What Did You Do Today 2026

[Speedy Builder5Participant @speedybuilder5]

I will try to remember that one Ian. I suppose I could Dremen a broken drill now, just in case.

Bob

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

I managed to dismantle the curious air-pump the subject of my enquiry elsewhere, discovered how it works. I had never previously encounted this mechanism, in reality or books.

Then cleaned all the old grease out of it and re-assembled it. I put a Nylon plug in the grease-lubricator to reduce the rather wasteful volume by about half.

I didn’t waste the old grease from the lubricator. Of two different types – Tar Black and Old Pond Green – I used it to help protect some of my steel stock from (further) rusting.

 

I did hit a snag in trying to re-assemble the crank. The pin runs in a bush in the piston, and in trying to push the crankshaft assembly back in, I unwittingly pushed the bush forwards by a tiny amount so it rubbed the cylinder wall. Taking a deep breath, and relying on having oiled it very liberally, I pushed the piston out, noting a light scuff mark along the cylinder surface I hope won’t be a significant leak path, and very carefully filed the bronze back to the piston surface.

I’ve now to deal with the broken gasket on one cylinder cover. A small piece came out of the ring of fibre material, but I think I can put it back with a touch of sealant. This little compressor is not intended to drive a pneumatic road-breaker, after all!

 

Then to find it Something To Do, depending on what it can do. Low-pressure bubble-testing soldered pipe-fittings springs to mind though I think I’d acquired it to drive a basic air-brush.  If I can find that.

 

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

I got enough bits made to give the Jowitt Major that I have been working on a first run with the governor. Still needs a bit of tidying up but happy with how it runs and if you watch until the end it will go surprisingly slow for a single acting engine.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Well, yesterday and today (Saturday and Sunday)

Helped run the club’s portable railway at Purbeck Vintage Rally, held near Wareham.

The organisers had fenced off a lane along the side of one the two arenas. Which seemed a Jolly Good Idea in advance, considering some events have placed us in locations most visitors do not spot; but no-one could have foreseen the consequences here.

This arena was used for the main “crowd-pleasers”: not only the vintage vehicle parades but also the dog-training and falconry demonstrations, and two-a-day displays by “The Tigers” childrens’ motorcycle display team.

Don’t get me wrong. We genuinely admired the beauty of the falcons, and were greatly impressed by the young scrambles-bike riders – aged from just five to sixteen.

While these on we could not operate the railway though. Trying to keep an impatient 7-1/4″ g loco from blowing off without losing the fire, for nearly an hour for each display, alongside the dogs, the falconer’s birds and fine black stallion (the trainer ran a sort of animal double act) and clouds of flying dust from the bike wheels, takes some doing.

Not only that but the motocyclists’ adult trainers and supervisors used our railway land to store their jump-ramps clear of the arena while the act was under way. One part they omitted in view of the drought and grass-fire risk, was the fire-column jumps. They erected the ramp and ran the jumps but did not light the torches.

The displays bill was even more intense today (Sunday), to such an extent we decided around mid-day to stop running, and let the engine cool down. I think I was about to set off with what turned out to be the last train with a few young childen on board, when The Tigers roared into dust-filled action a few feet to our left, and the call came to stop. Obviously we refunded the fares; but when we learnt the rest of the day’s events we realised we’d be left with barely half an hour’s running.

There were no programmes, so we could not know what was happening other than by the public-address announcements.

 

To their credit the organisers did realise their mistake, in discussing it with us. Also, perhaps due to the heat, the whole event suffered from rather low attendance. Perhaps everyone had gone to the seaside.

+++

 

The other arena?

That was for what little live steam there was on site; and a rather unexpected display of heavy-vehicle recovery, using two HGV rescue lorries and a scrap refuse-lorry. The breakdown cranes laid this vehicle gently on its side then showed righting it in controlled fashion, using the cranes in opposition. The commentator was at pains to explain the dust-cart was clean, with no fluids in it- the engine had been removed, the hydraulics drained.

 

Live Steam?

Very little.

Full-size was two rollers, one a Fowler named “Fippeny Queen”, and a Marshall traction-engine christened “Hadyn [sp?] Princess”. I cite those because they have been regulars Dorset engines on the rally scene for decades.

