| Gallery, Projects and General > Project Logs |
| Shay Locomotive |
| << < (4/7) > >> |
| Dan Rowe:
In the process of writing this up, my wife Alicia who is usually the photographer found an early set of photos with her brother John helping with the oven. I mostly use a hand held crucible as I mentioned and that takes all my hands one for the torch and one for the crucible...okey I see that I am holding both items in one hand and looking over my shoulder but the metal is not hot yet. Pouring the bronze after John took the flask out of the oven and placed it on the vacuum table and turned on the vacuum. Molten bronze on vacuum table. John inspecting the part just out of the investment. Here is the piece just cast with a few other early Shay castings and a Stock Drive Products bevel gear. Dan |
| Dan Rowe:
Back to the frame here are the drill blocks for the frame. The reason there are 2 in the photo is the top one is like the drawing. I used thicker channel then the drawing so I had to make a new block to match my stock. I made the I beam the true overall cross section size with a thicker web. On second thought I should have matched the flange dimensions and made a wider beam. That would have given the correct flange depth to rivet to not a slightly narrower flange. I need all the room I can get to rivet to the flange. This is the drill guide to drill the frame angles attached to the ends of the I beams. Here is the full set of running board brackets for Shay Plan 1553. The short ones are on the left or the fireman's side and the long ones are on the engine side with the engineer. This is the bending and drilling tool. The top screw acts as a stop and a clamp for drilling. The setup to bend the odd short bracket. Both styles of left side brackets with a slice of I beam stock. Dan |
| saw:
Very nice done, thanks for showing :clap: |
| Dan Rowe:
Benni thanks for stopping by. The holes for riveting the running board brackets to the I beam were drilled in both parts with a single setup. Here is the drill guide. And here is the setup in the drill vise. I made two small blocks that just fit in the I beam flange. I used the drill guide to spot the holes then used a ball end mill to make the pocket for the rivet head. I goofed with the first attempt so I did a second try. This is the setup to rivet the running board bracket. I made another jig for the grab irons. 14 gauge fence wire is nearly exactly the size required but simply smashing it would not make tabs large enough so a fabrication seamed the simple way. Here is the silver solder operation and a finished bracket. Here is the frame still missing the grab irons and a bunch of other parts. I have several more frame parts in progress and I will add them when they are complete. Dan |
| Dan Rowe:
I am making forward progress on this project. The end timber braces will be attached to the bottom end of the frame rails and the end timbers. The last photo in the previous post shows the location of the braces. The end timber braces are different on the Dulong and the Mapleton. The old forged braces were replaced with a steel casting by the time the Mapleton was built. I made a pattern for a casting but I was not happy with it and rubber molds are not the best for holding close tolerances. I decided to have a go at machining the brace. I chose some true wrought iron as it is easy to machine and I just like working old iron. The piece i used had spent over 50 years as part of a boat house on lake Michigan and I suspect that was not the first use. Here is the stock in the chuck to bore a 1/2" hole. I do not have a DRO on my mill so I added mill stops to the X axis to make milling a pocket simpler. I have a set of round gauge blocks tapped 1/4-28 so I tapped the ends of the stops for the same thread. This is the setup to mill the pocket with a 1/8" ball mill. The coaxial indicator located the 1/2" hole and the other indicator is to calculate the backlash on the y axis. This photo shows the original stock with very heavy rust. Notice the fracture section which really shows the grain structure of wrought iron. I used sacrificial backers to mill the braces to length. The web section is 0.055" and most likely would have taken the light cuts but I hate taking chances. The milling is complete and the parts are ready to be cut in two sections. Here is the full set of end timber braces ready to be drilled for the frame and the timbers. They are not steel castings but I like the way they look. Dan |
| Navigation |
| Message Index |
| Next page |
| Previous page |