I have to say Tim is a lot calmer in the face of (drill bit) adversity than I would be, he just gets on and thinks of a fix.
Dont believe a word of it!! Underneath all this dirt, grease, oil and swarf there is something else...... More dirt!!!

But underneath that there beats a heart of a little
wannabe model engineer.

Anyway, now that my head has swelled enough for this year, having some time off the
mundane drudgery work I got a little more progress made this morning, starting with the blocks.
I started out by cutting off a chunk off the same 4mm thick sheet (well, hardly a sheet, more like half a hankichief) of brass that I made the eccentric straps from. and then mounted it the mill-vice to make the cut edge flat and parallel.

Then after a little cutting to size and milling I ended up with these

Then after a little drilling they were done, here they are in place ready for silver soldering. ( I plan on doing a few practice joints before attempting to SS any of the parts for the engine, just to be on the safe side.)

Just on the subject of Silver Soldering, and especially to those who have built the Paddleducks engine, how did you stop the silver solder from blocking up the oil hole on the eccentric straps? The oil hole is only about 1mm from the soldered joint for the con rod. Any hints or tips?

Anyway, getting back to the build.
After this I had a bit more time, so I made a start on the Forks ( "use the forks, Luke" (said in best Obi-Wan impression)

)
Not having any 6mm square brass stock I sliced off a 8mm chunk of the 19mm square bar I have, flycut it on both sides to 6mm thick, then cut it down and milled it to 11mm on one side, then cut the other side ( the remaining 19mm side ) down and milled it to give me 2, 6mm x 6mm x 11mm blocks for the forks.

So next time I will be drilling, tapping and milling the forks into shape, then it'll be on to the valve packing glands ( which I already have made the nuts for thanks to Kvom

for telling me that they were the same as the piston packing gland nuts, so I made extra when I made them.)
Tim