The Marshall spent the weekend belted to a rack-saw bench. Fippeny towed a farm trailer around, giving public rides.

Miniatures:  I counted just three miniature traction-engines, of 4-inch scale I estimate, and our “Wren” class locomotive.

The show-ground geographically was not kind to anything with small wheels and exposed motion as it was a mown hay-meadow presenting hard, dry grass tufts in very rough, deeply dusty, sun-baked soil. Even driving an ordinary car across it was unpleasant.

 

All in all, the show was interesting for vintage vehicle enthusiasts generally; and the funfair and arena displays catered well for families; but we half-dozen club members spent more time trying to sit in the shade than doing any train-driving. I don’t think we carried more than about twenty or thirty passengers in the whole two days.

At least there was plenty of catering on site, and the plastic “building-site” toilets were kept very clean and in good order.

 

 

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Received a circular from the Society Chairman to all members…..

That due to the drought conditions, there will be no live-steam running on our site, of locomotives or traction-engines until further notice.

The road steam tends to stay on the car-parks but there is always the hazard of a blown ember or two. The ground-level track poses a much more serious danger as it runs past a lot of vegetation including trees with dry leaves and pine-needles.

 

I wonder if other clubs have similarly “quarantined” their engines, or been asked to do by site-owners.

 

Meanwheil, slowly getting back into my own engineering after a lot of work for the club, I dare not do any welding and angle-grinding at home until the Rainy Season.

I had a go at reproduce the injector part-drawings in D.A.G. Brown’s Miniature Injectors Inside & Out; and thereby assemble them into something vaguely looking like his design.

This was an Alibre Atom exercise; and if I become tempted to try making an injector, to investigate much easier ways to fabricate the overflow passage than Mr. Brown shows.

 

These drawings are on page 38 of the book, in a chapter titled ‘Making The Bodies’.

 

I take my grease-top cap off to anyone who can make reliable injectors to his design – a challenge on a par with making 18C-style carriage-clocks.

 

First problem: the drawings in the book are so small I needed a magnifying-glass.

Then, binary-fractions of inches, necessitating continual conversions.

Two of the spouts are radiused to the bore through the cylindrical body; the third to fit its exterior. The drawings do not locate the radii centres, so I had to deduce their geometrical construction.

So far so good, sort of.

The valve chamber’s overflow port is a horrible, a tiny “oval” slot of umpteen-twiddlieths-inch centres, according to the poorly-dimensioned drawing smaller than full-size. I cannot model rectangles with semicircular ends in CAD properly, nor make real ones neatly, so drew a nice circular hole instead.

Now I had four Part files: Body, Water Inlet, Valve Chamber, Overflow Boss. I’d omitted the threads.

Tried to Assemble them…. Ah well, I tried.

[Nigel Graham 2]

On Nigel Graham 2 Said:

.. … I cannot model rectangles with semicircular ends in CAD properly, nor make real ones neatly, so drew a nice circular hole instead … ..

 

Nigel, there’s a ‘Slot’ tool/template available in the Atom sketching space that does it for you.. (.and more besides..)

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

I’m not sure if Nigel has the slot tool as I think he is not on yearly updates and the slot ha sonly been available for  acouple of years.

Sevaral ways to do rectangles with rounded ends if you don’t have the slot tool.

1.  Sketch a rectangle, exit the sketch once just the rectangle has been drawn. Then use the fillet feature which is a quicker way and better should you decide you want to alter the radius at a later date. Enter the length of the short side/2 and alibre will work out the radius from that.

2. Draw a rectangle and while still in sketch mode use the fillet tool entering the length of the short side / 2 as the fillet radius. Click each pair of lines that form a corner and it will round them.

3. Sketch two circles, sketch two lines and then make the lines tangent to the circles. Trim lines and the inner halve sof te hcircles to complete your sketch

[DiogenesParticipant @diogenes]

Apologies – thanks Jason.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Thankyou Diogenes and Jason.

No, my edition does not have that tool.

I did look at the Arc and Tangent tools but couldn’t see how that would apply.

I didn’t think of Fillet, which I have not used often.

 

I think I’m forgetting more than I’ve learnt about CAD! So I don’t use it very often.

