Hi to all, my name is Pete, I am from Norfolk UK, I have retired early in life
So have plenty of time on my hands, I am not a machinist but I have always had a interest in anything to do with engineering or mechanics of any sort, even as a kid I belonged to a model engineering club running a model boat with An IC engine, and the best bit was running the live steam model railway up and down the clubs Track, you couldn't take the grin of my face for days, but as I grew up I drifted away from modeling and went into car and motorcycle mechanics ending up doing car restoration which I loved but was forced to retire early due to health, but still like to potter about, and have just finished a 1966 gt6 mk1 which has taken 7 years to build as we only did a few hours on it at weekends, As I was at a loss as to what to do next I started to build a toylander from plans I bought which I totally enjoy doing just for fun, but then came up against the problem of the electric motors I had (for free) needed to be modified to fit the drive sprockets and retain the ability to disengage the drive for ease of moving it about as it is about 80 to 90 kgs, I needed the use of a lathe as the cost of professional machine work would be to much money. so I bought a micro lathe seig c2 off a well known auction site, I have found it very addictive and cant wait to finish the toylander, whilst looking for tips n tricks and general machining info I found this site and have been glued to it since its an absolute gold mine and found it to be invaluable I would also like to say I find the workmanship you guys are producing is awesome keep it up lads, I do have a small amount of turning knowledge, and what is left of my tooling is all geared up to fix and restore cars so lots of spanners ect, I have no milling ability yet but I am looking for a vertical slide and a small pillar drill at some point, so having turned anything square in my shed to round I am open to any suggestions for a novice to build in the way of a small type of steam or air powered engine so I can start to source any materials and tools that are needed over time as I think a couple of months should finish off the toylander with a bit of luck
pete