Member postings for Paul Kemp

Ron,

You can do without a diff (sigh of relief?) if you leave one wheel free to rotate on the axle. Depending on how far you go you could always lock it with a longer drive pin if you get stuck in the mud!

Paul.

Ron,

I am with Andrew on this one. I originally bought a 4" rotary table for my mini mill. One of the worst purchases I made! I used it while I didn't have anything else but it was very limited and to be honest not well made. The worst thing about the particular one I got was the single screw to lock the table acts on the side of the table and the register it acts on as well as the bearings are not well or accurately machined so if you nip up the screw to lock it, the table gets pushed sideways out of kilter by about 8 thou - absolutely hopeless! I ended up getting a 6" Warco rotary table that came with the dividing attachment and plates. Since having the 6" the original has not been out of the box. The clamps on the Warco act downwards so no issues with moving it out of alignment. Also as Andrew says lots more options for clamping things down. I am not proud when it comes to budget level tooling and have generally got reasonable results but the small rotary table was a complete waste of money. Even if it had been better manufactured and generally fit for purpose I would have still outgrown it. Get the biggest you can fit on the machine and if you can get one with the dividing kit thrown in, go for that, even if you don't think you will need it now.

Paul.

Jason,

Doesn't look a lot wrong with that for Ron's purpose!

Ron,

Don't be put off by the nay sayers! Amuses me greatly sometimes when responses to a question prompt a sharp intake of breath and Nay lad, you'll not be doing that! There is usually a way of achieving what you need when you don't need an accuracy of 2/10 of a thou. It's nice to have the all singing all dancing professional kit but for the purposes of back yard engineering perfectly acceptable results can be achieved with less. As someone once said to me, "you can only wee with the willy you've got".

Paul.

Ron,

I hope we get to see a thread on it??

Paul.

Geoff,

The efforts put in by you, Steve and Mike are commendable and are undoubtably together with similar effort by others a major factor in the continuation of the show. However it would be naive to think that the venue owner does not make a profit from hosting the function - it's a business and has to make a profit. Have you seen any accounts to indicate how the expenditure is distributed? When I say honest accounts I mean real numbers, not speculative. I didn't say vast profits I said significant.

I do have some experience of running an event albeit our small 2 day annual club event and we have a significant advantage with that in so far as the venue is zero cost. We have an outside caterer who we do not charge and gets to keep any money they make, we do though in return get a discounted rate for food for our exhibitors and helpers, we cover that cost, so exhibitors and helpers get a free meal. We provide free tea and coffee for them from the clubhouse. We hire in toilets and obviously have to cover the insurance for the event. Entry for visitors is free, parking on site is free. Income is generated from giving rides and running traditional games for children like hook a duck, skittles etc where every winning participant gets a free ride ticket or a small consolation prize. The Saturday is given over to exhibitors enjoying themselves, Sunday the public are invited and is when we try to recover our costs / boost club funds. The net increase to funds after expenses averages around £1000, some years we have due to weather made a loss. The whole ethos for the event is that the exhibitors and visitors enjoy themselves and that for visiting families the cost is minimal.

Granted compared to a MEX the above compares like a village fete to GDSF! Accepted costs have to be covered, attending traders need to make a profit, the venue wants its slice etc. People cite 'large costs' one favourite being insurance but until some actual figures are quoted my view remains unchanged. Say an event attracts 2000 people (I would think that is low for the midlands event) that generates £20k at £10 a head and that is without rental from trade floor space. I am not suggesting entry should be free, I am suggesting that the distribution of income is better managed to improve the show - encouragement of exhibitors and traders.

Paul.

An Exhibition by default (as highlighted by Neil in another thread) requires exhibits. So surely the primary consideration of organisers would be attracting exhibitors as without exhibits, there is no show. Given that the average loco or traction engine takes between 2000 and 3000 hours to build there isn't going to be an infinite choice of 'new' exhibits each year. There will be a good pool of models built in the past that have never been shown at an exhibition though. So there is a way to get variety. In order to get the builders to show these models though there needs to be at least some incentive. Tickets should be a relatively 'low cost' incentive to organisers, giving tickets to exhibitors for every day of the show is hardly going to have a big impact on the bottom line! Arranging 'secure' transport to collect and return exhibits before and after the show would be a greater cost but may be a way of widening the net? Organisers negotiating a corporate rate for local hotels for exhibitors is certainly zero cost to the organiser and assists the exhibitor in reducing expenses. Negotiating an exhibitor rate for food at internal outlets and covering the cost wouldn't cost a fortune either. When our club exhibited at Sandown there was a room set aside with an urn and free tea and coffee for exhibitors, again not a massive cost but a sweetener for exhibitors. I do not expect to be paid to display my models but niether do I expect to pay to display them when it's a 'commercial' enterprise. To take my traction engines to events where they charge on the gate I expect free camping and free entry for me, the wife and any of my kids that want to come. Free evening entertainment and a bag of coal is a nice bonus. If you want to charge me to exhibit though or make it difficult, forget it, I will go elsewhere.