Still, I had started that purely as an exercise.

 

Though if I want to make an injector I would copy the drawings to readable size and decimal dimensions.

D.A.G. Brown intends them to resemble castings as all full-size ones were, and instructs making them almost entirely by turning and milling from round bar, so why on Earth did he use vulgar fractions, as recently as 2011?

Also of course, I’d not want to ruin the book itself by using it in the workshop.

 

The modification I’d wanted to investigate without wasting brass (it costs brass!) is to the overflow conduit. It slopes at 45º between valve-chamber and body, and my thought is a piece of through-drilled rod or brass tube silver-soldered through the assembly. Not the peculiar ‘C’ section trough as shown, which I would likely find too difficult to make and fit reliably.

 

++++

Still too hot for me to do much thinking or physical metalwork, but gazing up from the front-room floor at me like an indisposed spaniel is my 7-1/4″g version of “Juliet” still waiting for me pluck up the courage and repair its superheater’s wet header. The six stud threads in its mounting-bush are nearly all stripped. The new studs needs no more drawing than a sketch on a real, not digital, “Notepad”. The stainless-steel is on order…

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Yer ‘tiz.

Just the basic body.

There is an “Overflow Cover” that links the outlet from the valve to the port into the cavity taking water round the delivery cone to the overflow connection. This is a peculiar thing to make, but worse the book’s drawing is not at all clear and it proved impossible to transcribe. I don’t believe it can be made it from that drawing, too.

I have omitted the cap. It’s not as simple as it would seem. Similarly with the cones; four of them as the combining-cone is in two parts. Each of these five would take me an evening to draw!

I’ve also omitted all the threads: I can’t find a way to show them sensibly. ( I don’t understand how to ask Alibre to generate them, but anyway they apparently take vast computing reserves for what they are.)

 

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

It depends how you show them.

One option is too make them “look” threaded on the screen which will also carry through to 2D drawings, this doe snot use up much memory. Left end

The other is to actually have alibre ” cut” the thread which does take up a lot of memory and is aimed more at those using CAD for 3D printed finished parts. Right end.

Having said that again I don’t think your version is up to date enough to have the “hole” tool which is used for both internal and external threads.

A similar thing can be done manually by drawing a triangle and using helical cut but not worth it for your puropse.

 

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

Yesterday St Albans DMES changed our BBQ to a picknick and ran electric only but it was still a fun day. Still someone actually lit a pipe (they still exist!) and the Chairman had to ask them to think again.
We have a couple of portable track runs booked in the lead up to our big model show at the end of September so they are likely to be non live steam but hopefully we can use the opportunity to tell people to come to the show to see real steam engines operating.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Thank you Jason. I recall trying that thread-generating with one of the published exercises. It was never normal to depict threads in more detail even on manual drawings.

I’ve not tried it but I wonder if it could be done in Alibre by modelling the core as a basic Part feature, then overlaying it with a thin cylinder made translucent. An analogy to drawing a thread as a pair of concentric rectangles.

I take it what you show there on the left-hand end is a series of grooves that are actually parallel? That would suffice for many threads.

 

BTW: to create the ball I sketched a semicircle on the axis then revolved it by 360º.

 

What this exercise does suggest is there may be slightly easier ways to fabricate such an injector physically.

…..

Have just responded to Neil’s invitation for events or clubs to publish fire restrictions..

[Julie AnnParticipant @julieann]

Made a couple of brass union nuts this evening:

Nothing particularly special about that, except it gave me the chance to try out my new Carmex theading tool to cut the 3/16″ x 40tpi internal thread:

Julie

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

If you happen to be near Prestatyn today … The Car Show is worth a visit.

MichaelG.

[Speedy Builder5Participant @speedybuilder5]

Made a Clevis pin 3/32″ dia with a 1/32 diameter split pin for it.  Made the split pin by filing a piece of 8mm stainless MIG wire flat on one side to a thickness of just under 0.020″ and then wrapped itaround a 0.05mm drill stub to make the eye, then trimmed to length.

(nice load of different measuring standards there !)

Bob

[Clock polisherParticipant @clockpolisher]

Finally purchased two old clock books by W.J. Gazeley and F.J Britten that I’ve been promising myself for a while.

