Member postings for Paul Kemp

That should do the trick, most likely will be 55 deg. Strange as you say that the two are different sizes, I would guess that originally they were both 7/16" and at some point one of the threads in the boiler bushes was either stripped or damaged so was opened up to 1/2" to recover it and a larger safety valve body made. A lot of old machinery usually has some interesting tales to tell!

Paul.

No idea on Emma Victoria but its usual practice for a boiler to be firmly fixed to the smokebox and saddle and free to slide at the firebox end to take up expansion.

Paul.

Given its age and the fact all other threads are ME series the safety valves are are almost certain to be 26tpi. 26 was commonly specified by LBSC for safety valves. Remember there are are two standards for 26tpi, brass and cycle, former is 55 degrees, latter 60 degrees so if buying taps and dies be sure to get the right one. Brass will screw into cycle but cycle won't screw into brass!

Paul.

80 psi would have been the working pressure. With old boilers, it it ain't broke don't try to fix it! Trying to get things clean enough on an old boiler to make a new soldered repair that flows where it needs too is very very hard. There are still early rivetted and soft solder chalked boilers in service! Brass was often used for boiler fittings and shouldn't be for the reasons above.

For 3 1/2" gauge Atlantic try searching for Maisie by LBSC.

Paul.

No to stainless steel boiler fittings, there are many grades of stainless and some are subject to corrosion at elevated temps in combination with certain contaminants (chemicals) in water.

Common on boilers of that age for soft solder caulking to be used. Pressure test it, if it doesn't leak don't worry about it.

Paul.

Assuming the spline was made to some standard, machinery handbook might be a good place to look? Not easy to tell from the picture the exact shape of the splines but I would think your method is about right.

Paul.

Not sure I properly understand the question but from my interpretation of it as written here goes. The flange position (and to an extent the thickness) will be determined by the gauge and the back to back distance of the wheel set. If you draw two opposite wheels on their axle the shoulders on the axle within determine the back to back distance. This is important to ensure the wheel set will pass through points etc which are fitted with check rails. If the back to back is too small the engine will derail as it will be forced to ride up the check rails, if it's too large then the check rails won't guide it and it will still derail! So the position of the flange is governed by the back to back distance and its thickness to still comply with the gauge (distance between the running rails). Hope that makes sense? I am not familiar with the N25GA standard but I doubt it requires thou precision for compliance. For greatest accuracy in production it is usual to finish the flanges with the wheel set mounted between centres when all the relevant governing dimensions can be checked.

Paul.

Garry,

Somewhat depends on the scale of your engine and the boiler material. For larger engines with steel boilers (if your's falls in that category) then the old standard EN3B or modern equivalent of similar carbon content and UTS is expected for boiler studs as communicated by a commercial boiler inspector. Do not use stainless, generally subject to all sorts of issues such as crevice corrosion (especially if you fill up with chlorinated tap water!) and sudden failure, plus if you ever want to get then out again, you probably won't!

If it's a smaller scale engine with copper boiler then PB is probably as good as anything.

In all cases talk to your boiler inspector. Club inspectors sometimes do not appreciate that the traction engine cylinder and its attachments form part of the pressure system and thus part of the boiler.

Paul.

You could try approaching Hobbycraft (national chain of hobby stores the wife and daughters frequent!) I have never visited but I understand they cater for all tastes! Other than that you could market yourself through ads in the railway preservation mags?

Paul.

Even in the late 90's crankcase and bed plate castings at Ruston were 'seasoned' in the manner previously mentioned, left to stand outside initially then part machined and returned outside and then finally brought back in for finishing. Not sure if this appllied to smaller castings like cylinder heads etc.

As regards the aggressive shot blasting would help relive stress, crankshafts are shot peered in the fillet radius of journals to deliberately induce a stress in the surface to better resist fatigue failures initiating at the surface.

Paul.

Dinosaur I am afraid, centre drills, spot drills were not around when I was in school and I don't have any. I also only use the small tip to give a location to start a drill unless I have a good reason to go deeper.

Paul.

Jason,

Thanks for that, that finish looks OK for my purpose, just to get some brick cleaner now! Not sure I want to spend half my day stood in B&Q car park!

