Stuart Beam Engine

Well, after swearing I wouldn't be building any Steam Models, here I am with most of the parts for the Stuart Beam Engine. I have a copy of the manual and I will get myself the plans.

But what is missing? More importantly, what is missing that would be definitely advantageous to buy from Stuart? I think I am probably the third person who has had these bits in his possession and along the way, parts have either gone missing or been destroyed in a machining attempt (not that I will fare any better) so I am looking at what to buy.

The base was missing and I have had a Forum Member contact me and he fortunately had one so that's a start. What else?

This is what I have:

Only bit you might want is the valve chest but its not hard to cut from solid or solder up 4 bits of brass flat. Glands can be made from round bar, pivot blocks for the valve linkage flat bar, valve chest cover a bit of 3mm plate. The rest is just barstock and fixings

I think the booklet has all the drawings needed so you should not need the plans

If you go on the Stuart Models website, look for your engine in the list of unmachined castings, click 'More Information' and scroll down to the bottom, Stuart list what contents are included in the kit, which may be of help in determining what you are missing. Hope I'm not teaching Granny to suck eggs here.................!

Chris

You appear to be short of the connecting rod which could be a particular shaped casting as Chris says check Stuarts website

Roy

No, no egg sucking at all Chris, but you are assuming that I actually know what I am looking at

I actually don't know what some of the items are, having had zero exposure to Steam Engines of any kind, other than to admire them.

Jason mentions a "valve chest", I have no idea what one is and some of the Googling I have done to determine what one is has left me more confused than before!

graham.

Update - found a great Youtube video explaining the whole Valve Chest thing and now quite a few things are clear to me. I can easily compare quite a bit of this stuff to two stroke (and four stroke) engines. Of which I have quite a bit of experience, built a few from bits too. Not the original bits either.

Edited By Oompa Lumpa on 05/03/2014 21:21:47

Graham the booklet does list all the parts on page 4, the parts are all numbered on the centre spread.

There is no casting for the co rod as it's cut from flat steel bar, we covered it quite well on the Stuart Victoria thread.

Yesterday I had an opportunity to closely examine the parts that I have. I have discovered to my dismay that the shaft pressed through the centre of the beam is off square by some margin. I used slightly different terminology at the time, it all means the same thing!

I have also discovered that the two grooves milled into the top of the column are so off square it is going to cause me to scrap the present entablature arms and re-make them so I can cover up the existing screw holes and remake new. This puzzle can wait but one thing of major (to me) significance, when I removed the arms I poured out small piles of cast swarf from the screw holes. This sort of thing is totally unacceptable to me and demonstrates a lack of detail. If I am going to bush out the centre of the Beam I might as well bush out all of the points and make my own holes. At least I know they will be square.

graham.

graham, looks like you'v got a bit of work to do, other peoples stuff is a bit of a worry isn't it. Ian S C

Just makes it that much more interesting for me.

My "engineering" is usually fixing someone else's Co**ups so nothing new here.

graham.