Hi, this wee Puffer was built by my late father around the 1970s and was found in the loft of my mothers house when we cleared it
Deep in her bowels is one of the first steam plants I ever made a very very rough and rattly thing it is
Iv also posted some of this on a model boat site so apologise if you may have already seen some it before.The intention is to give a little more detail here.
I also need to make two other engines for boats and the idea is that this engine will have a common stroke but the angle of the cylinders will be different as will the bores.The port faces ,crank, mains and flywheel will all be the same.The boilers will be twin drum with water tubes each boiler having different amounts of tubes but sharing common firebox burner tanks,
Well thats the idea
So its out with the old
On with the new
This engine is 5/16 bore and the common stroke is 1/2 for all engines.The design of the engine is a bit of this and that from Stuart Turner,Reeves Popular and Peter Arnots V4 all mixed up and stuck together with a bit of glue. I make no apologise for building simple wobblers for my boats as they are very reliable and save me getting wet feet recovering a stalled boat out on a pond.
The engines frame is simply a 2inch ish bit of mild steel.I had made a comment in the past about splitting the lines of a rule to get within a thou or two so to put my money were my mouth is gave it a try after many years of just using the mills dials Iv never got round to one of those new faddly DRO thingy ma bobs.
After carefully marking it out I then drilled reamed the holes not without its problem I used a center drill that snapped I know a spot drill should have been used just couldnt find it.
The old dodge of regrinding the drill worked and all the holes finished .To check my marking out I made a simple jig and found one side to be good and the other very slightly tight the 60 degree angle I simply dont know :Jester:and it wont matter.
The frame was then cut out and simply filed to shape
Just a shot of the tools used .So at least I know Iv not lost the knack but the mills a wee bit easier
cheers
frazer