Paul.

Jason / Others,

What is your experience of pickling steel parts in either citric acid or brick cleaner? I have a few steel fabrications to silver solder shortly. Previously I have never tried pickling steel parts and have cleaned by hand but as the OP one of the fabrications will be a bit of pain to clean by hand after!

Sorry to hijack but I think the original question has been answered.

Thanks,

Paul.

Derek,

There should be a gap between the die block and the end of the link. Has to be to allow for link slip. Usual for the centre of the die block pin to coincide with the centres of the valve rod pins which means the valve travel is going to be close to the eccentric throw. God place to start a check is mid gear on the reverser has the die block in the centre of the link if the drawings are good!

Paul.

BSS will shear to size but maybe not in your desired quantity! Might be worth giving them a call? They emailed me last week saying they are open for business!

Paul.

Tom,

You could try BSS "call 0114 244 0527 or drop us me email [email protected]" they are a division of Fernite Sheffield. I bought my strip through Fernite and I had to buy 18' to reach the minimum order charge. However since then through BSS they seem to have abolished that although you would have to talk to them to confirm (I have not dealt with them since they just keep emailing me!). Fernite do have a bit of a technical department if you can reach them! Got some useful info from them for my job regarding temperatures and specs.

My friend who made the restraint jig used a lump of thick plate with a curve cut on the edge so it was stable in the required direction. 180 leaves is quite a project! I do think stacking them as described may cause problems with the quench in the middle of the leaves as the outside will cool a lot quicker than the centre, edge on that may cause some internal stress and explain your distortion? Restraining like that may just lead to more cracks. Painful though it may be I think probably pairs at the most would get the best result. Be interested to hear how you get on.

Paul.

Steve,

One on the left is a slot drill (clue is in the term drill) it is centre cutting and can drill down into the material and form a slot like a keyway. The two on the right are end mills and are not centre cutting - hole in the middle. They are for general milling not pocketing down into recesses where you need to cut on the end. Don't get too worked about the flutes, there are all sorts of permutations, more common modern cutters are 3 flute and centre cutting. Slot drill / end mill is a fairly dated term in this modern age of CNC and zillion rpm spindles!

Paul.

Tom,

I made a somewhat larger leaf Spring a while back for a 6" TE. I bought the material direct from an accredited Sheffield supplier (at some expense due to minimum order charges) 1/8" thick, 1 1/4" wide. I hardend it using a combination of large propane torch and a wood fire. Put in the fire first and then brought up to heat with help from the torch. So brought up to temp fairly slowly and then quenched in brine (genuine direct from the North Sea! - well Thames Estuary at least). Te spec I got from the supplier suggested oil quench would be kinder but I would have needed a lot of oil for a spring that size! The individual leaves (I did them one at a time) did change their curvature a bit in the process but not to the point of being unusable when assembled. I can confirm after hardening and before tempering they were glass hard and I also broke a leaf into 3 bits. For tempering all I did was polish them up and then stoke up the wood stove again and put them on a rack over the fire and watched the colour - took them to a dark blue. Worked fine and had spring to it. Sadly I had miscalculated and I needed it to be slightly stiffer so I intend adding a couple of thicker leaves to beef it up a bit, not got round to that yet though as its not ready for the road!

A mate did similar and he also found the leaves changed shape so he made a jig as you suggest to restrain them during the hardening process - which worked.

As Andrew says the soak times are based on thick sections to ensure an even heat all the way through so in the sizes you are using you can pretty much disregard that, a couple of minutes should be fine.

Paul.

Easy mistaka to maka! Try the other way you will see. You can feel it on the hand wheel when climbing the cutter drags the work along and it's easy to turn. Going the other way you will feel more resistance as you push the work past the cutter. A lot less risky and you will break fewer cutters

Paul.

Steve,

Spindle needs to rotate clock wise or the cutter will rub as you won't be presenting the cutting edge to the material. Imagine looking down on the cutter going clockwise and presented to the job as you had it feeding right to left the cutting edges are dragging the material toward the cutter. If you had been feeding left to right it would be pushing the work away from the cutter. Do a doodle on a piece of paper. Try it again tomorrow going t'other way you will see and feel the difference.

Paul.