Hawkes 28' dampener mounting....

A momentous occasion...our 100th post!

Finally got back round to a little work on my hawkes 28' drum. Remounted a few newly polished lugs, and fixed the newly made (all be it newly a year ago!) dampener.

It's workings (my own design) are fairly self explanatory. The knob on the winding thead pulls the arm upwards towards the skin, this is tensioned by a spring to pull it away from the skin when slackened on the knob. The dampening head is pivoted and held steady by a lever spring, this allows the lad to automatically level on the skin applying more equal pressure, something missing on many existing designs, in my humble opinion. 

Keen eyes may note there isn't a retaining nut on the pivot for the dampening pad. I assure I later realised and put it on! 

More details of further work to follow,

The Carpenter. 

2" Scale Ruston 'Lincolnshire Lad'

A project that I really must get around to finishing at some stage...

A 2" scale Ruston 'Lincolnshire Lad' built to the Reeves design. It was bought cheaply several years ago and is...crude to say the least. For many years it used to just sit ticking over on a few pounds of compressed air when we did shows. The engine itself always ran well and had quite a bit of power, unfortunately, the boiler is soft soldered and has no paperwork - so pretty much useless! The plan is to build a new boiler with the help of a boiler maker friend of mine, get the engine working and then rebuild the niggles that I don't like once up and running!

One day!

The Engineer.

Building a Garden Railway Part VIII

Didn't think I'd be making a post pertaining to the garden railway while I was away at university. Anyway, it's barely progress, but I recently managed to pick up a bulk lot of Peco and Tenmille SM32 track for a very reasonable price. I managed to get hold of fourty-five yards of track and three sets of points and by combining this with what I have laid already and what I bought at the Exeter Garden Railway Show should allow me to complete the vast majority of the initial plans for my line as a double track rather than single track line!

The Engineer.

Faraday Motor - can you help?

Am looking for a bit of advice on this one - has anyone built a Faraday motor? I knocked this one up a while ago now just to try the principle but it never really worked properly. Basically, DC current is fed to the hook at the top of the stick which then feeds down through the dangling rod into the dish, which is full of a conductive liquid (Mercury in the original - but I'm using salt water). The circuit is completed by another wire leading out of the conductive liquid to the other side of the power source. A magnet is placed in the center of the dish and the dangling rod is supposed to spin around it.

However...my attempts to get it working resulted in the rod spiralling to the center and then just fizzing a bit. Has anyone built one of these and got it working successfully - without using Mercury? 

The Engineer.