The Workshop Progress Thread (2017)

Made a start on some motorcycle wheel spindles in EN16T, Had to turn 16mm bar down to 0.624". Got the lathe/tailstock dialled in nicely to better than a thou over 11" and a superb finish using DCGT tips.

I've had a rusty bit of 22mm steel hanging about for ages so thought I would use it up to make 3 arbors to hold the gear blanks for the Ruston. Also set up the division plates on the rotary table so looks like I'll be gear cutting tomorrow.

Two 33T Mod1 gears 5/16" wide cut before dinner

And a 66T for afters

I took a chance and tried some gear cutters from the land of the rising SIEG which cost just over £6 each, seemed to work OK though the one for the 33T was just starting to need a bit more effort on the last few teeth, don't know what steel it was but it was not as nice to turn as the blank for the 66T so somthing a bit harder.

At this sort of price they can almost be regarded as throw away and I would still be in pocket as two 33T gears from HPC would have cost me almost six times as much as the cheapie cutter.

They are a bit smaller at 22mm bore so as it was just a try out I did not want to buy a 22mm arbor so just knocked up a reducer that allowed me to mount them on the end of my existing 1" arbor.

J

the last gear was the 15T for the governor

Also turned and milled the large gear to look like the original casting then gave it a good seeing to with the dremel to knock off the corners and add a bit of texture.

Spent the rest of the day watching the live streams of teh Cyclo-Cross World Champs, snow, ice, mud and ladies in lycra - what more could you want

Here's a little loco part:

It's one half of the grid section of a an EMD FT loco dynamic brake housing. Needs one slit across the middle to .01 with a .008 slitting saw and before I can try casting it. I believe this is a phase III version as the locos it will go on were made in 1944. It's N scale (1:160th) and part of a suite of parts to represent the much modified Northern Pacific versions that roamed Western Washington right up until 1970 and the BN merger. A friend wants to have all 11 ABBA sets for the 1955 Sumas branch layout he is preparing to build. I had previously made some of the parts out of Styrene to fit the IMRC model but decided to do all new masters in brass. The little flange is .004" thick to (hopefully) ensure it casts. The grid was done manually with a .004 thou engraving cutter but other parts with trickier organic surfaces have been or are being done with CNC. Did the later number boards and an aborted injection mould that way. The pilot is a bit of a pain and testing my ability to draw the surfaces. I think I am going to fix my probe and use it to figure out the mounting area on the IMRC shell. Present work is centred around building a buck and then forming the metal (.015"  ) and laminating .002" shim embossed with the bolt heads. There are easier methods but I need to use this method elsewhere so I'm trying to work out the bugs where possible. Need to work on my soldering amongst other things and one of the reasons I ran back to something easy for this afternoon's work.

Here's a photo of one of the units in question care of Rick Horne:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/37908073@N04/3652076621

Canada is just behind the shed. My house only an hour or so bike ride away.

Not today's output but I made a pair of these right angle brackets for my mills. Just a rough copy of the Sherline ones - that way I know they fit!

Will have to make an adjustable too one as the cast iron one I have is too heavy to keep taking home from the shop in my pack.

Andrew Hutchinson

BC Canada

Edited By Andrew Hutchinson on 30/01/2017 06:33:50

Edited By Andrew Hutchinson on 30/01/2017 06:34:16

Back onto the Horizontal steam engine this week. Got the conrod made on friday evening then the bearings, keep and studs yesterday morning.

Started teh cross head last night and completed that today along with the pivot pin then did the piston and one end of the rod, won't complete that until I can check lengths from the assembled engine.

J

Edited By JasonB on 05/02/2017 15:33:21

Looks very nice Jason. What's the reason for the blue colouring on the picture?

Brian

Not sure, something was throwing the automatic off on the camera, pics taken at the lathe were fine.

J

Finished off a log and brush moving trolley (for tree surgery) by painting it yesterday and testing it out today.

Rubber handles on order from China

I see that a lot if you take a picture of a grey/silver/metallic object on a pale woodgrain background. It seems to fool the auto colour balance into thinking fluorescent light is from a traditional light bulb. A really hefty dose of colour balance from blue to yellow can fix it.

Funnily enough i was sent a picture of a lathe a few days ago that had gone the other day, the whole picture was yellow and it as lot harder to fix but I got a good balance in the end.

It's amazing how you can fix pictures with a cast! Here's one I fixed that's on Wikipedia (someone else's pic of one of my heroes I even used to have a jumper like that):

Before:

After:

It would not be so bad if it were consistant, compare the photo at the top of the page with the latest ones, all taken with the same lighting in the same shed but the ones at the top are fine

Dang blast it! I thought Jason had a tasty bluing effect in his repertoire and wanted to ask how he did it. Really good work - even if the colour is down to a confused camera.

Well there could be one other reason for the dodgy colour of teh photos as the air in the workshop was a bit blue today

Ouch !!

I have been pondering whether to buy one of those grooving tools for a while now.

You have just made up my mind for me.

Phil

Phil, thats a 10mm shank one so if you could fit a 12 or 16mm holder in on your lathe that would have a bit more meat under the insert.

I like it a lot, cuts well and the 2mm dia end inserts are nice for getting a small internal radius as can be seen on the conrod and the crosshead where the round joins the rectangle.

Think I may not have had enoug material in te collet. It happened about half way through parting off the piston from 1" bar and ther was only about 10mm length in the 5C collet.

Good grief, that's a bummer and a half. If it had happened to me I'd be on the third beer by now.

Andrew

Edited By Andrew Johnston on 05/02/2017 20:53:54

That's an >ouch<

Neil

Looks like Dave Brock to me, if it is I saw the current version Nov. 2015 in Oxford.

Mike

Just checked Wikipedia and I see I am right.

Edited By Mike Poole on 05/02/2017 21:58:45

A while back I posted on this thread on making some Tich nameplates - here's the finished articles, thanks to John Lintorn for letting me post this picture.

Chuffed to sneak Hawkwind into the Workshop Progress Thread. I haven't seen them for about 25 years but I do like 'The Machine Stops'. I'd better shut up now!

Neil