Wood Beam Engine fabricated by SAM

[kcmillin]

These unlikely wooden objects are pretty cool. Wood is pretty strong stuff. My Shop Press's frame is made of wood, with a hydraulic car jack. It creeks and groans but does what I need it to.

Kel

 

[Deanofid]

These unlikely wooden objects are pretty cool. Wood is pretty strong stuff. My Shop Press's frame is made of wood, with a hydraulic car jack.

Heck, my whole house is made of wood!


It's getting there, Sam. The brass on wood does make a nice match.

Dean

 

[SAM in LA]

A bit of progress since my last post.

I cut my cylinder from a piece of brass tubing, trimmed it to the specified length and took a light cut with my boring bar to clean up the ID.

The cylinder Head and Base required a recess to locate the cylinder. I switched to my four jaw chuck and indicated the part. Previously when I was drilling the holes in the head and base, I made a light center drill cut which locates the cylinders center.

Two small flanges are needed to attach the piston valve assembly to the Cylinder Head and Base. One other flange is needed for the stuffing box. I made up a set of file buttons. This set was made with an integral post. I broke the post off the first time I tried to use it.

So, I made a second set with a hole drilled through and used a drill bit as the shaft.

This picture shows a completed flange with the buttons and two flange blanks awaiting there turn to be worked over with a file.

These little parts seem to take a lot more time to make than I estimated. Good thing this is a hobby.

This shot shows the flange on the cylinder end.

I ordered some 2-56 nuts which should arrive tomorrow, then I will be able to finish the cylinder assembly.

Thanks for stopping by.

SAM

 

[Deanofid]

You're doing it up nice, Sam. These small parts can be time eaters, but the flange you show here looks very uniform. The result was worth your efforts!

If you've hardened your buttons and have trouble with them breaking, take a minute to temper them. I usually leave mine dead hard too, but if you have to squeeze them hard, or like with yours, they have a pin for jigging, tempering them will make them less brittle. After you harden them, run them up to about 300-400° f and quench them, and that will do it. If you're not sure of the color to watch for the temper heat, you can just put them in a toaster oven for about 30 minutes, then pick them out with tweezers and drop them in water. That will do it without the guess work of color.

Enjoyable thread here. Your project is looking good.

Dean

 

[kcmillin]

Those flanges turned out really nice Sam. Well Done Thm:

Kel

 

[Philjoe5]

Nice file work on those flanges SAM. :bow: Work is inversely proportional to the size of the part it seems The wood and brass combo is looking good. Thanks for posting.

Cheers,
Phil

 

[SAM in LA]

Today the progress meter moved in the negative direction.

I finished filing the 3 flanges.

Next I made and aluminium dowel to hold the flange and brass tube together.

What looks like a silver washer is actually solder that I pounded into a thin sheet and trimmed it into a washer like shape. The washer shape of the solder seems to work OK. The next time I will make it a little thicker.

Here is a freshly soldered flange and tube. You can just see the aluminium dowel poking out on the top. Solder will not stick to the aluminium.

I set up to long tube in a v-block which is then held in the vice. I drilled the hole through the the side of the tube, then spot faced it with a 0.250 end mill.

I have everything lined up and clamped and its ready to be soldered/

I said at the beginning of this post my progress meter went into negative territory. I was trying to drill and ream the long tube. My drill bit got hung up on some solder and tore up the whole assembly.

Tomorrow is a different day. Here you can see the flanges after I filed the solder off

The next time I machine the long tube, I will spot face the tube so the level is above the centerline so I do not create a weak spot.

Thanks for stopping by to visit.

SAM

 

[SAM in LA]

Today I will try again to fabricate the piston valve cylinder assembly.

If anyone has any hints or tips, please speak up.

The brass tubing I have is 0.250 OD, 0.049 wall.

This is what I plan to do different this time around.

Drill the tubing to the finished size of 3/16" before milling the sockets for the soldered joints.

Drill the cross tubes, the one with the flanges, to 3/16" ID before soldering.

Make the solder washers a bit thicker.

When everything has cooled off, ream the long tube to 3/16".

The last step will have to wait until a new 3/16" reamer arrives. Yesterday, to add insult to injury, my reamer broke. :wall: :redface2:

Thanks for stopping by.

SAM

 

[arnoldb]

Hi Sam - sorry about the mishap...

