Odd Ideas

When messing about with secondhand toy steam engines, you come across some very bizarre restorations and modifications done through their life. Many are well meaning but crude bodges to keep the engines running, but some I just do not understand. This engine was given to me as a Christmas present after having been picked up secondhand, it's an SEL Junior with half of a Mamod hammer. Signalling Equipment Limited - SEL made an interesting range of very small engines just after the Second World War. Many of their engines used Bakelite in their construction, the Junior having a Bakelite engine frame.

Sometime in the past, the owner has remove the safety valve and respective bush and araldited on a lovely turned brass locomotive chimney. This has just been glued over the hole, meaning the boiler will no longer hold pressure. After doing this, the owner has then gone to the trouble of making a very long plug to fit in the water level plug hole, even though the boiler can no longer be used.

Maybe he had an idea for the engine - I will never know, I'll leave it to you readers to speculate!

The long filler plug!

The Engineer.

A Nice Bit of Bowman

This came in in my Christmas haul this year. As usual, my parents had asked me to find something 'steamy' that I wanted for them to get me as a Christmas present. I managed to get these six Bowman tools and a Bowman M135 stationary engine for a reasonable price just before Christmas. They look to have all been repainted and all need a bit of work - some more so than the others, but they are all there! I am working on completing my collection of Bowman stationary engines and accessories, and this is one step closer. I am still looking for a 101 engine and the Fretsaw accessory if anyone has one of either going spare?

As you can see, the drill needs a bit more work than the rest!

The engine...

The Engineer.

Preston Services Christmas Open Day

After spending the 28th collecting the Marshall portable, we all went up to Preston Services Christmas Open Day on the 29th, for a day looking around the fantastic (but expensive!) collection of engines for sale.

There were some gorgeous pieces on sale including this fantastic Nielson & Co Twin Beam Engine built for the Great Exhibition in 1851. If I'd had a spare 37K this would have made a lovely centerpiece in the living room...

Preston Services has a lot of engines that have been repatriated from abroad, many from Argentina and Chile. It's fascinating to see the bodged repairs done to the engines just to keep them going where there is a lack of spare parts. This included wooden flywheels, corrugated iron smoke boxes and wired together chimney base castings, but the best had to be this checker plate bodge onto the trunk guide of a Marshall traction engine...

Finally, this little twin cylinder workshop engine was gorgeous. There is something I really love about engineering of this period. Everything has had so much care put into it, and the design shows a high level of finesse. Just look at the shape of the crank web...unforunatley, only one of the crank webs looked like this as the engine had been a garden ornament for 30 odd years and the other side was well rotten! Much of this engine needed re-making rather than restoration, but I thought she was lovely!

 The Engineer.

Collecting a Marshall Portable

A Happy New Year from MBI!

Last Saturday (28th) was spent collecting a very large Marshall Portable engine. A friend of mine had heard that she was going to be up for sale, and decided to buy her for his collection. She is a 24nhp Duplex engine, and she is big!

The plan is, after restoration, to install her with the owners rack saw bench and build a shed around the set-up. As restoration progresses, I shall post further updates.

Here she is as found...

On the low-loader...

Safely in her new home..

A big old firebox!

The Engineer.

Box Joint Jig Part I

So I decided the other day that it would probably be useful to have a box jointing table saw sled knocking about the shop, so I decided to take a Sunday morning to knock one together, I like to think that the readers of this blog are pretty mechanically minded so I'll let you fathom out how it works from the photos. It's a simple little affair but has some adjustment abilities for other blade sizes, timber stock ect... 

Here are some photos of samples and the jig itself, for your interest...

Rear and front,

The Carpenter. 

Box to Musical Box

An interesting little workshop project fitted into free time over the last few days was this little task of turning a wooden trinket box into a musical box.

The first job was to accommodate the spring break mechanism so I needed to drill the box accordingly and fit a bearing plate and pin, to allow the musical movement to play. 

These were made from an odd end of brazing wire and a brass scrap. The movement was then fitted into place with machine screws and the winding key accommodated on the bittom of the box. Endless tinkering with the set up then ensued to ensure proper working.

 The movement now plays when the lid is opened and is silenced when shut. The box is wound from underneath. The next jobs are to fit a decorative cover to the movement and fit feet to raise the box off of the floor.

The Carpenter.

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.