finish was showing a lot of marks.
I'll use it only for roughing after this.

After the piece is cut to its rectangular shape, I replaced the end mill with a new one. I'm
just about to cut the center slot in the piece, but first, a skim cut was taken off the top.
It is probably not necessary for this particular piece, but it's a good machining practice.
When cutting slots and such, and especially when cutting things like dovetails, it's important
to have surfaces parallel. So, I usually skim anything like this right before cutting then next
parallel surface, just out of habit.

After the top cut, the piece was centered and the slot cut, seen in the next picture.

Here, the slot has been cut, and it's being center drilled for a hole that will be tapped. I just
made sure to drill the hole deep enough that it would go clear through after I had finished the
bottom of the piece.

This is all that can be done in the mill, for now.

A cross hole has to be drilled through the sloted part for the piston rod pin. If I had started with
a piece that was a stock size of material, I would have drilled this hole first. Since it had to be
made from oversized stock, that couldn't be done.

The location for the hole is laid out, and a piece of wood and some shims are put between the
two "ears" so they will not be deformed while drilling. The shims are just to keep the wooden
piece nice and tight in the slot.

Then the piece is center punched and spot drilled. The wood piece serves a second purpose here,
which is to keep the piece flat on the top of the vise jaws. The piece is clamped on the larger
waste material, so I don't have to worry about scarring the "good" part. Then the piece is drilled
through and reamed.

Another use for the wooden piece. I used a file to clean up what will be the finished slipper.
In this picture, the wood piece is wedged between the ears to keep them from vibrating while
I'm filing across the narrow dimensions of them. Vibrations in a thin piece will cause the file
to skip over the part, and the finish suffers.

Still using the waste piece for work holding, the top corners of the ears are filed to a radius that
suits me.

The diagonal marks you see are from using a fast cutting file. I started the radius with an eight
inch double cut mill *******. That's a good size for removing a lot of material from a small work
piece. As file sizes go up, (in length), the the tooth size on the file changes, even though the
name of the cut is the same. In other words, a 4" mill cut file will be much finer than a 12" mill
cut file.
Filing is a whole 'nuther aspect to machine work, and is a subject in itself. If a few folks would
like to know more about it, I can write more...

Back to this little part. After I had roughed out the radius with the double cut, I finished it up with
a finer file.

When I had done most of the filing, the waste piece was cut off. I left it on as long as possible,
mainly for something to grab in the vise. The threads that were on the end were from a test
thread done some time back, for some forgotten project.

Now it's back to the mill to get rid of the nasty end.

Then the previously drilled hole is wiggled in, and the hole is tapped 5-40.

And that's the whole days work. Well, only a few hours, really. Spent most of the day chasing
around town. Didn't even get to work on the new/old lathe today!

Next time, the slipper foot. Sounds like a Cinderella story...

Dean

 

[ozzie46]

Filing is a whole 'nuther aspect to machine work, and is a subject in itself. If a few folks would
like to know more about it, I can write more...


Dean,
I'm interested, that is a nice finish. Mine looks like.... well you know.

Ron

 

[zeeprogrammer]

Another great post Dean.

Yeah...I'm interested in learning more about filing too.

You feed your mice too much swarf.

 

[Twmaster]

Me three on filing!

 

[4156df]

Yes please on more filing.
Dennis

 

[Deanofid]

Dean,
I'm interested, that is a nice finish. Mine looks like.... well you know.

Ron

Like a mouse gnawed on it?

Ron, Zee, Mike, and Dennis, thanks for checking in on the build.

I'll write up a post on filing sometime this week. Maybe it should be a new thread.
I know there are a number of other fellows on the forum who know some filing
tricks. It might be good to get some discussion going on it.


I got some more little tid bits done on the steam engine. Today was pick up day.
Pick up on all the little niggling things that were yet to be done on the parts made so far.

First, I made the foot for the slipper. It's just a rectangular piece of 1/8" brass,
and above, it's about to be soldered to the top piece.

Next up was the connecting rod small end bushing, and the cross pin that holds it to the slipper.
Just LRT's. No pics of the process.

