What I am working on

[-steves-]

OK, brief intro, I had only made a couple of posts previous to this one, and they were to say hello.

If you don't know, I have never had a lathe or a mill before, and the other week I decided it would be a great idea to build a steam engine from castings, a "simple" Stuart 10V kit was selected.

I bought the book on how to build it, a couple of books on lathes and mills, and tool sharpening, and LOADS more, of which I am still on the first couple as I do find it hard to find the time to read with so much going on all the while.

So this is all from someone with virtually no experience (other than metal work class for 1 year at school around 28 years ago).

I will add some pics up later, but this post will contain my ongoing project of mainly my Stuart 10V build, but also bit and bobs that I do in the meantime.

Last night I decided to attack the kit, though some would say it was rather hasty after reading the book and not understanding what half of it meant.  

So far i have milled down the top and bottom of the base, managed to drill and tap the base to 7BA and bolts actually went into them to my suprise. You need to remember I have not done this before so its all a bit exciting to me when something actually fits. i have also drilled the main bearing base, and to my shock, these holes actually lines up with the base and I could put all four bolts through to hold it on, now there was one happy puppy. I still need to take a tiny bit off the base to get it to size, but all feeling very pleasing so far, no cracked castings as yet, no missing fingers, life is great

I also managed to attack the flywheel a bit as well, after a bit of filing, I stuck it in the 4 jaw chuck and managed to centralise it pretty well in the end, though this did take quite a while it appears the time spent doing that is worthwhile, as I managed to machine down half of the outer flyweel, one side of the flywheel, one end of the flywheel and one side of the hub top of the flywheel, as well as centre drill it and drill it, and yet again, to my complete amazment, the side I have worked on seems to run quite true, like a dog with two, erm, tails....

I will try and post up a couple of pictures later, I know its not all that interesting and I know its not much to most of you guys, but it's my first ever work, and even if if it was turning down a bit of ally by 1mm, I would have still been chuffed to bits  

[andyf]

Hi Steve,

It sounds like you're off to a good start 

The books are a good idea, if (like me) you have no background in machining and no-one leaning over your shoulder telling you how to do things. And there's loads on the interweb about building the Stuart 10V on sites like this http://homews.co.uk/page42.html ; I'm sure you will already have Googled around the subject.

Pictures are always interesting, so do post some as you go along.

Enjoy yourself!

Andy

[-steves-]

Hi Steve,

It sounds like you're off to a good start 

The books are a good idea, if (like me) you have no background in machining and no-one leaning over your shoulder telling you how to do things. And there's loads on the interweb about building the Stuart 10V on sites like this http://homews.co.uk/page42.html ; I'm sure you will already have Googled around the subject.

Pictures are always interesting, so do post some as you go along.

Enjoy yourself!

Andy

Thanks Andy. I think the enjoying myself is defiinately happening, the only downside is as like yourself, i have no one about to tell me if I am right or wrong, and no experience to of any of it, and everything is a first, I pretty much kack myself with everything i do at the same time as enjoying it, makes my heart go with each cut or movement, wondering if something is going to break, snap, fly off etc, working so close to the chuck frightens the ..... out of me , lol.

Can casting have different areas of material, as one part of the base just made horrid "hammer drill" type noises as I went over it, and it just didnt seem to "cut it", though changing the position of the work in the vice, changing the mill bit and changing the direction of cutting certainly seemed to help eventually, but I have no idea what caused it to happen?

[AdeV]

Steves,

That was me, about 18 months ago - brand new to machining, new (to me) mill & lathe... and all the same fears. In fact, probably the most risky time is as the fear starts to go away - cockiness can follow and you'll have a couple of broken tools or tool crashes on the lathe: At least, that's how it went for me. In fact, I went through a period of really not getting along with the lathe at all, everything was a damn struggle, nothing seemed to work; but, as my skill slowly improves, I now find it much better. BTW, the 4-jaw does get easier to adjust, but it's always a pain. On the other hand, so long as the jaws are holding straight, you'll always be more accurate with a 4-jaw independent than a 3-jaw scroll chuck. So if it's got to be bob-on to the nearest thou (0.001"), then the 4-jaw is the only real choice (unless your lathe does collets).

It's taken those 18 months, but I can be pretty confident now that I'm not going to break anything worse than a carbide insert, or take too much metal off whatever I'm cutting (which is bad enough).

