5" gauge Britannia (a builder's diary)

[steamer5]

Hi Roger,
My club has flip over end stops, made from a piece of angle, they work very well............. if they are used!
Other clubs I’ve visited don’t have stops..... you learn very quickly that your loco toolbox needs all sorts of extra stuff in them......some form of stop for both ends of the loco being one! Bigger versions of your mini clamps would work great!

Cheers Kerrin

[Gary L]

Apr 18, 2020 23:20:26 GMT d304 said:

Morning everyone

White vinegar is 10% citric acid. I bought some at your local shop Jim, for $2.00 for two litres. I needed it at the time to de-rust a full set of wheels for a 71/4 A3 A4 wheels that had been left on a barn floor for twenty years. I also use the citric acid for cleaning brass and copper prior to braising.

As for the disposal of the acid it becomes my weed killer.

Regards

David

I was told at school that vinegar is a solution of acetic acid. It is lemon juice that contains citric- clue is in the name. Unless some vinegars contains citric as well as acetic... ? These days you never know.

Gary

[springcrocus]

I'm trying to get the tender finished because I shall need a water supply in the not-too-distant future. One of the jobs to be done was to join the coal tray to the tank and here I have not followed the normal convention. Most people just solder the coal tray into place and that's it! The tank is sealed for life.

I've chosen to make mine removeable just in case I want to get in there at some point in the future and I've now made the final parts to achieve this. The tray rests on the forward bulkhead which has a rubber seal all round the edge and is screwed on to a pair of pillars to pull down onto the rubber. Screws at the top of the tank sides hold the back in position and will be painted but left unfilled.



The pillars are 1/2" dia brass with the top milled at 10 deg and tapped 6BA so that the screws line up with the slope of the tray at this point.



I've had the tank 3/4 full of water overnight on a towel and it's still dry. There is no pressure involved here, just the head of water which is minimal. The front can now be fitted permanently as this won't affect any future dismantling. Then it's on with priming.

Some will ask why I bothered since it's a feature that's unlikely to be used. Simple answer (and to forestall any discussion): just to show it can be done.

Steve

[simplyloco]

Apr 27, 2020 15:05:44 GMT springcrocus said:

I'm trying to get the tender finished because I shall need a water supply in the not-too-distant future. One of the jobs to be done was to join the coal tray to the tank and here I have not followed the normal convention. Most people just solder the coal tray into place and that's it! The tank is sealed for life.

SNIP

Some will ask why I bothered since it's a feature that's unlikely to be used. Simple answer (and to forestall any discussion): just to show it can be done.

Steve

My sentiments entirely. My Brit reverser was a case in point!
Mind you, on reflection the whole ruddy loco was a case in point...
John

[Jim]

Like you Steve I want things to be 'get at able' so made the coal hopper removable. I know it's a feature that may never be needed but it's there. I prefer your solution to mine I should add.

Jim

[springcrocus]

Apr 27, 2020 21:54:57 GMT Jim said:

Like you Steve I want things to be 'get at able' so made the coal hopper removable. I know it's a feature that may never be needed but it's there. I prefer your solution to mine I should add.

Jim

Sorry, Jim, I must have missed your version. I shall now go back to "Boadicea" and refresh my memory.

Regards, Steve

[steamer5]

Hi Steve,
The old guy that got me into this hobby could of used that idea!
He used to have issues with his injectors not working. Anyway one day he removed that plate at the back of the tender......he had ever quite got to fixing it down.....& proceeded to remove over a cup of coal fines from the water tank! After that he had very little issues with his injectors!

Nice work.

Cheers Kerrin

[springcrocus]

I'm waiting for some putty and some paint to arrive so made a start on something else instead.

I've made the reverser box from offcuts of 16 swg brass sheet and soldered them together to get the basic shape. I drew out the parts with locating tabs included and hacksawed to size. The tabs were marked with a felt tip to ensure the correct orientation



Cutting the tabs was a simple matter of setting each side in the vice with packing to leave about 1/8" sticking up. Then it was touch on the top with the cutter, go down 1/16", touch the end, zero the DRO and wind to 0.375". Because I used a 3/8" cutter, I wound along to 1.125" and came through with the centre slot. I did this for all the pieces.