Now, for one of the things that have been nagging at me. The print shows the
fly wheels being attached via a pin driven into a hole drilled on the line where the
outside of the crankshaft and the inner diameter of the fly wheel bore meet.
I want to put a pulley on one end of the crankshaft, so the pin method described
in the print won't work. I decided to use set screws, but since the fly wheel hub
is inside the rim, I can't tap a hole straight in. So, I set up as shown in the picture
above, and milled a flat on each inner hub, then drilled and tapped into the flat for
the set screw.

I don't want the set screws to scar the crankshaft when they are tightened, so
a small piece of lead shot is put into the set screw hole before the screw goes in.
Then, when it's tightened, the piece of shot will deform against the shaft, and
protect it from the end of the screw.

The picture shows a #8 lead shot, which fits perfectly in a #6 threaded hole.
You can buy this stuff in bags at a real sporting goods store, or, if you don't
happen to need 25 pounds of it, get it from a shotgun shell.

So, that's one little niggling project done. If you look at the left side of the shot above,
you'll see niggling project #2. I don't want slot head screws holding on the bearing caps.
I only used them for fitting up and holding things together until I got around to taking
care of them. I want studs and proper looking nuts for this job. I don't like the kind of
nuts that hardware stores sell for small fasteners. They are too flat, and too large in
diameter, and just don't look right to me. That's the next step.

Here's a quick series of shots on making stud or cap screw nuts.

Get a piece of hex rod the right size. That is, whatever size looks good to you.
Drill and tap down the center for the screw size needed.

Part off to a length that suits you.

Thread the new nut onto a threaded shaft or screw and use it to hold the nut while
you finish off the burs left from parting off. That's it.

Here's the slipper finished.

New stud nuts on the bearing caps.

Progress so far.

Dean

 

[Twmaster]

Dean,

Once again, I seem to get a tip or other hunk of useful knowledge with just about every progress post you make. Thank you.

As to the filing.. yea, I think a new thread on the subject would be great!

 

[4156df]

Dean,
I think a separate thread on filing is the way to go. I'd hate to see this thread drift too far away from this excellent build!
Dennis

 

[Russel]

Great craftmanship! I am following this thread with great interest! Thanks for posting your fine work. OT: I recently spent a couple hours going over your website. I was particularly impressed with the rotary table you made. I have to smile every time I see your smiley face on the aluminum plate. (Last seen with a vice clamped on it.)

Russ

 

[zeeprogrammer]

Excellent. And more juicy tips. I like the lead shot idea.
I also liked the way you made the flat for the set screw.

 

[mklotz]

Very nice work, Dean.

On the matter of scale nuts and such "looking right", here's a set of rules that I use that seems to work for my eye. As always, YMMV.


Scale fastener dimensions

D = bolt major diameter

Across flats dimension of bolt hex head and matching nut = 1.5*D
Bolt head thickness = 0.7*D
Nut thickness = 0.9*D

 

[deere_x475guy]

I concur with what everyone else has stated and like Zee said great tip on the lead shot....I have pounds of that stored away from my shot shell reloading days. As a matter of fact I have about a half of bag of shot laying on the lathe and use it to help dampen any vibration I get when I bore a deep hole, that is if I can't get around it any other way.

 

[Deanofid]

Mike, Dennis, Russ, Zee, Marv, and Bob, thanks all for the kindly remarks. I was surprised today when I saw this many comments to the thread.

I started a thread in Tips and Tricks on the filing subject, for those of you who mentioned that you would like to see more about it. Thanks for the encouragement.

Marv, thanks for sharing your formula. After measuring a number of shop made nuts I have here, I find that my eye must be calibrated fairly close to what looks "right" to you, too. Your calculation comes to within a few thou of the different nut sizes I've made up.

Russ, thanks for the comments about the RT, too. And the "smiley face" aluminum plate.

Dean

 

[arnoldb]

Very nice progress Dean. And lots of good tips

Regards, Arnold

 

[NickG]

Dean,

Just seen this topic and flicked through the 7 pages. Beautiful work and as people keep saying, lots of tips to be picked up. The engine is looking fantastic.

Nick