What sort of things inspire you?

Saw this old breech loading coastal gun from Drake Island on the BBC news website today, woudl make a great model:

What sort of things get you contemplating new models?

Neil

Looks like an RML (Rifled Muzzle Loader) to me, possibly the 10-inch 18 ton job.

I've always wondered about the enormously thick reinforce on these pieces. Were they to resist pressure spikes caused by relatively fast-burning blackpowder propellant, when trying for armour-piercing velocities with Palliser-style projectiles far heavier than roundshot?

A subject like this, or a standard Napoleonic-period ship's gun or carronade (one of each in my album) , has the virtue of simplicity. But more modern pieces are much more interesting from the engineering point of view - for example Mal Webber's 8" howitzer in current build. But drawings of these guns are practically impossible to find, so the model engineer has to be prepared to undertake a formidable scaling and design exercise before cutting any metal, and not all of us have the time and commitment to do that.

In Churchill's old house at Chartwell, there's a model of the sponson-mounted 6-pounder gun used in early tanks. Looks like an ideal piece of work if the drawings -if any - could only be obtainable.

Edited By Mick B1 on 21/02/2020 18:21:16

I keep mulling over whether to have a go at making a Triumph trident T150 engine, I have the full size version so a ready source of information.

Mike

Two posts and both on weapons of destruction, how sad.

One of our club members gave a talk last week about progress on his Stirling Single which is quite a popular loco but I much prefer the Dean Single and Johnson Spinners.

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Oh dear where to start? Just looked at the various photos that I have in a file on the 'puter and see that there are 298 images though I do have several photos of some items.

These few are probaly towards the top of teh to be done list but the problem is more get added faster than even I can make them

No apology if a couple of those may cause offence due to their part in history but I just look at them as an interesting engineering item

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This bloke inspired me, What a legend! **LINK**

Neil you will like what's on my drawing board at the moment then.

The TV ads for a model spitfire that will cost £1200.00, and take over 2 years to build. As I am now limited to a max 2 hours a day, if I am lucky, in my workshop, I thought there must be a better way to add movement to the model than the one in question. With that in mind, I have bought a plastic model spitfire, and I will enjoy finding a much better way to add movement to it. It will involve a minimum amount of lathe and mill time, because I can't stand for more than a few minutes at a time, but it will make use of a few of the many hundreds of small motors I have in my stores. Total cost should be no more that £40.00, quite a saving on the cost of the TV advertised one.

The type of things which inspire and fascinate me are machines which are unnecessarily complicated and ridiculously elaborate, yet do very little: the type of contraptions from Heath Robinson and Emmett.

There was such a machine shown on Playschool once thorough the "round" window in the late 60s. I cannot remember what it was, but it left a lasting impression of flailing arms,cogs and wheels achieving very little, just because it could.

James

Edited By James Alford on 22/02/2020 09:22:44

I like the idea of 'models' that can actually do something. So my current attempts to build a large model / small reality vertical engine.

Once that is done (in some decade in the future) I am toying with either a clock or a watchmakers lathe. Which will disappoint the OP of the converse post, no doubt. I had a bit of a flirtation with the idea of a watch, but, having watched (sorry) some You Tube videos, I suspect is beyond my competence - my manual coordination is not the finest.

I also want to do some casting at some point, but lack the space and facilties.

My final 'inspiration', I suppose, is some jewellery for SWMBO. Perhaps that might soften her heart towards the Art...

You will notice a common theme in all of this. I'm inspired by things I've never done, don't have any evidence of the skills required and which are rather hard.

Perhaps I'm not alone in that?

Iain

Ordnance and tooling are twins of the same DNA, working and developing together since they were both flint handaxes.

Ya can't have one without the other.

Edited By Mick B1 on 22/02/2020 09:40:54

I find myself repeatedly inspired by the model engineers of the first half or so of the 20th Century, from ET Westbury though to GH Thomas. Most inspiring is the way those old boys did everything with almost nothing. Made their own dividing heads and just about all tooling etc.. Made their own racing tether boat engines for goodness sake. Just been reading ETW's build series in ME reprints for the Kiwi Mk2 engine. All done in the Myford lathe.

He describes drilling and boring the two holes in the timing chest for crankshaft and camshaft -- requiring a precision location so the drive gears don't bind or rattle around. He does it by marking the hole locations out with a scriber block and steel rule, then prick punching the intersecting lines and then setting up on the face plate with a wobbler to get hole location dead on. Not a DRO in sight. Not even a vertical slide with graduated feedscrew collar. Just careful marking out and workmanship. And it was rated as a beginner's project.

That's inspiring.

So much so I'm seriously looking at spending the stupid money to buy the Hemingway castings and get them shipped halfway round the world.

The other inspiring thing about stuff from that era is its style. That curvaceous art deco look of the 1930s is right there in ETW's KIwi engine, and in GHT's versatile dividing head that I have already made. Matched the style of the lathes of the day. Much more inspiring, to me, than today's piles of square blocks with sharp edges and corners loitering with intent to bust knuckles at first opportunity.

Edited By Hopper on 22/02/2020 10:10:58

No specific subject but seeing good engineering here on the forum, from simple items to more complex things which have a full description and pictures of how they were set up, tooling used and produced. As a relative beginner that inspires me, I have learnt such a lot from it.

Ron

I remember seeing that, I later discovered it was one of the creations of Bruce Lacey:

Immortalised in song by one of my favourite bands too:

<edit> On reflection it may actually have been one by Wilf Lunn His machines were a bit more 'age appropriate'

Edited By Neil Wyatt on 22/02/2020 10:49:15

No specific subject but seeing good engineering here on the forum, from simple items to more complex things which have a full description and pictures of how they were set up, tooling used and produced. As a relative beginner that inspires me, I have learnt such a lot from it.

Ron

My inspiration came from my Grandfather, for over 60 years he made all sorts of things on his treadle lathe and would never allow my brother and I to put an electric motor on it, as very young boys we made wooden whistles on the lathe or fire up his two coal fired tugs and his 2" free style traction engine. My brother and I both took up engineering and both have workshops to make and tinker what we will because of him.

I'm also inspired by anything mechanical and particularly if it moves, yesterday I watched a Wheeler Dealers program about a Ford Cosworth 4 x 4 Escort they were sorting out, I was amazed to see that one of the drive shafts passed through the engine sump and oil to get to its front wheel, imagine the chap who thought of doing that and then convincing management that was the way to go.

Martin P

Wilf Lunn was probably the 'super predictor' of Steam Punk,

Guy

Inspiration has often to be well moderated by reality.

I have been fascinated by locomotives since too young to go to school. Watching what I now believe to be a 9F going through the cutting next to Bulwell Common is perhaps my earliest clear memory.

BUT I am not inspired to build a replica as my club track is ground level and small 7 1/4" is more practical than large 5", let alone 3 1/2"

Could I turn all of those wheels and build a boiler that big in the years remaining to me? - and as I haven't really looked slim since 1968 could I drive it if I did?

Sorry, much as I should love to build a 9F, the 7 1/4" Tich I am building, although progressing far more slowly than I would wish, inspires me because I can see I am likely to finish it and drive it after that!