Next, adjacent sides were soldered together by resting each pair in a spare Vee block to keep them square. This is silver-bearing soft solder and an alkaline flux.



Next, the first and second pair were joined together to form most of the box. The solder was laid in the bottom and heat applied from outside, as with silver solder. The clamps and bracket kept things square but doubled as heatsinks, too.



Getting the inset section into place was more of a challenge and was achieved with this Heath Robinson setup, doing both joins a few minutes apart. This one hasn't been done yet, the lengths of solder are laying in the bottoms of the respective joints.



The base was put on next, starting with the longest edge. The clamp was to prevent the top bit dropping loose because it seemed the most vunerable to collapse. By having the Vee block tipped over in the vice, gravity was helping keep thing in the right place.



I actually spent more time heating the Vee block than the component as it gave me better control of the temperature. The moment the solder melted, I pulled away and let the residual heat do the work. A bit like a giant soldering iron.



The overlapping section was sawn away, the corners and edges fettled and this is the basic box ready to be drilled and have the various bushes fitted.



Steve

[Jim]

Very neat Steve and I like your use of a piece of angle strap to hold things nice and square. Mmmm must remember that for next time I have a job like that.

Jim.

[springcrocus]

The mounting bracket for the reverser box is a piece of 16 swg brass bent around a simple former with the joining edges soldered afterwards.



Going back to the box, the next job was to linish all the corners, particularly around the base. Having the base soldered on made it rigid enough to hold in the vice and mill all around the top to bring it to finished height.



After this, the holes for the bushes were drilled and reamed as well as holes in the base for fixing to the platform and for the bearing to hold the driven shaft. The bearings for the driving shaft were soldered in first, followed by line reaming. I'm using a pair of bevel gears from the "useful oneday" box rather than the specified meccano gears, purely a financial consideration.



I've had to redesign the innards to suit the gears I'm using and the support for the driven shaft had to be located behind the gear. This is an offcut from the bronze plate, milled complete so it acts as both bearing and support pillar.



The driven shaft was offered up to set the location of the support bush and holes drilled in the bottom of the box to suit.



Then the rest of the bushes were made and soldered in, the Meccano worm and gear pair drilled to suit the shafts and the indicator drum made from some 1" dia HE30 aluminium alloy. The UJ and drive forks were made a year or so ago.



Finally, the lid was made from another piece of 16 swg brass, the shape formed by scribing round the outside of the box. A locating piece was soldered to the underside at one end and a fabricated spring clip soldered to the opposite end.



For the top of the lid, a small pointer was made from brass shim and fixed with 3/64" rivets, then bent to suit the indicating drum.



Jobs left to do include sourcing a suitable handle, marking out the drum and painting.

Steve

[simplyloco]

Very neat!
John

[Jim]

You've done a great job there Steve. It's quite a tricky job assembling the gear box so that the various gears all mesh nicely to do the job you want.

Jim

[Deleted]

superb Steve..

Pete

[springcrocus]

The last couple of days have been devoted to getting the tender finished. The chassis is now painted, the brakes set up and the plumbing put in place.





My painting won't win any awards but it will do for now. The tank is masked up so that I can spray the underside black tomorrow.

Steve

[stevep]

I'd be happy with that!

[springcrocus]

This one is for Paul.

As I noted in another thread, I found a handwheel in my scrap box. Well, the makings of, anyway. A billet of 1.1/2" dia brass with a hole through looked like it might contain a handwheel. Thoughts turned to the problem of making a large curtain ring and soft jaws seemed the way forward. For the benefit of people unfamiliar with soft jaw use, here I'm truing up the jaws before loading the work.



