Water Cooled Webster

[bmac2]

Flipped it around and zeroed it in the 4 jaw. Ah close enough. Oh yes . . . Happiness is a 4 jaw chuck and 2 keys.
“Hi. My name is Bob, and I use to be afraid of my 4 jaw chuck. Then I made a second key”

 

[bmac2]

Crap that stuff gets everywhere! I’ll be another hour cleaning the lathe. But the cylinders cut to length and cleaned up. Tomorrow I’ll try lapping it and see how it goes.
Apparently I have this stuff in the yard called Grass and it doesn’t stop growing just because I want to play in the workshop.
Stupid photosynthesis

 

[hedgehog]

very nice build.


but ill say if my old shop teacher caught me with one chuck key in I would have been wrapped on the back of the hand. I dont want to think what he would have done to me if he seen that set up

 

[hedgehog]

also great idea on the cast iron. what is the diameter of the handle area?

 

[Brian Rupnow]

Nice work, great photography and very well documented!! The forum needs more builds like this. Excellent!!----Brian Rupnow

 

[bmac2]

very nice build.


but ill say if my old shop teacher caught me with one chuck key in I would have been wrapped on the back of the hand. I dont want to think what he would have done to me if he seen that set up

Hi Hedgehog
My dad would have done more than that, he was old school.
It’s ok though all main to the bench are dead when I was setting up a chuck. Keep the key next to the switch.
The iron was a tip I got from Gmac. I took a ruler with me when I went to Walyworld. The 5lb weights ranged from around 1” to 1 ¼. They had them from 3lb to 40lb at about a buck a pound. If I remember correctly the 40 pounder was just shy of 1 1/2”. With a lot of cutting the ends could be used for flywheels.

 

[bmac2]

Nice work, great photography and very well documented!! The forum needs more builds like this. Excellent!!----Brian Rupnow

Wow, thanks Brian
I had and old Kodak Easy Share and it has lived in the shop since I joined the forum. I take pictures of everything now just out of habit. As they say “a picture is worth a thousand words”. And hell I like the builds with LOTS of pictures.
I think one of the things I like best about your builds is that you’re not afraid to show your mistakes. I learn a lot from this.

 

[bmac2]

Well lapping didn’t happen. I just hand reamed it (as in while in the lathe turn the chuck by hand) and gave it a couple of lite passes with a hone. The bore looks pretty good so I’m going to leave it for now. Sorry I forgot to take any pictures. It didn’t take much time and wasn’t very interesting. Just imagine this thing spinning and sliding up and down in the cylinder. ;D

 

[bmac2]

The frame went a lot faster than I thought but then in hindsight there’s not much to it really. I saw the way Chuck Fellows used trimmed down angle for the frame of his “Bessemer Hot Tube Oil Field Engine” (now called something else but I can’t remember) and I like the look so I decided to use it here. With the two side frames glued up and bolted tougher I cleaning up the saw marks and got it to size.

 

[bmac2]

Here I’ve removed the bolt and milled out the gap then back into the mill to cut the angle.

 

[bmac2]

That done I clamped the cylinder block to the side frames to scribe the radius for the front piece.

 

[bmac2]

This is my quick and dirty setup for the rotary table. I have a plug that’s a slide fit into the center hole then just hold it in the vice. Milled the radius . . . . well its close I can clean it up with a file.

 

[bmac2]

The cylinder block is held to the side frames with two 2x56 screws (for now) coming up from the bottom of the frames. I didn’t take any pictures, its nerve racking enough drilling small holes through 2” inches of aluminum that’s ¼” thick.

 

[bmac2]

My wife keeps says it looks like a cross between a meat grinder and a sleigh!
Damn she might be right. Paint it red and I could put Santa in the back.

 

[Swifty]

Don't worry Bob, women don't seem to have the same appreciation of the skill and labour that goes into our projects. My wife's usual comment is "that's nice and shiny".

Paul.

 

[bmac2]

Oh it was a banner day in the shop today. Decided to do the piston next and had a short scrap of square aluminum so I got it setup in the 4 jaw. Once it was down to the right diameter I setup up my poor man’s DRO for cutting the ring groves.

 

[bmac2]

To cut the groves I ground a small tool so I could just make a straight plunge cut.
Ya. . . . Nice. . . . .
Ok, anyone out there that’s familiar with the Myford ML7 lathe will recognise that in the first picture something bad is about to happen. For those who may read this and are not familiar with the Myford ML7 I’ll explain. That’s the “Tumbler Reverse Lever”. It controls the power feed and should be in the middle position when the power feed is not being used. Hence the second picture with the extra wide, slightly irregular ring slot in the piston.

 

[bmac2]

I’ve heard it said that “anything worth doing is worth doing twice” or something like that.
All righty then, piston 2.0

 

[hedgehog]

been there done that. nice looking piston in the end.

 

[bmac2]

been there done that. nice looking piston in the end.

Thanks Hedgehog
I think this might be the only place where you can find a group of guys that are looking at pictures on the internet and saying “nice pistons” and be talking about pistons.Rof}