Got on with it after reading the disturbing articles about AI companies bulk purchasing old/out of print/niche interest books and feeding them into their creations.

Nothing wrong with that apart from the fact they destroy the books in the process, slicing the spines off and then feeding them into an industrial scanner before pulping whats left.

Currently working through my book wish list a lot quicker than I was doing.

David

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

We don’t appear to have the old topic any more, so I’ll post it here …

Rather impressive Chinese motorcycle, exhibited at Prestatyn today, by George:

He’s very happy with it, and says it handles well.

.

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MichaelG.

[bernard towersParticipant @bernardtowers37738]

yes SB especially the 8mm?

[Andy StopfordParticipant @andystopford50521]

Finished a copy of this device;

https://www.homemadetools.net/forum/small-diameter-turning-tool-360-degree-travelling-steady-76904

as mentioned in the thread on turning small diameters.

It seems to work well, after a bit of trial and error to set the diameter.

Also took my Kuroda boring and facing head to pieces to see if I could get the fast return automatic disconnect to work. I found it was worked by a separate mechanism from the facing disconnect and doesn’t have an external adjustment. It might be possible to adjust it by knocking out a retaining pin, but I didn’t fancy that much. Most of the time I’d be happy to wind it back by hand in the high gear.

It may free up with use – it seems to be barely used, just stored for years. It was interesting to have a look inside it anyway.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Not today but last Friday (when I was on holiday Up North), and not mechanical engineering but still craftsmanship…

I accompanied a friend who plays Hardanger Fiddle on a tour of Saltaire’s old woollen mill that basically made the town. The place has its own museum but is otherwise very much gentrified with fancy art-galleries and the like… and a shop very much to her interest. Once we found it as sign-posting is not the site’s strongest point.

This was the Old Music Shop – I think that actually is its trading name.

I’d heard of the Theorboe (a sort of bass lute with what we took to be drone strings, parallel to the fret-boarded melody strings), Crumhorn (like a long recorder with a J-shaped lower end), Recorder (obviously!), Serpent, etc., and here were plenty, along with curiously-shaped violins and violas, small harps, a Spinet or two, some ancient-pattern drums and a restored Portative Organ.

With the exception of the few restored instruments, these are all newly-made copies of Mediaeval and Rennaisacne instruments, mainly of wood although we saw a family leave with their young daughter happily clutching a recorder made in transparent red plastic!

A large display of accessories, music books, service-manuals, etc. too.

 

No doubt they use modern equipment, and Elaine said she noticed slight scorching on some wood edges (so laser cutting); with hand assembling and finishing, helping keep the prices to levels I thought very reasonable.

 

Our expedition was for her to enquire about having an instrument case made (and we had spotted a cello case made from looked like fibreglass); but for me it was a joy to see these things simply as beautiful craftsmanship.

I’d have loved to been able to visit their workshop – the open door offered only a glimpse of a band-saw and shelves of stores.

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

I think it was the Mill at Saltaire I went to in 2001 where the electronics company Pace were making cable TV set top boxes. By 2005 there was no such electronics production left in the UK.

[Roderick JenkinsParticipant @roderickjenkins93242]

The Early Music Shop

Rod

[File HandleParticipant @filehandle]

I was drilling a 1.7mm hole in the end of some silver steel, No swarf was appearing so knowing that I was using a new dormer drill I thought I must be using some very hard steel and tried some mild steel, same result. I was about to change the bit when I suddenly noticed. Note to self, when using smaller bits its a good idea to wear reading glasses, this avoids feeling a fool when you realise that you have inserted the bit inside down and not noticed. Second attempt it was drilled with no issues. I have to keep reminding myself that bits of me don’t work as well at my age.

[DalboyParticipant @dalboy]

Apart from working on the Rob Roy lubricator I have managed to do a couple of jobs I keep putting off.

One being somewhere to store my chuck keys for the various lathe chucks (surprised by how many you can accumulate) It is only something simple, but it saves having them all in a pile on a shelf.

And the second is to replace the wooden tops which I store my woodturning tools in as the wood was causing them to have a very light rust ring around them. Replaced with some plastic cubicle devider material which hopefully will prevent that from happening again.

[Author]

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