Traders; I think they are getting a raw deal. Through Internet sales etc, margins are getting smaller. Looking at Traders as a way of generating income or even as some have suggested covering costs to enable the 'gate' to be profit is also narrow minded. An exhibition is perhaps not a trade show but having the major suppliers present helps everyone. Visitors are able to see first hand the products, twiddle the handles of machine tools, look at the quality of castings etc etc. They add an extra dimension for the visitor. Would I go to an exhibition where there are only models / own made tooling on display - probably not. Where there are things to see and stuff to buy - absolutely.

It's not really rocket science. I find it hard to believe there are not significant amounts of money being made either by the venue or the organisers. It would be nice to see some honest accounts for one of the major shows detailing the visitor numbers and gate takings, the income from rented trade space and concessions and the costs for venue rental, security, insurance etc. Maybe a reset is needed here where maybe the organisation could be done by say ME or MEW and arranged at zero profit, zero loss. Howls of laughter....... Ok difficult to achieve in year one but if its arranged to achieve a small surplus this can be ring fenced and carried forward and whenever in the future a halt is called the resulting surplus is donated to a nominated charity. If you take the profit out of it then it's hard to claim you are not getting value for money, it costs what it costs.

I'll get my hat!

Paul.

Alan,

A bit difficult for me to visualise how leaving it on the faceplate to transfer to the mill will help. I would have thought it may restrict access to get the cutter in to where you need it especially if you are holding the cutter in some kind of chuck (auto lock, ER etc). Only you can really know what you have in mind and where you need to machine. Jason's idea of a 'dummy boiler' on the rotary table sounds a reasonable plan especially if you can mount your table both flat and vertical, that should allow you to rotate the block wherever you need it.

I am a time served fitter / turner from many years ago but haven't worked as a machinist professionally for years, all my hands on machining is on my own kit in my own time! I tend to go my 'own way' in terms of setting stuff up and machining sequences. All I can advise is spend a bit of time thinking through every stage of the job from start to finish according to the facilities you have available and then work through your mental plan bit by bit. Don't be afraid to think out of the box or be unconventional!

Paul.

Alan,

Bit of a difficult question as there are many ways to 'skin a cat', all depends on machinery available and the tooling you have to go in it. I am currently machining the cylinder for a 6" Savage, a casting (iron) and rather bigger but the principles are the same I would say. My plan of attack has been to mount the casting on the table of my mill (it has horizontal and vertical spindles) so at one setting I was able to machine the top face and the steam chest face. Translating that to your lump of bronze if you machine two flats at 90 degrees you then have datum faces to step off for the bore and the saddle radius and two flat surfaces for clamping. My current stage is now mounting it on a horizontal borer to machine the bore for the cylinder liner and then I can use the coordinate scales on the machine to step off to the centre of the saddle radius and machine that. I will then return it to the mill to machine the valve face, drill off the ports and the stud holes for the end covers and saddle.

Couple of things to consider - when you do the saddle radius you want to consider not only the diameter of the boiler but the thickness of any joint you may intend to use between the boiler and the cylinder. When you drill the stud holes in the flange make them a reasonable clearance - as you pull down on the joint any compression will result in slight movement at the extremities of the saddle. Too tight a clearance on the holes and the studs may bind and the joint may not seal.

I guess you don't have a horizontal borer but it can all be done on the mill as yours is quite a small cylinder, would help if you have a boring and facing head for the spindle though (rather than just a boring head). You can do it without but the facing function makes life a bit easier.

Paul.

Larry,

I have recently finished cutting a set of gears for my 6" traction engine. These were with 4 DP cutters so a fair bit to come out on each tooth, gears were cast iron so as others have said cut in a single pass. Cutter speed worked out on 90 fpm (which should hold good for steel) and was as stated around the 100 rpm. One thing I do when cutting gears is scribe a line at every division and number them with a sharpie. I then clamp a scribing block to the table aligned with the line, gives a quick visual check of position each time you index - and saved me some grief a couple of times during the job! It's easy to get distracted.

