Building Stuart V10 Vertical Steam Engine

Having now practiced sharpening tools and trial cuts and producing as much scrap as Longbridge I have decided its time to start in earnest. First the baseplate and read instructions , "first cut deep enough to get well under the skin", well, himmm? " Run the lathe in back gear" Himm? " the slowest open gear speed"? "Hmmm.

Well this is in the book for beginners?? Can somebody please enlighten me as to how deep is skin deep and what back and open gears are.

Something a bit more recent may be of use such as this think it runs to 27 pages.

Backgear is used on the older machines as a way of getting a slower speed so just use your slowest available speed.

As for the skin, well the surface of an iron casting can be a bit harder than the core so taking light cuts will wear the tool that is why its suggested to take a reasonably deep cut first BUT Stuart castings of late don't have much machining allowance and if your lathe has low power and/or a highish low speed then this won't work. Ideally you want to take at least 1mm or 0.040" cut as your first one if possible.

Hamish,

I would thoroughly recommend the website at http://www.homews.co.uk/page42.html
this gives a nice step by step guide to building the 10V (not V10, one cylinder is quite enough for a beginner...)
Like you the 10V is my first model and I also have the book you refer to. It assumes that all work is done on a Myford lathe. The website does give some different techniques in some areas.

Edit, Jason already beat me to it with the link, sorry for the duplication

Stuart

Edited By Stuart Bridger on 02/06/2015 10:54:23

I'm sorry I can't offer any advice, I'm a complete novice having only had my lathe a few days so I'm still at the 'swarf making stage'.

I'm glad you asked the question though, I'm considering buying one of the Stuart kits shortly so I'll be interested to read the replies from the experts

Peter

There is also a series of a dozen or so videos on Youtube going through the 10V as well as random individual ones.

Use hard metal lathe tool in case the cast iron has hard spots due chilled cast iron. The hard skin is not deep, hold the lathe tool under skin to remove hard skin before finishing to right size.

Thanks very much for the input and I now know what "skin deep" is. I have looked at the links suggested and to others. My post was a bit tounge in cheek just to make authors of these "beginners " guides and posters on here aware, that as beginners we need descriptions to be precise, which is what this hobby is about.

Will now hopefully start producing a model and not more scrap.