As for your "hammering" issue; it does sound like you hit a hard spot in the casting. There are basically 4 things you can do in such a situation: a) Faster spindle speed, faster feed; b) Faster spindle speed, slower feed; c) Slower spindle, faster feed; d) Slower spindle & feed. Picking the right one is simply a matter of trying them (probably the slower options first) and seeing what happens. Beware blunt tools in steel! If your cutter and/or workpiece is getting murder hot (enough to discolour, or if there's visible redness in the tool), then your cutter is blunt and ruined; don't bother trying to carry on with it, put it in the "to be rescued" pile & carry on with a new cutter.

Carbide insert tools on the lathe are brilliant - although it takes a bit of finessing at first, you'll break a lot of inserts in your early days - but once you're past that stage, you'll find they cut anything, even relatively hard steel (e.g. driveshafts). In fact, pretty much the only HSS I still use on the lathe are taps & dies, even my threading tools are carbide.

The main thing is - enjoy it! As you say, there's nothing more satisfying than trimming a lump of metal to exact dimensions, and seeing it fit another piece you also cut. After 18 months, I still love standing in front of the mill or lathe carving stuff out.


Anyway: 

Looking forward to seeing those progress pics, it sounds like you're off to a great start!

[raynerd]

Hi, good luck with your build - I made the same engine 12 months ago. Look forward to seeing to pics.

Here is my buildlog and there were lots of helpful tips from people on here:

http://madmodder.net/index.php?topic=3633.0
http://www.raynerd.co.uk/?cat=44

[Stilldrillin]

Steve.
You're having fun.
You've still got all your digits.
A project is beginning to take form.
You're telling us about your progress.

THAT'S interesting to us! 

Keep on, keeping on...... 

David D

[-steves-]

Well, I have taken a couple of very bad pictures, I have to say the items don't look as bad in real life as they do in the photo's, in fact, its made me look harder at them and I can see where bits need to be done again, maybe this is the way forwards, photograph it then do it again, lol 

These are first attempts so please bare that in mind before slating it. I also need an end mill as the ones I have are old and small and don't do that greater job, its all a learning curve and so far I am loving it 

[Rob.Wilson]

  good to see you have taken the plunge Steve 

 Looking forward to seeing the engine come together 


Will be watching , Rob

[saw]

Good start, good luck with the rest. 

[madjackghengis]

Steve, definitely take pictures, don't think those who have been doing this for a while have forgotten our beginnings, we haven't.  I took a year of machine shop in high school, 28 years ago, and while I've worked at machining ever since, all my real education in the area is from practice and from reading everything I could get my hands on.  Books from Lindsey Book Company, they specialize in reprints of out of print old books, are great, good price, invaluable information, as you have as much tooling now, as many full time machinists had to work with a hundred years ago, and far more accurate measuring devices at your disposal.
    With metal, there are many which alloy together just like homogenized milk, and are consistent throughout, others, particularly stainless steels and cast irons, which will segregate with hard and soft spots in the castings.  Aluminum is almost always homogenous, good quality brass and bronze, ditto, virgin cast iron is usually very easy to machine, but that with scrap added often has hard spots.  Good advice has been given on machining those you run across, and the fact you drilled and tapped holes, and had parts line up already makes you ahead of the game already.  "The wise man learns more from the fool, than the fool learns from the wise man".  All that I see on this forum is instructive at some level, and your presence makes this forum last longer and do better.  Glad to meet you, and welcome.  cheers, mad jack

[-steves-]

Thanks guys, you do know how to make someone feel very welcome  (I couldn't find the embarassed smiley..)

I am "hoping" to get some more time on this over the weekend, however I am not sure how much I can do before having to splash out £150 on a cheap 30mm / 32mm indexable face mill, a cheap indexable boring bar and a half decent indexable parting tool. So these items will slow down my project as money is very tight after forking out for the lathe / mill and other hundreds of pounds worth of "bits and bobs" to have something to do on them. My tools are very limited but I do have managed to purchase the following: a face plate, a 4 jaw independant chuck, quick change tool post, a fixed steady, a chuck and MT2 taper for the tail post, a set of indexable lathe tools, a dial gauge, a magnetic dial gauge holder, a set of large files, some very small files, centre drills, BA and Metric tap and die sets, a selection of ME taps and dies, a set of metric drills, a small selection of end mills, a grinder / sander, last but by no means least, a pair of safety glasses and thats all from October  hence I am skint now, lol...I have to say the outlay has been far more than I was anticipating and I dont seem to have 1/4 of what I need, still desperately need some reamers yet too I guess it will all build up over time, but its just so annoying and frustrating sometimes when you read, do this with "X" tool, and you dont have it, seems to be happening a lot at the beginning, but I guess its something everone goes through and even after a number of years no doubt there are items which you dont have and still need to get.

