Member postings for Simon Collier

Can we can we assume sharp drill with even length flutes? Piston valves should be able to float a bit on their spindles anyway so the valves can self centre if the spindle is not dead parallel to the bore. I made a split collet for my 7/8 piston valves so I could end to end them without marking the surfaces, and used 4 jaw and DTI for these critical jobs.

I just rotated the head to be perpendicular to the table on my SX3 and it seems fine. Perhaps I got a good one.

I got my last issue yesterday, with Barry Potter's NSW 24 class loco on the cover. Barry scaled this from full size plans and it is highly detailed, like all of his locos.

You could experiment with a bit of scrap with a couple of tapped holes. Case harden, put in vice and torque up M5 screws tight. Or, you could put screws/grub screws in the holes before treatment so threads are protected from the hardening compound. This would also keep the threads clean.

Citric acid grows bugs unless you take measures, like putting a bit of bleach in it. I use it for small brass fittings in the workshop but for anything larger, it goes in the sulphuric outside the workshop. I make fresh small amounts of citric if it has been more than a few days. The real nightmare in the workshop is HCl, as in Bakers fluid.

Did you see the recent series on turbines in ME? It was very detailed and would be a good guide for better efficiency. A turbine for say, a loco headlight, eg, DHR B, would want to be thrifty on steam. But if yours is just for fun, it doesn't matter.

Pretty exciting. It would be good to have an idea of the rpm. Also the design of the turbine. Sorry if you have posted details before and I missed them. A lot of fun, as you say.

I have just learned that AME is to cease publication, with the Jan-Feb 2021 issue to be the last. A while back, it became subscription only with no distribution to newsagents. Even though contributors have never been paid, apparently advertising has diminished and this plus subscriptions are not enough to continue production and postage. It has been going about 33 years I think, with six issues per year. We have essentially eliminated covid 19 so I doubt that that is a significant factor. This is unexpected and distressing news.

You might have a look at the AALS standard

https://www.aals.asn.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/5-inch-gauge-track-wheel-standards.pdf

Interesting about the naval ship data Martin but I wonder if they used Stevenson screens, and anyway, I was referring to continental land masses.

We in NSW are presently enduring an unprecedented (that word again) heat wave in what officially is still spring until 1st December. Sydney and most of the state had 40+ degrees yesterday, overnight min of 29-30, and 40 odd today. A cooling Southerly change is due this evening. Summers have got hotter in my lifetime and winters milder, that is certain whatever the drivers.

I believe the following to be true although I can't provide references without going to more trouble than I care to:

reliable, standardised temperature records for the last hundred years are available for only very few places, such as the UK and Eastern US, there are scant records for most of the planet, so how do we know what global temperatures have been doing; senior climate scientists whose research doesn't support the prevailing dogma have been refused publication and hounded out of jobs; computer models of chaotic systems are exquisitely sensitive to imput variables; those who decide what variables to imput are scientists in whose interests it is to support the prevailing narrative. The most rabid groups screaming for "action on climate change", demanding that we listen to the science, and who likely eschewed maths, physics and chemistry at school, will rapidly retreat from the much simpler science of genetics, into magical thinking, and will abuse and vilify you, if you suggest that XX = female and XY = male, or that someone with blond hair and blue eyes isn't " indigenous".

I tend to believe that human augmented warming is real, but I worry about the forces at work. Ultimately, the planet has only a single problem: vastly too many humans. You won't get politicians or ecologists going anywhere near that one.

Is it Mogens Kilde in the magazines who does amazing things will a small-looking lathe? Great inspiration for the mill- challenged. A lot of the early loco designs assumed only a lathe, vertical slide and drilling machine.

Just turn any steel 12 mm and cross drill for HSS tool bit. My 50 mm boring head came with a tool with an angled square hole for HSS bits. I've also run mine in reverse. I didn't even think about the head unscrewing from the arbor. Luckily it didn't.

Oh yes, for narrow lengths for the side wind shields, I pinched the narrow section in the milling vice jaws with scribe line level with the jaws and snapped. Plenty of scrap, but it only had to work cleanly twice, and I had one hundred slides.

I recently bought a box of oversize microscope slides 1.1 mm thick. I tried various methods to cut them but found my normal glass cutter worked best. It is a good cutter, bought for leadlighting many years ago. I had no luck with a carbide tip scriber. I broke a lot of slides, but I was prepared for that. Straight lines were fairly easy, but cutting the front cab windows for my Springbok was a challenge. I used a diamond grinder in the drill, wet, to tidy up to final shape. This also had been bought for stained glass. I was very out of practice cutting glass so had to get familiar again, hence lots of broken slides.

I've used Don's spreadsheet and taken the data to the Wallace simulator. I've not cut parts for Stephensons but would do so with complete confidence.

Maid of Kent gets my vote. As already suggested, not Britannia.

Steve, you are more than a loco builder, you are a true craftsman. Also a masochist for not having a mill. I also modified D. Brown's injector bodies as I found them too problematic to make.

I would like to thank a very kind member who sent me the 6 missing issues that were never sent to overseas subscribers, to complete my collection. He did not want even the postage.

Yesterday I had three issues of ME in the letterbox plus the Nov- Dec AME, so in a couple of days I received 10 model engineering magazines to read!

These sorts of pumps require great accuracy in the machining. Concentricity is critical and the holes for steam ports have to start and end in the right place. You don't want the piston packing to be too tight; I would use viton O-rings with about 5-10% squeeze. Personally I would use bronze preferably, or brass. I have no experience of aluminium in steam applications and don't know why you would choose it. Perhaps you just have some.

A friend just made a Westinghouse style pump for 5" gauge with internal pilot and shuttle valves. These are a real challenge and I am going to have a go very soon.

For demanding jobs like these pumps and injectors you have to start with the right attitude. If you think blunt drills, cheap blunt carbide boring bars and reversing work in the 3 jaw are OK, you can't expect success. If you are careful, patient and use the right tools and materials, it will work. Good luck!