Member postings for Nigel Bennett

I don't know of any; I think the fun in making something like a Westinghouse pump in this scale is to make it all yourself from individual bits! If it's to be a dummy, then you can soft-solder carefully-machined chunks of brass together to create "castings". There's not a huge amount of cast-in detail on a Westinghouse pump that you can't fairly easily create in this way. (The top valve housing would be fiddly but not impossible.)

You could even use aluminium and Araldite, as your pump's on the cab and not the smokebox, so it won't get too hot.

Work from photographs and sketch out the bits, resolved into machinable blocks. Lots of pix on the Interweb thingy!

The pump on my Isle of Wight O2 is a working one, (steam/water, not steam/air) but it only looks vaguely like the real pump as it's just too impractical to make it work in this size. (Somebody will prove me wrong...)

To get the detail in a Westinghouse pump casting, it would really need to be a lost wax affair and that would make it expensive.

Similar to Bill, I've used Unimat chucks in both Myford & Boxford lathes; I turned up a flanged mild steel spigot with M14 x 1 thread on it and the setup is excellent for gripping little fiddly things that can't easily be held in bigger chucks.

I recall a chap who used to take his dog "Badger" out in the car. He just used to fling the poor thing in the boot of his Mini. He told me he found pawmarks on the underside of the rear parcel shelf after an enthusiastic drive to the walkies area. Dog must have been daft as a brush, as it apparently jumped into the boot of its own accord quite happily when a walk was in prospect. So no restraint needed!

I think it was Barry Hares who made the Merlin. He also made a RR Eagle (sleeve valve, 24 cylinder) to a similar standard. The only other working Merlin I know of was by Anthony Walshaw, the son of Tom (Tubal Cain).

All the pundits will tell you that you can't hold a milling cutter in a lathe chuck. You can if you're prepared to take very small cuts with small (say 1/4" diameter or less) cutters. The danger is always that the cutter will "walk out" of the chuck and dig into your nice job. I've often gone the small cutter in a drill chuck route, but always been prepared for disaster. I've seen cutters walk out of chucks - it was a 2" diameter slot drill and I'd nothing to hold it with except the lathe chuck. Horrible idea,despite taking the smallest cuts I could... I used a different idea completely, .

Alternatives for holding cutters is to make yourself a cutter holder; this can simply be a length of decent-sized steel bar with a grub screw to hold the cutter in the lathe chuck. You also need a flat that you've previously ground on the cutter for the grub screw to bear on. Not ideal.

Best solution is to get (say) an ER16 collet chuck. They are available with parallel shanks, which can be gripped in a 3-jaw. You will only be able to hold relatively small cutters with that, but if your lathe is only 1MT that's probably all it will cope with.

A cutter with a 1MT on one end should be axially restrained with a draw-bar to stop it coming out of engagement.

It also sounds as if you could do with a vertical slide for milling!

Yes, that's right, Paul; if you engage the toothed segment and the back gear it will all jam up. Engaged = direct drive, disengaged + operating the back gear lever = back gear.

I worked for Kaye’s from 1984 and we’d stopped making them several years before that. All the drawings and records were burned by some idiot before I could save any of the information.

The LMS on the handle presumably refers to a specific loco shed. It’s a standard 1/2 pint model, made in hundreds if not thousands over the years.

We used to make the tiny Meccano oil cans and I knew the chap who made them. He was delighted when I took mine in to work to show him as it brought back memories for him; I think he enjoyed making those better than the full sized ones. The MD had a big 1 pint one, gold plated, on his desk!

Perhaps you should use millimetres instead... it's the inch symbols coupled with the brackets that causes the problem! (I'll get me coat).

If you're going to drill it with a drill of some sorts, I recommend some RTD cutting compound. No idea how it works, but I've seen a chap fail to drill through some turbine blade-grade stainless, then reach into his bag, draw out a tube of RTD and apply it. Using the same drill bit, in the same hole, it went through like it was mild steel.

Some years ago, then Editor Ted Jolliffe wrote in ME how he had modified a Super Adept lathe to be left handed, like him. It wasn’t a success apparently.

CJ - See Arc Euro catalogue. You're looking at a 5" 3-jaw (30mm bore) - but that's a bit big for a Myford as they're very heavy - and the Chinese ones are £65. Not fond of the Chinese chucks, as their jaws are very heavily chamfered so that you can't grip thin things with them. Buying TOS or Bison would be more expensive. The 5" Burnerd one on my Boxford 280 is 35mm bore, by the way.

Hope that helps!

Edited By Nigel Bennett on 22/01/2020 12:35:34

Edited By Nigel Bennett on 22/01/2020 12:35:58

I bought some 100mm cast iron from a well-known supplier. It was for some cylinders for my loco. I started machining it, thinking, "This is funny cast iron swarf!" I cut off a small piece of the bar and put it in the vice. I hit it with a hammer. It bent through 90°. In all fairness, they quickly replaced the steel bar supplied with the correct material, but I do wonder sometimes with commercial purchasing, which involves Certificates of Conformity, how often the C of C is incorrect...

If one migrates to Win 10, does that mean that the older (2006 in my case) Office programs of Word and Excel stop working? And does that mean you have to cough up an annual fee for the new Office versions?

Loctite 542 hydraulic sealant is also effective. Do not use brass screws to affix your retaining angles - make your own in bronze. Any brass subject to pressure below the boiler water level will de-zincify over time and become a horrid spongy mess. I'm sure I recall LBSC suggesting "a smear of plumber's jointing" (Boss White or similar) to affix screws into boilers, but I think we've moved on since then.

Take care when tapping the threads! Good luck, and hope all goes according to plan.

Their website still seems to indicate they're selling spares:

**LINK**

In our machine shop at work they have an ISO 40 female holder screwed to the bench. Tooling is popped in there, tightened up with the appropriate ER spanner (the bloke goes "NNNNINNNG!" like they used to do in the Beano) and the cutters simply do not come out. If you're trying to tighten the collet chuck in the machine, you may not get them tight enuff. I have a similar bench-mounted fixture at home for my ISO 30 tooling - and I've not had a problem with cutters coming out.

Who recommended that? Particularly on a Britannia, accessing it every year or so to change it would be a real pain. It's not usually a mandatory requirement that you fit one; if a bush has been provided, I'd just fit a plain solid bronze bush and forget about it.

Admittedly mine's 3.1/2"G, so I had to do my own thing, but I went for a brass fabrication with cast iron liners. Fabricating from steel with CI liners would be another option. Much cheaper to fabricate!

Provided you ensure it's well lubricated after a run, CI is the way to go - especially as you can then use CI piston rings in both the main cylinders and the piston valves.

You can also heat up the bar to a nice red heat, hold it there for a couple of minutes and allow to cool slowly. This redistributes all the locked-in stresses created during the drawing process and distortion should be reduced.

I'm not particularly into IC but there aren't many IC engines I've seen that use O rings. This is probably because of the heat involved. IC engine pistons can get quite hot, particularly if close to the piston crown.

I suggest you use cast iron rings. Making your own is quite straightforward. The idea is that you turn the rings to be a good fit in the bore, split them. and then heat-treat them by heating them up with a suitable piece of material in the gap. When the rings cool down, the gap is maintained and they behave in the same way as a bought one. You make sure, of course, that you make a couple of spares! An article by G Trimble in ME in 1984 V153 No. 3735 p 210 Heat Treatment of Piston Rings is a good start.

Good luck.