If anyone can see I have missed some form of "obvious" tool, please let me know as I have a tend to set up a prioritized list of things to work through to buy, thats how I bought all the above, ok, it meant selling lots of radio control plane stuff, but I kinda got there in the end.

I will not be able to do anything next week as i will not be near the house where the lathe / mill is, its going to be a slow process, so please dont wait up for updates  I might have a bash at a couple of 16mm buffers from ali over the weekend, if I do mamage to get anything done I will of course take a piccy and post it up. Just got to go find some 7mm bar stock now to put my flywheel onto, the fun never ends does it 

So far this seems like a very nice place to be and I can see why you have this smiley ico 

[-steves-]

Well its been a kinda busy morning today, making up for the fact I can't do any work next week.

As I dont have a decent face mill bit, I am leaving the rest of the Stuart 10V until I have a bit that will do it justice, its payday Wednesday, so hopefully I can get something ordered then, lol.

I decided to have a bit of a play and see what I could do.

So first of all I made a couple of 16mm train buffers for some rolling stock I am building, then I decided to make a new pulley wheel for my mamod stationary line shaft, just to see if I could, I didn't need one, I just wanted to see if I could do it. Also the grub screw was cut from a 3mm bolt and a head cut on it.

Here are a couple of the results, sorry about the poor quality of the pictures, I am not the best with a camera and the camera is only a cheapy, lol

[-steves-]

Next on the agenda today was to do some more to the flywheel of the Stuart 10V, and here is how its going to be other than a bit of paint or varnish and a parting tool of some description down the middle of it.

Unfortunately the 5ba grub screw was missing from the kit, so I has a bit of steel bar, and a ba tap and die set, and sat down and made one myself.

Also the 7mm bar to do the work between centres, all I could find to hand was 8mm, so I had to turn that down to 7mm before I could start, all the joys of it all, lol

[Stilldrillin]

Very nicely done Steve!  

The best practice, is in the making of widgets. This builds your confidence for the important, (mustn't be scrapped) work..... 

The flywheel looks very good!  

David D

[-steves-]

Cheers Dave, glad you like the flywheel, I must confess I am quite chuffed with that as I managed not to break it, it all seems to be running fairly straight and is drilled to the right size as it just about goes onto the crankshaft, I am sure it could be much much worse. Once I get my new parting tool I am hoping to put a slot down it.

Its been a very good day today for me, these little nick nacks as you say, do build the confidence a little and of course build experience which is something I seriously lack. Today I had part of the lathe pulled apart as it had some slack in it, I ended up replacing 2 stripped screws and tightening up a few bits here and there. I cant say what everything is called as I have no idea, but where it slide back and forward and whre it slides side to side and has 3 adjustable screws to make is slide properly, all had to be adjusted on both bits. I have absolutely no idea if I have done this right or wrong, or even if I was supposed to, but its made everything less slack feeling but nothing appears to be binding when turning the "knobs" and "stuff". This is when it would be really useful to have someone experienced about to say if I am doing right or wrong, and to show me once, how to do things and what to do and what not to do. Its really difficult when you simply don't have a first clue, just general knowledge and guess work, lol

Showed my Suzi how to use the lathe this afternoon and she also made a mamod pulley for the line shaft. As it was in effect "my/our" second attempt I made a couple of changes on how she should turn it, and I have to admit, hers did come out better than mine, but of course this was down to the "designer" LOL She did good 

[-steves-]

Well I dont know what happened to all my previous pictures, they all seem to be missing

Anyway, I spent some time on the Stuart today, and managed to get some bits and bobs done.

I polished up the flywheel a bit.

Managed to get the main stantion machined out and topped and bottomed as well as the brass bit in the middle done too. I have no idea of the names, but I have some pictures below Its quite a good fit not too tight but not loose either, a bit of oil and it slides in and out quite nicely, though it will need some running in. I managed to get some more tapping done and some more bits bolted together. This is my first use of my lathe and mill, so I don't expect everything to go quite as well as it did today.

