The Home Machinist!

Awesome work Steve

Thank you RussN, I am doing everything to put off Silver soldering the boiler, Just don't want to make a mistake, just a little too much heat, and it is all over.

I was just a little board today so I built a scale Steam Locomotive Head Lamp, Just need to add the glass and paint the inside white. Just for a moment I had a thought to make it function but soon lost that idea.

Well it has been a few days but I offer the following: The first image is the old way the pistons were made , although the cylinders ran ok like that, I didn't like it so I made the pistons with the seals I made in the second pic. Much better seal and the locomotive would run down to 10 lb The third...

Thank you for your kind words Pontiacguy, I am very happy for what it has become, being for my first one ever. Before I redesigned the piston, I could press down on the locomotive when the wheels were turning at a low speed and the wheels would stall, Now I can press down very hard and the little bu...

So this weekend, I redesigned the piston/seal assembly for the engines. If you look at the drawing, the piston is shaped like an (H) looking from the side. The seal was a split seal with oil grooves cut into it. I cut the end of the piston off ( One of the ends of the (H)) and made two seals out of ...

This is a shot of the Locomotive with the engines and linkage installed sitting on some make shift rollers to check function. All worked well from the start.

I finished the engine and linkage install this weekend, The little bugger ran perfectly on 20 lb of air. I am going to change he piston design to accommodate two teflon seals. this will give me a better seal in the cylinder. I did wind up putting a small hole in the bottom of the stack to allow wate...

I was wondering, should I drill a small hole in the bottom of this assembly (SA116) to allow the water to drain out, This is the exhaust from the cylinders over to the stack. Any thoughts?

I thought I posted a reply this morning, who knows. I do not think I will be making a large track to run this little bugger. I am building this for the fun, and function. Then I will be scaling it up, I have most of the drawing finished. I believe Adirondack Steamers of Wilton NY has a track I can r...

Thank you for that information Pontiacguy1 very helpful. I am trying to design a displacement oiler that will work on this build of mine, looks like I will have to make two to fit in the line going down the the engines, don't want to take away from the look of the loco though.

Jeanluc83, I sent a message to National 2-1/2 Gauge Association about my build. A funny thing, Julian de Waal, is a contributor on a site my build is being posted. http://www.vapeuretmodelesavapeur.com/richardmcdermott/index.html. I believe he must know about the build. Up on this site, he has poste...