gunmetal cylinders

[jeffhills]

Hello everybody
I am new to this group so I am not sure how it works, but I wonder if someone can help. I am in the last stages of building a 5" Don Young Jersey Lilly, pretty much the only large items left to do are the cylinders, I have left them to last as the cost of the castings almost makes the boiler materials look like a bargain! I looks cheaper to machine them from solid (assuming the time machining is called fun) but the largest bar I can find is 4" and they just wont come out. Does anybody know a supplier of larger cast gunmetal, or a foudary that will cast 2 blocks 100 x 100 x 110mm? emails to two foundaries found on the net have gone unanswered.
Have any of you built or own a Lilly in 5"?
Jeff

[baggo]

Hi Jeff,

have you thought of fabricating the cylinders? Looking at the drawings I think it would be fairly easy to build up the 'castings' from a piece of flat bronze bar for the port face/bolting face and a length of cored bronze bar for the actual cylinder, the two being silver soldered together. Any other 'fill in' bits could probably be ordinary brass. You could also machine the ports and steam passages before soldering the bits together. It would probably be easier and cheaper than using solid lumps.

John

[gugger]

Hello Jeff,

Building up cylinders? Have a look at this link
www.saunalahti.fi/~animato/steam/

Walter

[jeffhills]

Thanks. For some reason I had not done that bit of lateral thinking. I have made other bits that way, but I would just solder two blocks together and then machine all over, using the MNC method (manual nuneric control). Along the way I have lost a couple of assemblies during soldering, after investing hours machining the individual bits. My machining skills are far greater than my soldering ones. How would you ensure total penetration of solder over the whole joint, a pin hole after M/C would be a disaster. Would you place strips of solder between the two parts and heat the whole thing untill excess runs out?
Jeff

[ron]

Hi Jeff, welcome to the forum, have you thought of using cast iron for the cylinders if that's available, I had the same problem with Simplex, the price of gunmetal ones was extortionate!
Ron

[lancelot]

Hello folks,
the thought of ''Fabrication'' was on my agenda as I attempted to locate suitable lumps of leaded bronze for bearings on my engine build, luckily I managed to get them in College Metals, now the sizes were only 1 1/4''+1'' +1'' so pricey enough but considerably more in the sizes you required, had I not been able to obtain the material I would have gone for brass with a bronze insert bush, would not look right but a lot cheaper.
All the best for now,
John.

[waggy]

Jeff,

Try your local steel stockist for cast iron offcuts. When I did the cylinders for 46222, I got two pieces of cast iron (Meehanite) from a local stockist. Both were end offcuts from 120mm square bar approx 150mm long. Got all four cylinders out with plenty of useful bits left! Its a lot of machining but £25 set against the cost of castings, I rest my case.
Don't know where you are but there must be a stockholder near to you?

Waggy.

[abby]

I would be happy to cast your gun-metal and bronze castings from your own patterns , and I don't charge the earth. I also do lost-wax castings in silicon brass and will soon have a substantial amount of parts for the G1 " DOT " including many parts that ar as far as I know unavailable from any other source.
Abby.

[Tel]

I still prefer fabricated cylinders

[chris vine]

Hi Lancelot,

I expect you already know, but if you do decide to try fabrication, watch out for leaded bronze. It will not take kindly to silver solder!!

Chris.

[Steve M. W]

Chris

How can you tell leaded bronze?

Steve

[lancelot]

Hi Chris,
very good point about the heat aspect on silver soldering leaded bronze, as Steve said ''how do you know if it is LEADED '' ... the stuff I recieved from College Metals I hope is leaded...so firstly, HOW do you tell,...secondly I believe I saw on some web site that with careful control of the heat application during silver soldering , that it can be done successfully...but now I cannot find the blinking site...this could be a possible problem for someone using this material on a boiler?
All the best for now,
John.

[bar313]

My original trade was as a hot metal printing plate maker and one of the jobs we had to do was to solder 16 gauge process engravings in zinc or copper onto a block of lead alloy in order to bring the thickness up to type high which is 918 thou. The method was to preheat the lead alloy block to get it good and hot, give it a brush of killed spirits of salts ie flux made by putting zinc into hydrochloric acid until no more zinc would dissolve. We also used in another area thin tin foil so you got a piece of tin foil and placed that on the thick lead alloy put another coating of flux and then the thin engraving on top of this apply plenty of heat with the air gas blow touch and in a short space of time the tin melts and that part of the job was finished.
Another concoction that was used was to put copper into nitric acid again to make a saturated solution this would eat away the lead tin antimony type metal if it got onto the COPPER printing face and could not be removed by cutting it away with engraving tools. Another one is a paste made of french chalk and a little oil to stop the solder from getting where it was not supposed to be

[chris vine]

Hi Lancelot.

Ha, yes you have hit a nail firmly on the head. How do any of us know what any yellow metal is? Unless it is bought for real money from a supplier who tells you what it is.....

In truth I know what proper drawn phosphor bronze is like and it is quite difficult to confuse it with anything else. The rest of the bronzes are difficult.

I think a bit of experimenting is called for and a drilling through any silver soldered joint to pressurise it and test for porosity.

It may be possible to silver solder leaded bronze, I guess it depends how much lead there is, but I would avoid it for this application. There is too much time tied up to make a mistake.

Chris.

[Shawki Shlemon]

Yes I built a Lilly more than 20 years ago and used castings , from memory they were in gunmetal . The engine was sold a long time ago , you can see it on my site . For the fabrication see fabricated cylinders in IMAGES .