[Henning]

Looks like quality work to me!

Remember everyone has been new at this some time and the gents on here is top notch, so no need to be afraid to ask questions or tell about the mishaps. Usually you'll get loads of good advice on what to do to avoid that in the future!

[-steves-]

Looks like quality work to me!

Remember everyone has been new at this some time and the gents on here is top notch, so no need to be afraid to ask questions or tell about the mishaps. Usually you'll get loads of good advice on what to do to avoid that in the future!

Fear not, I am sure there will be lots of questions on their way, and no doubts lots of mishaps as I learn, but its all part of the fun

[saw]

This V10 is looking realy good, Stuart are making a very good casting, but I must edmitt I am not impressed by their drawings 
They could be much clear and better. 
However good luck with the rest. 

[AndyB]

Hi Steve,

Looks like you are cracking on really well!!

I am on my first engine build, a lot slower than you are!

I spent quite a long time making tools and tooling before I started on a real engine to get practice and to experiment.
Don't be shy or embarrassed, ask whatever you want to know; there are some real 'fonts of all wisdom' here, but there are also people like you and me who have tried and experimented and their input is just as valid and helpful.
Even I, unworthy as I am, have given advice and had it taken to result in success...I can't describe how that made me feel! And the confidence takes an almighty boost that helps me through the next step.

I have the brown trousers moments when attempting something new and difficult...look at my log for the Rider Ericsson! But there are ways round booboos and they teach you as much, if not more, as getting it right first time.

I have to say, making your own tools is a lot cheaper than buying ready made, and gives a lot of experience along the way. I had a large boring job to do for my work (I was that chuffed that they asked me!) that needed a long boring bar...so I made one out of a length of key steel and an odd carbide tip that I got in a box of bits.  Worked a treat...and makes me laugh when I see the prices they charge for ready-made ones. Since then I have made some more. Getting the angles right is trial and error, but they are made out of scrap so it doesn't matter...just cut the end off and start again.

The main point of this, or any, hobby is to enjoy yourself. If you have got Her Indoors into it as well then you have cracked it completely...I get complained at that she is a shed widow!

Good luck and keep moving onwards and upwards (as they say)

Andy

[-steves-]

Well, first boo boo was made today...... 

I had a go at the cylinder block, I was really struggling to try to work out what was level when it came to the top and bottom as neither was flat. After a bit of faffing around I "thought" I had managed to sort it out (mistake no. 1). So I faced up both ends and the steam block side. By the time I had finished milling both ends to try and and it flat I ended up a little short on the cylinder block, nothing major though a little disappointing (mistake no.2). Well, then it was time for the bore, never having done this before I took a "best guess" at the cetre of the hole, BIG mistake (mistake no.3). I took measurements from whe existing hole assuming it was central  It wasn't. I ended up with a near prefect bore of .750 through the clyinder block, the only thing is, not only is it offset from true centre, it also goes through the cylinder block at a slight angle  Looks like a new cylinder casting is in order.....though....I may continue onwards and see what happens as I "think" it will still go together and "may" even still run, Its just that the tops and bottom of the cylinders will be offset and the piston will be going up at a maginal angle. Oh well, we live and learn, certainly not put off and consider it a bit of a lesson in needing to take my time 

[saw]

Steves, that is happend to us all. 
When you aree going to drill the cylinder, you can not expect from the hole, you must measuring from edges. I little tip is, piece of wood and fill the hole, then it's much easier to center the cylinderhole.
Good luck with the rest. 

[doubleboost]

Great shame that
I think we have all messed things up
It is all part of the learning curve
John

[Pappy Frank]

Your doing great. Do not worry about the lack of experience. My first experience with a metal lathe was in High School too, over 40 years ago. I worked as a machinist for a number of years before becoming a paramedic, at which I am retired from.

I still find myself wondering what went wrong with a project now and again, I am still learning, and I have made a few mistakes that make me look like my first day on a lathe.

Keep up the good work, and if you have questions, ask them. Someone can help.

Pappy Frank

[-steves-]

Well despite my little knock back yesterday, I had a day off today and did a little more between things.

I managed to do the tops and bottoms of the cylinder, the only bit left to do is tap the bottom one with an ME tap. Of course I need to drill them and then tap the cylinder liner as well.

You can see how far my cylinder bore is out on these, though it look worse in real life than on the pictures..