The Workshop Progress Thread

Decided to saw down the middle of this bit of bronze about 1"x"x3" to see what was inside

With a bit more poking about I found an eccentric strap

Edited By JasonB on 24/10/2015 20:23:27

John Thorne, how did you go about the bores on your drain cocks please? I want to make some for my 4" Durham cylinder, the ones available commercially are too small.

Brian

> With a bit more poking about I found an eccentric strap

That's how Jason doies it - he get model versions of these:

No no no Neil

Eccentric strap NOT Eccentric scrap !

N

Neil when you said you hoped to have a couple of bits ready by September that is not what I had in mind

I like that Norman

Never one to pass up the opportunity to flog a dead horse, I've just finished version 3 of my tool post spindle. I hope I have combined the best bits of the previous two designs and come up with the final article. More by accident than design, however, is the fact that I ordered the wrong size toothed belt for the combination of pulleys that I selected. This, however worked to my advantage as I was able to juggle the collection of pulleys in my stock and, by re-ordering a belt 15mm longer, was able to mix and match belts and pulleys to give various ratios with the same centre distance. The results of my labours are shown below:

Front view with alternation pulley/belt combination. Rear view - ditto.

With the exception of the largest/smallest pulley combo, swapping the pulleys from driven to driver, as well as combining with the crude electric speed control, an useful range of speeds can be obtained. The spindle mounts in the QCTP on the lathe either radially or axially.

Following a brief period of navel-gazing, it occurred to me, that with suitable mountings, I could also use the unit as a basis for a tool grinder/sharpening device. A quick rummage for some boxes and the addition of a Harold Hall grinding rest resulted in this mock-up:

Just when I thought I'd finished - another project looms!

John

Made the crosshead for the Tidman engine over the weekend from a block of CI, size is approx 1.375" sq x 1.875" long. Pressed in bronze bearing, 3/8" stainless piston rod and 1/2" hex locknut.

John Thorne, how did you go about the bores on your drain cocks please? I want to make some for my 4" Durham cylinder, the ones available commercially are too small.

Brian

Hi Brian

Sorry it took so long to get back to you but did not see your post till today. The tapered bore was done with a small boring with the top slide set over and the cock plugs were turned at the same setting. I first drilled the bodies and used that as a guide to set them up in a 4 jaw chuck. The body shape was formed after so as to avoid jaw marks on the finished job. I can PM you the drawing if you require and you can scale it down

John

Plodding on with my small gyroscope build... have machined the flywheel & lightened the centre, having drilled the holes using DRO co-ords as the first attempt indicated an out of balance somewhere. For those interested I set up on the ally sub table I made last year, held in the vice...

Simple enough from drawing but lets see if it works this time...?

Hi Some more parts made at home for a Westinghouse pump

John

A rare find. The original tooling for an Adept super !

Edited By Ady1 on 11/11/2015 10:14:38

Over the weekend I have converted a piece of 0.75" x 1.5" EN3B into a pile of swarf and been left with this which looks like a conrod

The strap was bent up from a bit of 4x15mm black bar, an offcut welded into the end to stop it closing up while in the vice so it could be final machined.

Still a bit more to do.

I got the big end bearing done yesterday as well as the cotter and wedge to hold it all together. This allowed me to finalise the size of a few bits like the piston rod length so could not resist making up a couple of plugs so that I could try the Tidman on a bit of air, fired up straight away with my eyeballed timing setting and the governor butterfly valve seems to control teh speed quite well on teh 15psi I'm running at, no gaskets, gland packing or piston rings fitted at the moment.

J

PS don't jump when te compressor kicks in just after 60secs, organ music will have to wait until its all finished.

Edited By JasonB on 22/11/2015 13:22:13

It's a good 'un.

Neil

No pics as yet, hopefully tomorrow but been round reckoning up what quick change tool holders I have.

Including some specials that have things like knurling tools built into the holder and some obsolete holders to hold defunct type parting blades then the total count is 49 holders between two lathes.

Problem is once Deb's Phantom Bantam is in use and that's three lathes, we could be struggling for tool holders so hunt around and come up with a lump of steel 2" x 6" and 29" long. That will do nicely and should make 32 new holders.

So couple of hours on the saw tomorrow and should have the blanks cut out. Pictures later.

Must be for a late model Adept Super !

This part is in the 'progress' thread because it represents progress, unlike the previous attempt. Here's the part with undamaged screw threads, 32tpi on the larger (1" ) diameter and 19tpi Whitworth (aka 3/8" BSP) on the smaller:

Through the radial holes the inner valve seat can be seen, with undercut made using the homemade cutter previously shown.

Two more to go!

Andrew

The new Shaftesbury jig borer/light milling machine arriving at home. Looks pretty nice at first glance but an obvious problem is how am I going to get it in the garden/workshop?

Scratch of the head for two minutes then out came the spanners.

Long story short, a lot of puffing and panting and she was home but in bits. I am midway through the stripping and cleaning and have decided to have the table surface ground to get rid of a few dings.

I also bought a power hacksaw while I was at it and this will be next in the dry dock when the jig borer is complete.

I managed to blag a lot of tooling from the supplier so many thanks to those who offered chucks etc on 30 Int tapers but I am now in possession of everything I need. Including a brand harry spankers INTEGI U.M.200 boring head which looks very good and probably a lot more expensive than I paid for it. Anyone have any experience od Integi stuff, its Spanish.

More as things get cleaner.

T

Funnily enough this landed on my yard this morning.

Pretty complete, has the arbors, vise, collet chuck with collets and a full set, I think ? of 8 pick off feed gears.

No manual and there isn't one on the Yahoo Harrison group. The Anilam DRO is playing up and I suspect the head.

No time to play with it at present so it's gone into winter storage.

.

Very nice bits of new kit you have there Tractor man and John.

Nick