Gallery, Projects and General > Project Logs
Small "Mill Engine Plant" (Display)
NickG:
That is going to look splendid .. well done! :clap:
Stilldrillin:
--- Quote from: klank on August 07, 2009, 08:24:27 AM ---To add to Bogs worthy comments re - Tubal Cain - look up Genesis Ch. 4 v22 - "Son of Zillah, 'forged all kinds of tools out of Bronze and Iron'.
Some say, the Patron of Engineers!
(the name also crops up in the opening stanza of an old hit record of the '70's? - as a loco driver - "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down")
--- End quote ---
All those years later......... He`d gone & changed his name to Virgil! :lol: :lol:
David D
klank:
Back to the build.
I spent a long time shuffling the various items around the display board, once the boiler position was fixed.
Trying to think ahead, it is important that 1. everything that needs to be accessible can be reached as easily as possible without affecting anything else - i.e. cylinder drain cocks, pump handle, control valves and 2. The main steam pipe feed is kept as short as possible for thermal loss reasons.
With the layout shown, i think it gives the best compromise. The steam pipe, taken off the dome on the side closest to the chimney will be fitted with a right angle globe control valve, and the output then fed back into the boiler casing - possibly through one of the port-holes, and run through the internal space next to the boiler barrel thus keeping it nice and hot. If I can get it right, the pipe will emerge at the bottom of the cabinet, nearest to the engine cylinder, and enter the lubricator, and thus to the engine valve chest. Access to the drain of the lubricator may be difficult, but I am hoping to mount it on a small stanchion to raise it enough to get at the drain cock.
The cylinder drain cocks will be operated by a hand held "tool" - long thin brass rod with a forked end.
(Sorry about photo quality - not my strong point)
I temporarily fitted the burner/lpg. tank and gauge glass furniture to the backhead (using a steel off cut rod in place of the glass) to check clearances and to see where the blow down pipe will go.
I decided to mount the feed water tank and pump on the other side of the board - I didn't want to have to brush my fingers against anything else (hot or not) when using the pump.
The pump and tank is an old Stuart-Turner item I think from the '50's?
The tank frame is simple brass angle, soft soldered and sprayed with car engine enamel.
I think I'll leave the pump in its original (sick) green enamel. Unfortunately, the unions on this are very large and crude, hence the size of my brass fittings. (The output one is yet to be finished).
Next to the pump is a "trial" length of pipe and olive hidden by the screw fitting, bent using a simple pipe bender I built to a beginner's design by Stan Bray found in an old issue of ME. I used this first to bend the water tubes in the boiler build.
I have "cut" a set of (aluminium) rollers to the various sizes of brass pipe to be employed. I made simple "form tools" from stainless steel rod which I happened to have of the same diameter as the pipe (I don't have any stocks of Silver steel at present!). Rather like making D bits, but with a radius ground on the tip to match the radius of each diameter of pipe.
A small "production run" of pipe olives was made.
To encourage any who read this and don't know how to do it - here goes.
This method was given to me by someone else and has also been referred to elsewhere on this site - its not original, but is really easy and works!
For the (water) pipe shown - which is a length of 3/16" (4.76mm) brake line tubing - I used 1/4" brass rod in the three jaw, end faced, centre drilled with my smallest bit, and deeply drilled to about 11/2" with a 3/16" bit in the tailstock drill chuck - keeping the speed fairly high. Swap the drill bit for a length of 1/8" steel rod and introduce it into the bore. I parted off the olives at about 3/16" lengths using a carbide tipped tool set at a suitable angle to the brass so as to give a nice cone at the "cut" and the olives pop off onto the steel rod quicker than shelling peas.
Change the stock dimensions to suit other diameters of piping.
In the past, I have silver soldered the olives onto the ends of the prepared/cleaned/fluxed pipe (after adding the screw fitting - yes?) using a little collar of fine Silver solder wire around the inboard joint. Heat the pipe gently but NOT the olive itself and as the heat is drawn up to the olive, all should melt/flow. With my luck, I often knock the joint in passing and dislodge the solder wire - all very fiddly. I am now using Silver solder paste - comes in a small hypodermic syringe. The goo is pre-fluxed. Makes the process much quicker and easier.
Don't forget to "paint" a barrier ring around the copper tube behind the olive/joint with wax pencil or (I use) typo correction fluid from a pen. This stops the solder from spreading where you don't want it.
I will try and post a couple of pics of this process if it helps anyone? (Don't want to overload this thread with too many things which are possibly too basic for most.)
The water valve cock on the output of the tank looks a bit naff to say the least - but it is my very first effort - done from a recipe in a back issue of ME. There are many many recipes available from that source or published on the net.
I recently came across the Gauge O Guild handbook, published on the web which gives an excellent instruction on making Globe control valves and a globe form tool.
Clearly Globe Valves look better, and so I have had some fun trying to make one.
I had blagged a length of old car rear suspension leaf spring from a local garage - gauge plate!!!
I sliced out a length for the tool using my chop saw (Bosch 1mm thin ?carbon fibre? blade - cuts anything virtually).
This embryo tool bit then needs annealing. It was suggested to me by my Yorkshire Rabbi, that the best way of doing this was to hang it in the wife's oven during the cooking of the Sunday roast and let it cool down in the oven afterwards. Not a chance!! The other usual way is to put it in the embers of a fire and leave it to cool therein overnight. Nope - no fires in this house and no bonfires allowed by Local Authority.
In the end, I made a little cubical hearth with 6 of those heat resistant mineral fire bricks, put the tool blank in the bottom, left the lid off and nuked it with my Propane torch for a while - leaving it cherry red for a few minutes. Put the last brick on top and left the whole thing to cool.
Now I do not know if it worked properly, but after it had cooled, I drilled the blank fairly easily and cut it to length and file the ends to a sharp finisgh with no problems. Then harden and temper to straw in the usual way.
And that is the result.
I tried it on a scrap length of brass bar, turning at about 1000 rpm, and it worked like a dream.
I haven't tried it on brass hex yet for the next valve, but will probably "knock the corners off it" first with a standard lathe tool before forming the globe proper.
Will post more later.
Andy:
That's looking really good. Are you going to have anything for the engine to drive?
I can confirm that your method of softening hardened steel worked for me too. Lacking a coal fire, I carved out a 'cave' in a soft firebrick (the white sort, cadged from the local crematorium) and did it exactly the same way to soften the frizzen of a flintlock musket that needed re-profiling.
klank:
Thanks Andy.
Hmm - what to drive - I have to say I havn't really considered that. I am just hoping to get it all to run leak free first, but you do have a point there.
I cut grooves in the engine flywheel to make it look more prototypical, and add "texture" to an otherwise bland surface, so I suppose a sort of belt drive could be taken off here to a line shaft? But space is a bit limited - must think it over more - unless anyone has a "good idea"?
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