Just a thought: From what I can see, you might be better off milling the ends of the short tubes to the same size as the outer diameter of the long tube. Then just drill 3/16th holes in the long tube where you want to solder the short ones on, and solder the short ones "on top of" instead of "into" the long tube. That way you'll have a minimum to ream out of the long tube - and no unexpected obstacles in it.

Regards, Arnold

 

[SAM in LA]

Hi Sam - sorry about the mishap...

Just a thought: From what I can see, you might be better off milling the ends of the short tubes to the same size as the outer diameter of the long tube. Then just drill 3/16th holes in the long tube where you want to solder the short ones on, and solder the short ones "on top of" instead of "into" the long tube. That way you'll have a minimum to ream out of the long tube - and no unexpected obstacles in it.

Regards, Arnold

Arnold,

Good idea. If you look at the last photo, the parts look like what you describe. They ended up that way because they were soldered into a socket on the main tube and then I drilled through it. I will remake the short tubes.

Thanks for firming up the idea. That's what I like about this forum. Lots of good people and good ideas.

SAM

 

[SAM in LA]

Things are looking up. I machined up another cylinder for the piston valve assembly. Per Arnold's suggestion I attacked this from a different direction. Rather than machining sockets in the "cylinder", I used a 1/4" end mill to cope the end of the standoffs.

I drilled the mating holes in the “Cylinder” of the piston valve assembly.

Building the assembly this way caused me to scratch my head in determining the correct sequence so everything would be aligned correctly. The coped ends had to be clocked to the flanges so it would all bolt together correctly. Here you can see the flanges on the base of the power cylinder.

I made a locating dowel out of AL because the solder won’t stick to it. Sometimes I thought that solder wouldn’t stick to the brass either.

You can see the coped end of the standoff in this picture.

This piece of tubing is the “cylinder” for the piston valve assembly. The holes will align with the hole going through the standoffs.

All of the parts of this assembly are ready to be soldered. Note the strong backs I used to hold it all together. All of the joints have been fluxed and I hammer forged washers of silver solder that are sandwiched between the joints.

Hold on…..
How on earth are you going to get the AL alignment dowels out once this is all soldered up?
I’m glad you asked, in fact I am more glad that I asked.
I tapped the dowel 4-40 on the flange end. Once everything cooled down, I unbolted the assembly and pulled the dowels out.
Here is the assembly.

Now I must confess, it didn’t look like this when I finished soldering it. There is a couple of hours worth of file time and sanding. I’m not sure if this is the finished version or not.

I know I left something out, I will think of it later.

Thanks for stopping by to visit.

SAM

I remembered what I wanted to say.

I still have to ream the bore to 3/16". Once that is done, I can consider this piece finished.

 

[kcmillin]

Very Very Well Done Sam. :bow:

I like how you clamped it all together, very slick.

Kel

 

[Deanofid]

Good show on the jigging and alignment there, Sam. That's using the old bean.

I made a locating dowel out of AL because the solder won’t stick to it. Sometimes I thought that solder wouldn’t stick to the brass either.

Now, that's a good one. Funny. Sometimes..

Dean

 

[bearcar1]

Coming along quite nicely Sam. Keep up the good work.

BC1
Jim

 

[SAM in LA]

Executive Summary

The silver solder used has <1% Silver content so it can be classified as softer than melted butter. The flux used cokes up at temperature that is lower than the temperature which the softer than melted butter solder melts at.

What I learned

Well, I have been learning the hard way about soldering my pieces of brass together.
I had read a lot of the posts about silver soldering brass. I cleaned the joints up nice and shiny, used pencil lead on the areas where I did not want solder to stick and used flux where I wanted the solder to stick. I even hammered out the silver solder into a 0.010" sheet and cut washers out of it. That way there would be space between the joints for the solder.

I felt so good about the work that I had done and figured that it wasn't that difficult. Hey, I've soldered tons of copper plumbing over the years with no problems.

Here are the results.

Looks good, doesn't it.

