Isn't it funny how you can get diverted away from one passion by another.  The shed has been badly neglected because I've been building up a stockpile of articles for the paper.  However, the night before last I got a phone call......  I went down to a garage in Barlick and was reunited with an old friend.....

This is a two thirds size copy of a Birch lathe made by Johnny Pickles in 1927 and used by him and then his son Newton.  In 1927 Johnny was foreman at  Brown and Sons in Barlick and had a good job with a steady income.  However, he was buying a house in Federation Street and had a family so he had to be careful with his money.  Birch Lathes made a very good small lathe, they were in Manchester.  Johnny saw one of their lathes and fancied it so, being Johnny, he got some patterns made and built his own.  So what you are looking at is unique.  Birch Lathes are as scarce as hen's teeth, I used to have a full sized one.  This scaled down version by Johnny is the only one in the world.  It's nice to see it in such good nick and to know it is safe, it is as much part of Barlick's history as Gill Church. On the left of it is a dividing head Johnny made for cutting clock gears on a milling machine or a big lathe.  He used this for his turret clock gears before he built the big 1956 double spindle lathe that I have.  Both that lathe and the dividing head are fitted with tangential dividing gear, you can cut any number of teeth you want on this accessory.  The dividing head is stood on a surface plate I gave to Newton about twenty years ago.  I got two out of Tommy Robinson's at Rochdale when they closed and swapped Newton this one for the slide valve cover he had used for years.  That is a base for a pillar tool now in my shed.  It's a spare cover off the small donkey engines that Browns used to make.  So, for those of you that are interested, an historic machine, in good nick and being well looked after.  I am very pleased....

Not the most interesting pic in the world but a dreadful warning about being diverted.  I went in to the shed this afternoon to get the flywheel a bit further forward and after a bit of gentle measuring and planning found myself making a knob for the door on the base of the Harrison lathe.  I've always had to fiddle with the door to open it and was putting the three jaw away when I got diverted into seeing if the lock worked.  It turned out it was kaput so I ripped th guts out and made a knob, about time after twenty years.....  That took up the time and I washed up and went onto the site.  The daylight suddenly vanished, it was Big Kev filling my yard.  He needed an Allen Key to get some unions out of a defective radiator and after an investigation I decided it was metric, 13mm.  As I am totally Imperial, I ground a 9/16 key down 'til it fitted and BK is back in business.  Good deed for the day done......  Bit of Telly now.

Didn't fit, there was Allen keys all over the playroom by the time we'd finished. Stanley is now the proud owner of a combination Allen key, 9/16 one end and 13mm the other.

Nice one, Stanley, you're a star. New radiator is up on the wall, full of water and not a drop running out of it...........

The flywheel is back on the agenda.  I've written myself out for a while and so a bit of gentle swarf-making is in order.

It is still on the faceplate so as to preserve the centering.  I did a bit of calculating and decided that on this scale the flyshaft had to be 3/4" diameter (18" full scale) and so I need a 7/8" bore as the shafts weren't usually a plug fit but aligned on stakes.  To save filing when the stake beds are cut out I drilled the bed positions with a 3/16" drill which will give about a 5" width stake at full scale, about right.  Then I put the faceplate back on the lathe and poked a 13/16 drill through the centre.  This won't be dead centre of course as a drill never cuts true.  I shall bore the hole out now to 7/8" and then file the stake beds.

I can take the flywheel off the faceplate then and finish the backside which needs a bit skimming off as I got the spacing of the rope grooves a bit wrong.  Then a bit of gentle filing to get the taper on the stake beds and I can think about making the shaft.

All interesting and fiddly to some but the thing that intrigues me about doing this is that I am doing exactly what had to be done on the full size engines.  The only difference is that I can pick my wheel up whereas the original would weigh 20 tons and need a crane.  If you want to learn about engines, take one to bits or even better, make one from scratch.  Exactly the same skills and tackle are needed and you will learn all about the difficulties the old fitters faced.  In some ways it's harder to make the smaller version as you need to work to 12 times the accuracy demanded on the full scale version.  You don't actually achieve this level of accuracy but it's a good exercise to try.

The flywheel goes on.....

Boring out to 7/8" with a good finish.  Nothing will touch the bore because there will be a gap round the shaft when it is staked up but it's nice to have a clean finish.

Once the bore was finsihed it didn't matter if I lost the centreing and I could turn the wheel round on the faceplate and reduce the back side until I had me rope grovves dead centre.

Here we are, all the machining finished, all I have to do is file out the stake beds with the right taper on them and then I can get on with making the shaft.  It struck me that what I was saying yesterday about the operations I had to do were exactly what would have to be done to a full size flywheel that there is one major difference.  I can get things done a lot quicker.  Johhny Pickles told Newton that when he turned the rope grooves in a flywheel about this size, for a 500hp engine, at Burnley Ironworks, that it took him and another turner 3 weeks on 12 hour shifts to do the same job.  One of the fascinating things about making small engines is that you can't scale nature.  I have to use the same cutting speeds that they did even though the parts are so small.  If I built the full engine I would have to use the same steam pressure as the full sized one to get the scale power out of it.  The taper on the stakes will have to be the same as full scale.  So, Doc can stop asking about the wheel and start nattering me about the shaft and stakes.  The big question after that is how far I go before I stop.  Do I want to fit the cranks, eccentrics and governor pulley?   We shall see.......

The flywheel is still sat there.  I have progressed to the stage where I have found the key steel for the stakes and was on the verge of getting to work with the file to make the stake beds.  On Friday I went to me butchers and he presented me with this:

It's the press that he uses for shaping burgers and if you look carefully you'll see that the two CI lugs nearest to us in this pic which carry the fulcrum pin for the lid, are broken out.  A repair like this isn't commercial these days, nobody can afford the time and patience to find a solution and apply it.  Right up the street of an old fitter who isn't interested in money, just recycling a good little machine.  The most I'll get out of him will be a few sausages and a very warm relationship because he respects my ability to do things like this.  As you get older it's nice to be reminded that even though you are on society's scrap heap you still have useful skills.

So, how to bring it back from the dead?  The obvious route is to build the lugs up with nickel based stick welding and re-machine the lugs.  I have rejected that because it's a very thin casting and I reckon there's a good chance it would crack.  Stuart wouldn't mind this because he has another machine but I would because it would be failure.  So I need another way.....  I've spent a couple of days thinking about it and whet I'm going to do is do away with the gap between the two lugs which carried the return spring for the lid and use the space for more metal for the fulcrum pin.  The spring is broken and has been for a long time so no need for it.  Additionally, the lugs have obviously been broken by the lid flying up and wnen the stop on the back of the hinge hits the body of the press all the force devolves on the fulcrum pin and eventually broke the lugs out backwards.  So I'll file the broken surfaces flat, make a piece of metal to fill the gap and replace the broken CI, pin that in place and perhaps nickel weld the block as well.  We'll see.  It should be a lot stronger but there will be some finicky filing to get a good fit.......  Exciting isn't it.......