I see Jack is busy watching for visitors whilst you are hard at work

Stanley

Must admit the pictures of the machining of the standards made me wonder how people coped when they didn't have access to a mill. On my shelves I discovered a little book called "building a vertical steam engine from castings" from the ME publishers circa 1977, (an update of a pre-war book) which covers the smallest vertical in the Stuart range the Number 10. To machine the feet of the standard they plugged the guide with "a suitable wood dowel" mounted the head of the standard in the 3 jaw, then brought the tailstock centre into other end of the packing to support the whole lot. The machining of the feet was then done with an intermittent cut.

To machine and bore the top of the standard, it was clamped by the feet to the face-plate. To be fair, very great emphasis is placed on checking alignment at each stage. the injunction is: "it is a cardinal rule when setting up castings for machining, that external surfaces , particularly those which do not ultimately have to be touched, should be taken as reference surfaces, except in special cases".

Before the days of carbide tipped tools etc, one forgets just how hand work was needed, particularly to clean up castings before committing to machining. However, I do remember one old chap telling me that he regretted motorising his model engineering lathe. When the lathe speeds were governed by your foot on the treadle (just like Granny's old Fritser and Rossman sewing-machine) getting the right cutting speeds was a doddle!

Malcolm

Hello, just popped my head round the door...you seem to be in this shed more and more, and i can see whose popped in to visit by the last entry on the homepage...but what I'm wondering is, if Deadly and I ever pop over for a cuppa, instead of being a delightful intermission in your day, will it be an unwelcome interuption that sets you back an afternoon and puts you out of sorts for the rest of the day? Better list your walk times with Jack then the visitor who intends to surprise you can do so on Letcliffe, rather than haul you out of your inner sanctum!

This is yesterday's work....  and Stephen is quite right, what the hell is a bloke my age doing spending eight hours a day over a hot lathe!  This pic is a setting up tip.  There are all sorts of ways of setting a rough casting up in the lathe for machining.  They all depend on using a reasonably accurate reference and my pointed silver steel rod comes in handy again.  The bore, as cast is fairly accurate, and so it's quite easy to get centred by adjusting the heavy independent jaws on the big four jaw.  It's a very powerful chuck and once you have got the centre and clouted the feet with a big rubber hammer to make sire the top surface is square on the chuck face you can really tighten the jaws to the point where you are actually marking the casting.  Brutal stuff but you don't want any movement.

What a nice clean lathe.......  The next job is to set the standards up on a mandrel so I can face the top od the standard and the rim of the casting.  I remembered I had two expanding mandrels and so I got them out.  I can't remember when I last used them but had a disappointment when I mounted the first standard in the lathe.  It was out of centre!  The fault is in the mandrel and not the bore which is surprising because it's a good make,  Le Count.  I'll have a shufti at it this morning but have cut a piece for the piston rod from some 1 5/8" bar and will go back to plan A and make a mandrel to fit the bore.  This will be a dead accurate fit and if I make one for each standard and number them, these mandrels will become the piston rods and I'll know they are an exact fit so no machining time wasted. 

Here's where we are at the moment.  All the standards bored and the feet faced square and centred.  The rest of the box bases and soleplates are upstairs.  Now we have to face the top surface to length, turn the edge to match the foundation ring for the cylinder and cut two large ports in the sides of each cross-head slide.  The faces of the mountings for the cross slide lubricators need squaring up and then the standards are ready for final adjustment and drilling.  That can wait until later because when I do that I shall then know what I have to do to the internal opening in the sole plate, there is very little clearance between the crankshaft, the big end and the sole plate and standards.  Some careful adjustment, measuring and marking needed there before cutting because that's all part of getting the centre line of the cylinder dead right in relationship to the shaft, absolutely essential....  It's going well, I might even get on to the foundation ring for the cylinders today!  Those expanding mandrels are bothering me but I mustn't let them divert me!

First rough cuts on a piece of scrap 1 3/4" shafting to make a mandrel for holding the standard for the next operation.  No wasted time or material here because this is the lump of steel the piston rod and crosshead will be made out of.

The first standard mounted on its fitted mandrel for the first cut, to clean up the top collar of the standard.

The top collar is cleaned up and here we are taking the facing cut across the top face for the foundation plate on which the cylinder will fit.  Notice that I've drilled the standards and tapped them for two 7/16" grub screws to hold the standard firm on the shaft.

The two standards dealt with today.  The fitted mandrels are numbered as are the standards and they will stay with each other from now on because they are turned to exactly the right size for the crosshead.  All the bores vary slightly so matching the mandrels like this before using them to make the piston rod and crosshead is exactly what the old engine fitters used to do.  The parts aren't interchangeable, they are made to fit each other.  I was slower than I thought......  Two more mandrels to make and fit tomorrow and finish turning done on the standards.  The beauty of doing it this way is that you are preserving the relationships of all the finished surfaces by making them dependent on each other.  All the cuts relate back to the bore and this means that if I've done my job properly everything will be central and in the same plane.  When I made my first engine I didn't take enough care over this and I had to a lot of retro-fitting later on to make the engine run at all well.  We live and learn......

Are those "Apples for the Teacher" mixed in with the engineering projects Stanley? You deserve them!

Hi, I have just joined your forum, and can only say well done Stanley. It is rare that someone can be as prolific as you and still have time to write and take photos. Your work, your humour, your cock ups, everything is so readable, so down to earth. I have more or less sat here reading your exploits all afternoon. You most definitely have dragged me in, I just hope a Southerner can contribute in some small way, coz down here I am a bit out of the industry, plenty of cows and horses though.

I can quite see sometimes your frustration that no one is chipping in though, but your playing around with what we call a lost art OT and the machines that made it. So a lot of people will watch in awe, but be totally lost about commenting apart from how well you are doing and how shiny the parts.

Your lounge lathe is gorgeous and all you have done on it. I see you have made mention of Fenn a couple of times, so perhaps it is a good opportunity to say I have one, and it amongst other things can be seen on my web site at www.uphill.org.uk the mandrel nose and thread on these were the same as Holzapffel a real weird and wonderful 7/8 diameter and 9.43 TPI I think.

I am a member of the Society of Ornamental Turners (SOT) although like yourself still restoring and rebuilding many things, but thats the part I enjoy anyway. I also run a Yahoo group for the Rivett 608 lathe, one of the two best bench top machines ever made in my opinion, I am sure someone will disagree with that, but there you go.

One good thing if perhaps the only one when you are on your own is the ability to have lathes in your lounge or study, I have a Lorch LL in mine and the Fenn, so we are working on the same lines there.

I could offer some advise on the eccentric cutting frame, if you would like me to.

Steve

Oh I love the wonderful language that comes up on this post, "The society of ornamental turners" conjurs up some sedate British equivalent of dervishes!

Please don't be offended i know it is something much more manly and linked to a lathe, it's just my eccentric brain ....oh help am I  for the cutting frame?

Oops I forgot to say welcome Steve, I am a bit of a trespasser here, so I'll leave it to Stanley to welcome you officially.