Paul.

Gary,

Were you relying on natural draught for your hardwood fire? If so in such a small boiler you are unlikely to succeed. With small solid fuelled boilers it is the norm to have to provide draught by an external means to get sufficient steam to operate a steam blower. Steam blower is a tapping off the boiler and a valve piped to a small nozzle in the uptake (chimney) this induces air for through the fire. The external means used to get it going in the first place range from an electric fan placed on the chimney to draw the fire, a jet similar to the steam blower fed with compressed air either installed in the chimney or in a false chimney that drops on. Larger boilers like my 4" scale traction engine can use natural draught with the use of an extended chimney but my 2" scale engine will not respond to this and has to have an electric 'blower' (really a sucker) on the chimney until the steam blower can take over when I have about 20psi. The design of the grate with regard to air gap / fire bar ratio will also have a significant effect. Don't give up!

Paul.

I put my used white spirit back in the bottles and let the solids settle out then pour off the cleaner stuff into another bottle and use it to soak charcoal or wood for lighting up my various steam boilers. The bottles with the little bit of solids in the bottom go in the bin. Probably some law against that as well, but hey ho, gives me vfm in using the stuff twice.

Paul.

Ron,

I use this Soba vice on my mini mill which is smaller than yours with only about 260mm of fresh air between spindle and table. The vice is only about 65mm tall to top of jaws and the jaws are 100mm wide. It has served me very well over the years, no appreciable jaw lift . Not clocked it lately in the vertical plane but I seem to remember it was within a thou or two over about 4" (6" parallel held vertically in the jaws). It holds firm. Wasn't big money when I bought it from Chronos but that would be 15 years ago probably, no idea if they still do them.

On another tack I also use an MT2 ER25 collet chuck in the spindle which I have also been very pleased with. I tend to do work on this machine that is far too big for it having done all the milling and boring for a 6" scale traction engine water pump and the main bearing housings, including the steel plate jig for machining the latter. There are pictures for that on Traction Talk forum. Sorry about the state of the shed but it's only about 6' square so space is very tight and stuff tends to get piled around the machine!!

All the best,

Paul.

Ron,

Well done. It's self perpetuating this muddle engineering lark is it not? In the space of a few short months you seem to have gone from relying on others to do machining jobs to advance your shunter, to putting up a shed, getting a lathe and now a mill. I am sure you will get hours of enjoyment from your investment. There is a lot of satisfaction to be had from making something.

Paul.

Gary,

Well done that man! Doesn't it feel good when it all works? It's great to see new people coming along who are not afraid to put their own ideas into things and have the perseverance to make them work. Super job and an excellent video as well.

Couple of observations; very briefly priming is where water is entrained with the steam exiting the boiler, that can either be through the main steam valve to the engine or through the safety valve when it lifts (or both!). If the former it's very bad for the engine as it can lead to a hydraulic lock between cylinder end covers and piston, causing some spectacular damage in extremis. If the latter you know about it as it appears to be raining and can also be bad as it can reduce the level of water in the boiler very quickly as 'solid' water is being expelled through the safety. The main cause is as you say, impurities or high dissolved solids in the boiler water but it can also be caused be a high steam demand. There are some interesting videos on YouTube if you want to learn more about it.

At the end of operation it's good practice to let the pressure drop slowly as the boiler cools and not release the pressure quickly while the boiler is still hot. Not so critical with a copper boiler as a steel one.

Look forward to your firing experiments and ultimately seeing an engine on the end of the pipe.

Paul.

That is a question a bit like how long is a piece of string! There are a number of factors to consider here. Some are related to the engine, solid wheels (strakes or smooth rolls) or rubber tyres, boiler capacity and steaming characteristics, tender water capacity and how much 'spare' water can be carried on the outfit or availability of water along the route and coal capacity. Others are related to the terrain, how many hills and how steep on the route, quality of the road surface (very important in current times where a small pothole un-noticed in a car will be a giant obstacle to a small engine), general traffic speed and density.

There is no real reason why even a small (2" scale say) engine cannot travel a long distance in the hands of an experienced driver able to maintain a good head of steam. However you will find a 2" scale engine on strakes or solid rolls or even one fitted with rubber tyres quite frustrating on the road unless it is a dead smooth Tarmac surface. I have a 2" scale fowler Z7 ploughing engine which I have taken on a one mile road run (2 mile round trip). The first time I did it as built on strakes and it was fairly well shaken up! A good few things coming loose. I did it again having made removable rubber tyres which was much better but similar to a roller it has a very low road speed, the prototype was never designed for high speed running on the road.

