Howdy ya'll!

[DICKEYBIRD]

Great forum you fellows have going here! I'm reading the earlier posts and am really enjoying everything.

Me? I'm a lifelong tinkerer, jack of many trades but master of none sort of guy that just began the machining hobby a little over 3 years ago. I got into metalworking through my other hobby, r/c model aircraft. The urge to design, build & fly them has cooled a little after 25 yrs. of obsessive behavior in that arena.

I bought an 80's era used 8x16 Taiwan lathe on a whim and never looked back. I now have a 9 mo. old Seig X-3 mill, a 6" rotary table, boring head, 5C spin-indexer, a 4x6 horiz/vert bandsaw, drill press, bench grinder and a decent (but growing!) kit of tooling...some is store-bought and some is home made. I really enjoy making my own tooling.

Here's a couple pics of projects I've completed: 1) A modified HSM Mag. "Finger Engine" driving a PM motor (generator) which lights an l.e.d. in the lamp post.

2) A little cannon (.5" bore) made from scraps of mystery metal, brass & wood.

3) A copy of Matsuro Ishimura's grinding rest as shown on his website.

I'm now lusting after a Flame Licker engine and am making plans to build one of Jan Ridders' beautiful specimens shown on his website. I hop you guys won't mind my stupid questions from time to time.

 

[rake60]

Welcome DICKEYBIRD.

Nice work you’re turning out there.

I doubt that you'll find anyone here that would consider any question
"stupid". Never be afraid to ask!

Rick

 

[Bogstandard]

Welcome,
Some nice models you have made there.
Jans the man for your flamelicker project, his other engines are just as good as well, great designing and making.
No such thing as a stupid question.

John

 

[DICKEYBIRD]

Thanks for the welcome and the kind words gentlemen. I appreciate your hospitality.

I'll probably have a few questions about constructing Jan's "Vacuum Engine With Internal Head-Valve." I see a forum for talking about engines built from casting kits but not one for scratch built from bar-stock engines. Where would these questions need to be asked?

Thanks,
Milton Dickey

 

[Bogstandard]

Hi Milton,
Its always nice to talk to a proper name.
We seem to discuss everything in the photos and video section.
If you are going to be building one with the built in contra piston, my revisit is here

http://freeforums4u.com/viewtopic.php?t=350&mforum=homemodelengine

There are a couple of vids in that post, plus there is also a few more posts in this section about it.
Both Rick and myself have built this engine, unfortunately Ricks isn't running yet due to ill health delays. This is a fairly simple build as long as you get very good tolerances on the pistons, getting it to run afterwards is the problem, but I seem to have got it cracked with burner position. I am just awaiting for some plans for a gas burner and I will be trying that out in the near future to see if I can expand on the quantity of engines running on the same crankshaft to see if I can get some meaningful power out of them.

John

 

[Tin Falcon]

Milton:
Welcome to the board. Looks like you will fit right in here.
Tin

 

[Hal]

Milton

Nice finger engine. It the first one that I've seen that powers anything, neat.

Does the light pole telescope/collapse for easy storage?

Thanks for posting pictures of your work. Its always nice to see quality work.

Hal

 

[GeorgeGreek]

Welcome dicky,

we have exchanged niceties and our mutual admiration on another forum,
yet...

George

 

[gt2ride]

Milton your eng look great. But you pic are what I want to know more about. What camera do you use. Your set up and any thing you can tell me that would help me with my pic.

 

[DICKEYBIRD]

Hi everyone! Thanks for the kind words. You guys are great.

Hal, the light pole was made from lengths of hobby-shop K&S brass tubing because I didn't want to turn a taper on a solid brass rod and drill it for the wiring. Just a quick way to make a tapered, hollow pole.

The original generator idea was to embed some small magnets in the periphery of the flywheel and make an alternator but I'm no sparky so I took the easy way out and used a PM motor. The 1st one I tried was very small and took very little power to turn but wouldn't put out enough wattage to light an L.E.D. I finally had to use the big ol' 24v printer motor to get enough power at finger-powered speeds.

Hi George, good to bump into you over here as well.

gt, I use a Nikon CoolPix 3100 (3.1 mp) It's several yrs. old now but does a great job. I keep one of those cheap, clamp-on aluminum reflectors with a 75w bulb near my workbench and snap tons of photos at full resolution during any projects I'm working on at the time. I download them to my workshop PC, clean them up in Adobe Photoshop Elements (came with the camera) and resize to 800 x 600 or 640 x 480 for web posting.

The camera has a macro focus setting that lets you get very close yet still auto-focuses well. I shut my flash off and move the above-mentioned light around until it "looks right" to me. I think the flash flattens the image and makes things look cheap. You have to hold the camera very steady though and sometimes I'll remove any fuzziness with the "Sharpen" tool in the PhotoShop "Filter" menu.

Whew! Sorry guys, I must have diarrhea of the keyboard.

 

[gt2ride]

Milton Thanks for the tips. I will give them a try.