The Workshop Progress Thread 2019

After a year or so of renovating the new house I have finally found time to play in my shed.
This arrangement allows me to cut spur gears.
I used an old bolt for the single point cutter but will be ordering a cheap set of mod 1 cutters from China.

I decided to have a go at the flywheel for the Oscillator I posted the other day. First thing was to clean up the slice of thick wall tube to 14mm wide x 14mm thick, hope Andrew approves of te swarf colour.

Then the ring was shaped with a series of cuts at 10thou intervals, first outside then the inside.

That was followed by blending the cuts with one of the Tome lathe files from ARC and 50mm abrasive discs in the cordless as the ring was turning in the lathe

Then pop a few holes in for the spokes and do the same with a hub

Trial fit and take a photo while it all looks nice

Then make a mess of it with heat, flux and solder. I did it in two stages first working around the rim to do teh outer spoke ends. I then let it cool so the rim could contract back to normal size and then soldered the spokes into the hubs.

It's in the pickle now and once out will go back into the lathe to open the bore out to finished size which should hopefully five a fairly true running flywheel.

That is fine work you are doing jason,well done am following along .

john

Over the last couple of weekends I've made a spindle handle, much like the one in MEW (though not the same).

It's somewhat based on Neil's design from his book, but i decided to have a go at a nice brass handle.

below being the individual parts

The main problem I had with this is that the conical bit on the shaft was attached by super glue. However, this shifted when trying to tighten it up. I had a couple of a goes which failed. So my next attempt was with some Locktite green retainer which has worked ok.

The other thing I've not quite got is finish. Part is knowledge, most is patience. However one thing that lets it down is that I can't get all the layout blue out where there are fine grooves. I accept that the correct way to sort this out is to lathe a better finish and perhaps one day I'll get there! In the meantime, I've tried meths and Isopropyl alcohol neither have got the blue out of the cracks.

Any ideas?

Iain

Have you tried a wire wheel bench grinder ?

George.

Had one of those days™ in the shed today.

Cleaning up a bit of thick walled tube on a job for herself, I had to remove the tailstock on the ML7 and support the bar with the chuck and a fixed steady (First time I've used the ML7 in two years but it's a bit longer than the Hardinge). Having got it all mounted I started it turning and prepared to skim the crud/paint/rust off the tube prior to painting it. It turns out that the tube is bent by about 1/4". Ordered some nice new tube and put her job into 'pending' status.

Decided that I would finally make a start on sharpening quite a number of drills that have wear or chips on the sharp ends. Fitted a new, longer, bit of square bar to the tail end of the Picador sharpening jig so that it can cope with Morse taper drills in the larger sizes. Decided that the jig needed a riser block instead of the previous method of clamping it into a universal vice on the grinder to get it high enough. Found a decent lump of rusty scrap and started milling it flat/square/oblong to make the riser block out of. I'd almost finished cleaning up the third of the six sides when the mill started making an odd banging noise from the head. Since such noises tend to indicate something is falling apart, I stood on the step-stool and looked into the top end to see if I could spot anything. Spindle turned freely by hand, nothing looked out of place, so I slackened off the belt and turned on the motor as the first stage of checking. it was stuttering and looking as if it was dragging/not developing any real torque. Odd! Then I noticed a bit of a burnt smell coming from the switch box on the head, followed by a wisp of smoke. There was a gush of smoke when I unplugged the electric and removed the switch box. The switch was still trailing a bit when I removed it and put it on the bench...

Barrel/cam switches are a lousy way to turn motors on and off. But they've been used for many years. This one was rated at 7.5kW for motor duty, so should have been ok on the 2hp motor of the mill:-

Ordered a replacement and am thinking about building a box with some decent contactors for an upgrade in motor control.

Came in and had a little cry. Tomorrow I'll finish making the scrap iron square with the shaper.

Decided I needed a few more clamps so went along the lines of the Float Lock vice idea.

Forgive my ignorance, but what is a float lock vice?

Ian P

The float lock is an adjustable position vise used on drill tables. It normally has a clamp which fits to the edge of the drill table and the round sliding bar of the vise goes through it. The vise can then be positioned anywhere on the table and locked in place. A search on google will bring up a full picture which will give idea than my description. Tubal Cain has an excellent video on them.

Jason, are we quite near to having the engine up and running, I say we as its just that I have been looking forward to seeing it.

It was popping yesterday but not long enough to get a video, stay tuned.

Here you go Ron, I went out in the shed before dinner and gave it a few flicks of the flywheel. The running notes say the vapour carb works well on stale fuel and it ran better today having left the fuel open overnight to gas off a bit.

I expect it would run for longer if that bloke in the video would stop fiddling about with the mixture and ignition timing

Sharpened a few MT2 drills with the Picador drill sharpening jig. Took a while, since they were either chipped ones or hand-ground to interesting proportions by previous owners. Still faster and more consistent than the Drill Doctor was.

Lashed up the replacement forwards/off/backwards switch on the Mill. This one's bigger than the one I fitted when I rebuilt the mill, which was bigger than the original. So the extension housing I made for the original switch mounting is too small. It's held up with insulting tape at the moment and I'll cast a custom housing for it when I get the foundry going next year.

Used the now-functional mill to make a bit of oblong stock into a DIN/Tophat rail to fix a delay relay into the Chinee multiprocess welding set. It has a tendency to burn out its switch contacts with the inrush current charging its capacitors. A 15Ω resistor in series with the on-switch for half a second will stop the contacts welding together. The resistor has mounting holes, so that was easy.

It's nice to get things done!

Very nice Jason I like the sound of it and it looks different.

It seems to be sensitive to mixture and timing but it had a sweet spot towards the end of the video.

Edited By Ron Laden on 10/12/2019 06:55:37

Edited By Ron Laden on 10/12/2019 06:56:16

Edited By Ron Laden on 10/12/2019 07:15:58

Got the delay relay and big resistor mounted in the case of the welder and wired them all up. I now have a welder that doesn't try to weld its switch contacts shut every time it's turned on.

Really having problems with high humidity in the workshop. Didn’t get time to rebuild the workshop with a pitch roof this year. Next years project all being well. I had to resort to running two dehumidifiers intermittently so they don’t ice up. It upsets me to see my machinery dripping in condensation. 😢

Edited By Johnboy25 on 11/12/2019 08:21:35

Over the last couple of months, while Jason has completed a couple of engines, I have made some snail paced progress on Muncaster's Double Oscillator.

A picture of the parts to date:

A very loose assembly:

Still plenty to do but I can now see an engine in there.

Jim

I was busy using a piercing saw last night to rough out some swing latches in 1/16th brass - and it was all going very well. I haven't broken a blade for a quite while....

I must be getting better at this [I thought] or just plain lucky - Plang!! - at which point the blade broke.

OK - it was luck then...

IanT

Gone through a few piercing saw blades lately doing the frames for my beam engine; pushing that bit too fast or twisting out of square, ah well ! all sent to try us.

George.

Jim, you engine is coming along nicely. Good things come to those who wait take their time

between making swarf I have had a bit more of a play with the RMC and it is starting to run for longer and stop when I want it too. Sorry for holding the camera in portrait mode though it does suit the upright shape of the engine.