Well let me tell you, do not judge a book by its cover. Even though the joints look good, they were crap. I was doing a bit of sanding on the assembly and a joint would come apart. I would look at them and there was solder stuck to both sides of the joint. From what I read, that indicates the joint moved before the solder solidified.
So, I cleaned the joint, fluxed it and soldered it once again, making sure that I did not inadvertently move it. Filed everything smooth and sanded the assembly once again. I reamed the cylinder to 3/16". When I was removing the reamer for the final time, another joint came loose. :wall:

Something is just not right. I looked on the solder manufactures website and found out that this "Silver Bearing" solder contains less than 1% silver. I went down to the local Hobby Lobby and Home Depot in search of "Silver Solder. The solder rolls did not tell the silver content. I bought the different "Silver" solders and brought them home. I looked them up and they also had a negligible amount of silver. So I learned that the solders from Hobby Lobby and Home Depot are soft solders. I also picked up a new tin of self tinning flux.

The new flux does not coke up like my old flux does. So everything is soft soldered and cleaned up.

I will return the Home Depot and Hobby Lobby solders.

I ordered some Hard 75% Silver solder and some Medium 70% solder for the next time. I may end up making the piston valve assembly again using the hard solder.

Like they say, practice makes perfect and I sure need to practice.

Thanks for stopping by.

SAM

 

[Brian Rupnow]

Sam---Nice work!!! You get a karma for perseverance. I find that silver solder does not "creep" like soft solder. I have had a number of my silver solder joints which looked really good, break under medium stress. On examination, I find that the solder adheres to both parts just fine on the surfaces that are "visible", but when they break it is quite plain that it has not migrated into the bores etc. where I wanted it to, for strength. My Webster was the most recent casualty of that---The crankshaft come unstuck from the crankshaft "throw" while running at low speed. And I've been too busy working on the pumpjack to stop and fix it.---Brian

 

[arnoldb]

Hi Sam - good going, and like Brian said - onya for tenacity!

Another thought: From the joints I can see you are using soft solder - which used to be lead based in the past... Also, your figures for "hard" and "medium" silver percentages is a bit confusing - though it may just be me being dimwitted ;D.
What's normally referred to as "silver solder" in the builds on engines is actually "silver brazing" - the rods used for it looks like brass and the lower temperature versions with more silver content is , well, "slightly more silvery" but still brass-coloured. These all need parts to be brought up to near red-heat to solder though. All of these are very strong in joints; usually actually stronger than the base materials used. I'm not familiar with the versions of solder you're using, but it does not seem like proper "silver solder", and in that case, I may have made a grave mistake in advising you to solder to the top instead of "inserting" a bit. The soft solders are not strong. Maybe some more experienced members can intervene at this point ???

Kind regards, Arnold

 

[shred]

You may want to order some "easy" and "easy-flo" silver-solder as well. The melting point of Jewelers "Hard" is approaching that of brass.

 

[Blogwitch]

Sam & Brian,

If you get the right stuff, this is how strong a silver soldered joint really is. This is copper pipe to steel, the joint was twisted with a pair of mole grips until I started to feel the copper giving way.

Thjis was done with Tenacity 4A flux, and 0.5mm easyflo wire.

Bogs

 

[Deanofid]

I find that silver solder does not "creep" like soft solder. I have had a number of my silver solder joints which looked really good, break under medium stress. ---Brian

Brian, if you are having trouble with what you call "creep", which is usually called flow, using hard solders, you are not doing it right. There is no way an engine like a Webster will break a silver solder joint on the crank if you did it properly.

Real silver solder, which is in fact a brazing alloy, will flow like water when it gets to the correct temp, and it will coat anything in its path that has been properly fluxed.

Sam, stuff called "silver bearing solder" is not hard silver solder. Most of it is 4% silver or less, and it melts at a low temp.
Real silver solders don't melt until around 1100-1400°f. If what you have coming is called "Hard" and "Medium" solder, then it sounds like you've ordered jewelers solder, and it is also not the stuff we usually want.

The specific numbers of solder you want in the U.S.A are:
BAg1
BAg5
BAg7
and a few others will work for us. These numbers are standard in the U.S.A. and since you are from Loosyanna, you can get those solders just like I can.

BAg1 is 45% silver, and contains cadmium.
BAg5 is a 45% silver replacement for the above, that does not contain cad.
BAg7 is 56% silver and cad free, too. It flows at the lowest temp of the cad free alloys.

The flux you need for any of these is usually just called white paste flux. You can also get stuff called black flux for if you have to heat something a fairly long time.

This page has the proper products. If you want exact part numbers, I'll look them up for you.
http://store.sra-solder.com/section.php/19/1

Dean