Thanks GreenTwin really enjoyed looking at the photos and reading your comments.
Sadly in this electronic google world much of the hands on, making your own tools, thinking it out for yourself, skill is being lost.
At just 8 years old I started building balsa wood planes and stuff. I have done it on and off (in between raising 4 girls and making a living) for over 66 years.
I am now 74 and only in recent years have indulged in lathes, mills, building steam engines and model boats.
I am still learning new things and will continue to do so, as your Dad obviously did.
My message to anyone who will listen out there is; never stop learning, and use your hands as our creator intended!
All the best
Mike. Tasmania, Australia
I must agree, young people are not building things like they use to.
We made crystal radios, all sorts of electro-mechanical gizmos, model airplanes (which had a half life of about 1 day after they were finished), model rockets, mini-bikes, scooters made from a 2x4 with roller skate wheels, you name it.
The balsa that was in those early airplane kits was really featherweight.
You can't even buy that quality balsa anymore.
I am scheming to make a Trawler, and debating on the size, but perhaps something between 36" and 72" long.
I have not made a model boat yet, but would really like to make a model Frisco Standard gas engine to put in it.
I have the Frisco Standar about designed.
I am a poster child for learning how to machine and design engines, and make castings, late in life.
I learned it all starting in earnest in about 2009.
Some Frisco Standard screen captures below.
Patterns will be 3D printed, and the parts cast in gray iron.
JasonB (the prolific builder from the UK) figured out the helical gear design for me; I was stumpted on that to say the least.
I did not realize you could have two helical gears the same diameter, with teeth angles that give a 2:1 ratio.
Somehow I thought the gear diameters had to be 2:1, but they can actually be the same diameter (I still don't quite understand it exactly).
These gears will be cast in gray iron, and with resin-bound sand, I think I can cast them accurately enough so that they can be used without machining them, other than the hole for the shaft.
I intend to let the resin-sand harden fully, then heat the mold enough to get the 3D gear print hot enough to become flexible enough to carefully removed from the mold. I am not going let the plastic get molten, else it will imbed in the sand.
With ceramic mold wash, the finish should be bright and shiny, with no sand grain imprint in the castings.
The resin-bound sand is quite accurate, and this method will produce an exact copy of the gears, since it is much like the lost wax method, but far easier and simpler than lost wax.
The ceramic mold coat mimics what would be used in the lost wax process, and produces an excellent grain-free surface finish.
And the entire helical gear machining process is sidestepped by casting the gears.
No special cutters needed since there is no machining, and the gears can be 3D printed in any size, to any scale, without having to adhere to standard gear cutter sizes.