No problem with making new bearings. Even cheaper and easier would be to make the pedestal from aluminium and then have a solid or split bronze bearing to fit that. Have a look at this post of mine for how to go about it.

I tend to use a liquid gasket so don’t make any allowance for the thickness. If you want to use a proper paper gasket then then allow 4to 5 thou for something like Oakenstrong.

It was the gun metal bearing that I was talking about not the cast iron outrigger support pedestal.

Stuart’s on the right, fabricated on the left.

For the amount of running it is likely to get then brass or one of the bronzes will be fine, If you have got to buy it in then 660 bronze would be my choice.

On 27 October 2025 at 15:42 StewA Said:

Any idea where to get the Oakenstrong paper from?

Brown manilla envelpes are a good, traditional source of gasket material for model engineering.

A lot of people also say that brass is not a good bearing material but there must be 1000s of the stuart 10 series engines all running quite happily with extruded brass bearings.

In the context of a model beam engine that may get run a few times a year and probably under no load I doubt the material will make a lot of difference. I use Colphos 90 phosphor bronze for the bearings on most of my smaller engines as it machines quite nicely and they all seem fine and run upto 3000rpm with unhardened shaft so a 60rpm beam engine won’t hurt.

Colphos is leaded, I was referring to the unleaded, which can be a pig to drill holes in. I would agree that Colphos is wonderful stuff