Artistic hand cut oilways

I'm helping to refurbish two very old steam engines on a 1903 coal fired steam tug boat, and when we stripped the starboard pump down I couldn't help but to be impressed with the hand cut oilways.

So let your creative juices flow when cutting your oilways, they don't have to be straight!

IanJ

Just looking at that gives me a haddock!

I'll get me coat...

I thought there was something fishy about it!

We don't teach children and youfs to use chisels anymore. We should do!

That came off a trawler originally. Designed to be run on cod liver oil!

Paul.

If you ever get it running again, it'll be a mackerel.

I know my plaice....

People are having a whale of a time here with some great fishy puns but cod do better

Maybe we should have a competition for the most artistic hand cut oil ways?

I've seen a couple of youtube videos where people have spent ages meticulously setting up top slides on the mill to machine precise oilways, when it would have been a lot quicker to get the bullnose chisel out and cut some curvy grooves, it will achieve the same result.

Will the curve be better at distributing the oil? Or is there no difference in result?

or perhaps negligible difference at workshop loadings and immeasurable?

...sorry I codn’t add a fishy pun...

They'll just 3D print some oilways up after a quick CAD session scanning in a haddock and computer generating a tool path. Steam engines have moved on since your day , grandpa.

It's an Icthys - obviously designed to give divine support in the machine's subsequent life.

I don't think it matters too much what shape the oilways are as long as the oil is distributed on the surfaces.

An Icthys! I never thought a boat would need divine support, I thought that was what the water did