Because I will be holding in the bore, I have opened the jaws outwards onto a setting ring. Then the jaws are skimmed for a nice fit in the bore. When using soft jaws, it's important to always use the same key hole each time to compensate for any wear in the scroll, hence the mark on the chuck.



Using these jaws meant I had good all-round access to the part and the first forms made were the inner and outer radii using hand-ground HSS form tools. I'm not after a perfect circle, this can be filed or sanded to shape.



Next, I parted part-way through then followed with another form tool to make the back radius.



Then I returned to the bore and eased this out to final diameter and also deep enough for the parting tool to break into. Then it was cut off.



Time to change the jaws over and grip on the outside. Once again, soft jaws allow the component to sit in a machined recess making it easy to form the last internal radius. Using soft jaws like this stops the component deforming with the pressure from the chuck jaws.



So here is the finished ring, approximately the same size as the drawing, waiting for the spoke holes.



Because there are five spokes, it made the options for holding the work a little more limited and I opted to make a holder from 12mm MDF.



I've drilled a 10mm dia pilot hole and bored out a recess so that the ring is a press fit into it. That is only about two thou interference, though, it's already a fairly well-compressed material.



I marked out a rough pentagon and sawed some of the waste away ...



... before putting a 10mm bolt through the hole, with a locking nut, and loading to my rotary table. A decent-sized endmill and a mask, something I think is essential when machining MDF, and I was ready to form the outer shape. 72 degree steps and three rotations to get the correct form.



The spokes are at twenty degrees to the horizontal and the tilting vice was used to hold the ring at the correct angle. Each of the five holes was drilled 2.5mm to allow a bit of movement for the 3/32" spokes and are blind holes. A simple matter to just index the fixture round.



Next I made the boss from some 1/2" dia brass and this needed a 20 deg angle at the front for the spokes. It wasn't worth moving the compound slide round so a tool was set using an angle gauge.



Setting up to drill the holes was much more fun, needing two angle plates and much moving of positions to get it to work in the available space. I need a large angle plate without webs, something to look out for next time I go to a show.



After drilling all five holes through to the bore, the rotary table was returned to it's normal mode and a M3 cross-hole drilled and tapped. Then the bar was returned to the lathe and the boss parted off. I worked out that the spokes needed to be 19/32" long and these were cut with a junior hacksaw. However, it turned out they were a bit too long and needed trimming down to 9/16".



Getting the wheel assembled was a long, drawn-out process but I eventually managed to get all the parts together by starting with the spokes resting in the boss and slowly pushing a pointed 3/16" diameter rod into the centre and slowly working the spokes into the holes on the outer rim.



The rod already had a couple of cross-holes in it and I was able to rest the assembly on a panel pin poked through the rod. The joints were all soldered with silver-bearing soft solder.



Unfortunately, this did end up with the rod soldered to the boss so that had to be returned to the lathe and be drilled out. After cleaning that up, the handwheel was returned to the holder and the hole for the handle drilled. Then it was tapped 8BA on my small tapping fixture. I've chosen to go between the spokes because of the risk of drill breakage if going in line with a spoke.



The handle was made from 3/16" dia brass, the shape being formed solely with files and abrasive cloth, and the back turned and threaded 8BA. Meanwhile, the wheel has been cleaned up in the shotblast cabinet.



And, finally, primed and assembled to the reverser box along with the mounting bracket.



So that took all day and saved a tenner. But it's been really enjoyable making the part and with a satisfying outcome. But, then, that's what this hobby is all about, isn't it?

Steve

[jon38r80]

Magic. I agree its not the money but the satisfaction. you probably wouldnt have been happy with the bought one either. Its just not the same.

[uuu]

A masterclass.

Wilf

[mr swarf]

Nicely done, especially like the shot blasting for a cast look.
Paul.

[Jim]

Thanks Steve for that post.

I agree with Wilf, that is indeed a masterclass. You not only demonstrate the techniques for making a hand wheel and using soft jaws but

give a demonstration of traditional craftsmanship of the highest kind.

Thanks again,

Jim