Member postings for Paul Lousick

I looked at all of the alternative materials for insulating the boiler on my 6" Ruston but found that they all absorbed water and oil. The water will evaporate if the boiler is hot but this is not always the case. Oil that finds its way under the covers will not. My solution was not to use any material under the covers and to support them on thin metal spacers to trap air beneath. (Air is an excellent insulator if contained). Anything that finds its way under the covers will run out at the bottom. The covers are warm but not hot to touch when the engine is running.

See previous post: **LINK**

Paul

Edited By Paul Lousick on 25/05/2021 08:04:02

If you decide to get one of the cheaper welders, buy it from a reputable dealer that offers a guarantee in case anything goes wrong. I found out the hard way and threw it in the bin and bought a better brand, second hand.(Lincoln Electric with no problems).

Paul.

You could spray paint a 5" gauge loco with an airbrush but they are not realy suitable for large areas. I used one for painting the spokes on the wheels of my 6" traction engine but only on the small black section using signwriters enamel paint. The main parts of the wheels were sprayed with 2K paint usings a touch-up (small) spray gun. (available from auto accessory suppliers for less than $50). (pin stripes done with Beugler roller)

One of the problems with airbrushes is that the paint has to be thinned more than with a bigger gun to go thru the smaller nozzle. To get an even surface, the overlapping layers of paint should be wet so that they blend together and 2K paint dries very quickly and on a larger surface with an airbrush may not do so.

Why not try a test to see how well your airbrush covers a similar size area as on your engine ?

Paul

Edited By Paul Lousick on 23/05/2021 13:20:36

Why does "Specifying a drawing in fractions and thou also gives some indication of required tolerance" differ from giving dimensions in mm ?

Paul.

My metric mill has dials which are in fractions and graduated in 1/1000 metres but like imperial machines with graduations in 1/1000" it is using a denominator with 10 as the base number. (decimal system).

I started my career as an engineering draftsman and remember calculating lengths in fractions before the invention of calculators. A real pain in the butt ! (Try adding up: 3' 5. 37/64" + 1' 2. 17/32" + 4' 11. 9/16", )

Paul

Energy companies, here in Australia are planning on making hydrogen on a commercial basis from solar and wind power. Electric vehicles are not common on our roads because of the long distances travelled and lack of charging stations outside of the capital cities. (they are not green as they are still fuelled from coal fired power stations).

Solar panels on houses are now causing a new problem. Older panels that have to be replaced cannot be recycled and go to landfill.

Excess power generated from the panels during the day is fed back into the supply grid and compensates for that used during the night. The problem is that there is now too much power generated during the daylight hours and is overloading the national grid. Some houses are fitted with batteries but this is an expensive option. The manufacture and disposal of batteries is another problem.

The development of hydrogen producers for home use with solar panels could possibly be a solution.

Paul.

Hydrogen is the universe's most abundant element, but here on Earth it doesn't appear pure in nature, and requires energy to separate. The most common technique is to extract hydrogen from water, which is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen (hence H2O). Doing this is fairly simple. You can use heat and chemical reactions to release hydrogen from organic materials such as fossil fuels.

But this is enormously polluting. Worldwide hydrogen production is responsible for CO2 emissions equivalent to that of the UK and Indonesia combined. (The hydrogen is mostly used in the oil refining industry and to produce ammonia fertilisers.)

There is a cleaner way of getting hydrogen: a strong electrical current passed through a tank of water splits the molecule into its two constituent elements. This is called electrolysis. Hydrogen atoms form hydrogen molecules (H2) and oxygen molecules pair up too. Each can then be bottled and stored. If the electricity is generated from renewable sources such as solar or wind, production of hydrogen in this way emits no greenhouse gasses.

This is how we come to all the different shades of hydrogen:

• brown hydrogen is produced using coal where the emissions are released to the air
• grey hydrogen is produced from natural gas where the associated emissions are released to the air
• blue hydrogen is produced from natural gas, where the emissions are captured using carbon capture and storage
• green hydrogen is produced from electrolysis powered by renewable electricity.

Oxy-Propane does not just produce a small concentrated hot flame if you have the correct nozzle.

I recently was silver soldering some bronze parts with a Benzomatic torch on Mapp gas (Mapp gas is hotter than propane) but had a problem heating the part. I gave up after 5 minutes and tried an oxy-propane torch with a heating nozzle. The nozzle has a row of holes that produces a wide flame and even with gas turned down low took less than 1 minute to heat the part and solder the joint.

Paul.

International Harvester logo on the engine. American

And these on a Hornsby

That type of wheel construction was used by a few different engine makers, like those on this 6NHP Marshall portable.

Paul.

Screwed ends on stays are common on full size boilers. Some have thicker tubes with screwed ends instead of solid stays. Tubes are normally expanded with a special roller to seal them into the end plates.

Pressure testing of a boiler should not be done with air.

Water should be used in case there a problem. It the boiler ruptures there could be an explosion as the compressed air expands. Water on the otherhand does not compress like air and the pressure is quickly repeased without a big bang. (If you must use air pressure because you don't have a pump, fill the boiler with water to reduce the volume of air inside of the bolier).

Paul

Metal Lathe for Home Machinists by Harold Hall is a good book for beginners with projects to make tooling.and accessories for the lathe. Fortunately he has also made everything available to download free from his web site.

**LINK**

Paul

My mistake Chas with suggesting spray putty. I missed the point that you were doing lost wax casting and was thinking solid pattern.

65% silver solder is often used for jewelery and available in a paste/flux for fine work. Lots of information available on the internet. Do a search.

Paul.

Spray putty as used to fill rough surfaces (small imperfections) prior to undercoating when painting a car. Available from auto parts suppliers in aerosol cans. (sold by AutoOne, Repco, etc in Australia). Easy to sand smooth after it has dried but gets harder in time.

Paul

Hi Martin,

Is not the Standard pipe size in your table the same as Schedule 40 pipe which is the common size used for plumbing ?  It is even listed next to the Schedule 40 in the table above and is only one of the sizes available

Paul.

Edited By Paul Lousick on 11/05/2021 23:58:03

Soft jaws are normally machined in situ on the lathe to give a precise fit and centre for a prticular job as shown in this Youtube video **LINK**

Paul

When BSP pipe sizes changed to metric they did not change the bore size to an OD in metric but specified it as an approximate mm size of the nominal bore diameter. The OD of a 1/2" pipe is 21.3mm, not 15mm.

The link above for 1/2" BSP pipe has the wall thickness for the available schedules. (From 0.065"- 0.294"). The wall thickness varies but the OD has to remain constant to be compatable with screwed fittings. The ID is important for calculating the volume of liquid that can pass thru the pipe and is given a nominal size (average size) for the bore.

Pipe tends to have thicker walls and have screwed connections. Tube is thinner and uses flared or clamp type fittings using an olive or are soldered.

Paul

Edited By Paul Lousick on 11/05/2021 12:35:28

Martin,

The BSP system does not have a standard wall thickness for each size but is available in different thicknesses as shown in this link: **LINK**

If your work is using the ANSI standards for pipe (American National Standards Institute) it may be because of the availability of obtaining stainless steel pipe. S/S pipe is not as common as MS pipe and galvanised MS pipe used for plumbing, etc.

Paul