I also have a 4" scale Ruston Procter with rubber tyres permanently fitted. I have done quite a few road runs with that but it's not easy to fire on the run so requires a stop every half mile or so for a stoke up and to clear the ashpan and top up the tender. It has a reasonable turn of speed in high gear, fast walking pace at least but it still suffers on poor road surfaces (although it's 4" scale it was a small engine in full size so more akin to a 3" Burrell in model terms). I have done runs of up to 4 miles with that and if you keep the pressure up it uses about a gallon of water a mile (if you let it drop below about 90 psi that can double!).

For a reasonably enjoyable and not too challenging trip in my experience you want something no smaller than a 4" Foster or Garrett. That means you are big enough to be a reasonable prescence on the road and more likely to be seen by 'normal' drivers. You have the capacity to drag a reasonable amount of water with you, a reasonable road speed and the wheels are big enough to not be overly troubled by the average road surface. As indicated by SOD there are a great deal of drivers with a similar mentality that have to be somewhere before they have left where they are! Consequently on major roads they will cut you up, squeeze past where really there is no space and generally act like you have no right to get in their way! On minor and country roads they will overtake on blind corners or approach you round a blind corner at breakneck speed with no chance of stopping! On a small steam engine you are more vulnerable than on a motorbike or even push bike so make sure your life insurance is up to date!!!! Sadly having also done some trips on a full size engine BMW, Mercedes and Audi drivers still consider themselves invincible and feel no threat from 15 tons of iron and steel in front of them!

3" scale rollers and Maxitrak Avellings are nice things for the rally field but you won't try a 10 mile road run a second time with one!

All the best,

Paul.

Keep an eye put for an Elliot Junior (Omnimill). Fantastic bit of kit, 28" table, horizontal and vertical spindles and a quill on the vertical spindle for drilling (no fine feed though so for milling you put the cut on by raising the knee). I managed to pick one up last Christmas and have just finished cutting the gears for my 6" traction engine on it. My colleague has a Bridgeport in his shop and to be honest I prefer the Omnimill. You might have to search around to find one though.

Paul.

Ron,

There have been a few over the years. Fellow from Portsmouth built a Showman's engine complete with smoke generator in the smoke box which used to be seen at rallies and gatherings in the South East. It was a freelance design around 3" scale but a reasonable representation considering the limited facilities employed to build it. That's the only traction engine I have seen, electric powered steam lorries are more common. There is a fellow selling lorries ready to run which are based on a mobility scooter chassis.

Paul.

David,

Can you not clamp it to the table of the mill with a couple of packers under so the bottom face is clear of the table and then drill / open out with the boring head? Might take a while depending on what size cuts you can take but it should do the job?

Paul.

Update;

All fixed yesterday! The offending tight item was a distance collar that sits on its own register a little bigger than the bearing journal and buts up to a shoulder on the spindle where the diameter increases for the pulley to run. Ended up releasing the bull wheel, confirming it was loose on the spindle and then pressing the spindle through the lot. It didn't take a lot of force. The pulley was still a more than hand tight fit on the bronze gear so I heated the pulley giving an easy release by hand of the bronze bit. Cleaned up both mating faces with crocus and degreased. Heated the pulley to 75 deg C and reassembled by hand with loctite 64 something or other (can't remember the number off hand but it's a high strength bearing retainer). Tried heating the distance collar to the same temp but that refused to drop on by hand so put it back with the press. Again only light force required. Spindle refitted and thrust adjusted, original bearing shims retained as nothing has changed. Ran it light for half hour with a good oil feed, no heating of bearings. Tried the cut I was taking when the problem became evident, all good.

So now back to the job in hand, thanks for the pointers.

Paul.

Thanks gents, sorry it's a plain 7 as indicated in title, as Michael suggested the S in the text was a balls up! It has bearing caps so spindle just lifted out of the headstock complete. I found a couple of YouTube videos of spindle work which show for reassembly the offending collar to be a tight fit and refitted by knocking on with a hollow tubular soft block. Although the linked drawing is not my machine the closest match is item 31, distance sleeve. I had already tried 'jumping' the spindle on a wooden bench. It's definitely not rusted, everything is liberally coated in oil as it has been for the last 40 years in our ownership. Not had chance to get back to it yet but a bit reluctant to use heat as its directly on the spindle so heat will conduct into it and they are both steel so there won't be a differential of expansion rates, it's also sat inside the recess of the pulley. Might have another go this afternoon.

Paul.