Show Us Your First Steps

These are the first two models I actually have photos of. Before that, my first vehicle was of wooden construction with a dynamo used as a motor (age 11). The second was a motorised bike using a small 2-stroke lawnmower engine. A policeman told me to stop riding it. I then made this thing with a friend using a Suffolk Punch engine and gears from a Honda C50 that we'd blown up by not rebuilding it correctly. The other vehicle at the bottom had a car engine and 45hp (my first Honda). When I hit 17 I fitted that engine into a car and used it to go to school.

Heres a video of mine from a GLR Tina & boiler kit. Took about 7-8 years on and off to finally get a running pair!

Edited By Martin Cottrell on 13/11/2015 22:08:57

Well I did make a crude beam engine at school but don't have a photo, was not much of a sucess as the aluminium flywheel I cast using a Mamod one as the pattern was never going to carry things round with all the tight spots and air leaks to contend with.

I do still have the square that I made, rivited together from layers of 1.5x20mm steel, still gets used for rough marking out of things like black bar

When I was about 15 Dad bought me a Unimat3 and I made several bits for that, the only one that I could find knocking about in the back of a draw was this marking gauge minus it's pianowire point.

At about 16 or 17 I made a proper engine all on the Unimat 3 in the form of a Stuart 10V, its a bit rough when I look at it closly now but was the best I could manage at the time.

I dusted it off over the weekend and made a connector for the compressor, does not run as slowly as I would like due to quite a big airloss around the piston rod gland as that has to be left very loose if things are not to bind up. I suppose I should remachine the offending bits now but will probably leave as is.

J

Hi JasonB I have one of those little marking gauges. Still has its marking out point which is a gramophone needle.

A great bunch of projects,

Muzzer, from the combination of hairstyle, jeans, jumper and collared shirt I suspect we are of very similar vintage...

Neil

Can't compete with Muzzer's hair but as he has posted pictures of his 1:1 scale cars perhaps I'll post pictures, before and after, of my first restoration project which necessitated my purchase of my first lathe:

Russell.

I had made attempts at school (50 odd years ago!) to build something after mucking about with a Mamod but nothing was completed.

So my first proper effort was just last year when I attended the SMEE Polly course.

Roy

Well I must say Muzzer was well ahead of my brother's first efforts at making a bicycle:

Most of the first things I made where just parts. I guess this was my first proper project. It's a bit different. :D

A friend I've known for nearly sixty years asked me to look out some old photographs for a project he's doing, so I scanned them and, seeing this thread resurrected, I thought I'd post a couple of them here. They are our first "real" attempt at engineering. The first picture is of the two of us (me on the right) aboard the chassis of a 1932 Austin Seven, purchased for the princely sum of £5 by my friend's father. We stripped off the body and replaced it with the flooring you can see here. Today, this would be seen as sacrilege, but then, with A7's two a penny, it was a common sort of auto butchery. My friend had an enormous garden with woods at the bottom and we spent hours driving the contraption around. Of course, it had little in the way of brakes and about ¼ inch of pedal travel for the clutch. It was in-out sudden death! Certainly learned clutch control the hard way. We were both eleven at the time. Our efforts attracted the attention of the BBC and we were invited to appear on the children's television programme "All your own" presented by Huw Weldon - hence the unfeasibly small petrol tank front left. Yes, BBC Health and Safety was in force back then and wouldn't allow the car in the Lime Grove studios with any petrol in the normal tank. The programme went out live, so we never got to see it, but we got terrible ribbing from our classmates on the following Monday morning.

Later, the makers of Corgi models asked us to present a mounted version of the Donald Campbell LSR Bluebird to the man himself at London Heathrow, just before he went off to Utah to have a crack at the land speed record - just for good luck. It didn't work, obviously, he crashed in rather spectacular fashion, though I don't think he blamed us. Donald took great delight in pointing out to the Corgi guys that the real thing didn't have the raised rivets of the model. I'm not sure if the production ones had them removed or not. The ones we were given still had them, but they've been lost, unfortunately.

On the right, the late Donald Campbell is signing a picture of the Bluebird model car for us both. I still have the autographed picture.

Ah, memories!

John

Edited to try to get the photos side-by-side

Edited By John Hinkley on 28/01/2016 20:26:42

Just dug out my first proper project out of the loft , i know i made it before i left school up my grandads workshop so circa 1978 then , what a brilliant grandad he was to let a 15 yr old have free access to his machines and materials , soon after i got a job as a precision engineer and it put me off modelling for about 25 yrs , the engine is a twin cyl single acting oscillator , pretty sure it still runs though.

One of my first models, a Fine Cast Allchin Royal Chester for a friend who once owned one.

Ian S C

.

First steps = Scrap bin.!

It's still growing at a rate similar to that of Anak Krakatoa.

Nick

Muzzer:

Your motorised trike is somewhat reminiscent of my (more recently completed) Speedy.

? I don't see any scrap...

Neil

It only becomes scrap after you try to make something with it, before that it was stock.

Hub center steering?