frustratingly not much shop time over the past couple of months, but I have been able to make some progress.
I have managed to build the condenser.
the main body is a piece of 2" brass tube. I filed the ends square - figured it was quicker than trying to do it in the lathe and didn't quite trust my milling skills to do it on the new toy. But i did mill the grooves for the feet
and turned up the pipe and flanges for the steam inlet and outlet. these were then soldered onto the body one assembly at a time.
the ruler is just my way of checking by eye that things are reasonably square.
the proxxon came in handy for enlarging the pipe holes.
the outer covers where made from two discs of brass bar. To get the curve I made a couple of form tools from gauge plate.
the outer curve was pretty straight forward to produce on the peatol
but the inner i had problems with chatter and stalling but got there in the end
not the skinny off cut. I'm not turning a potential useful piece of breast into swarf if I can help it!
the two covers where then soldered onto pieces of 1/16" brass and the flanges turned and , on the rear cover , the middle trepanned out.
the front cover was more involved. this is ,on the inside , split in two. so i had to solder a bridging piece in first before I soldered the flange on.
I thought I had taken photos of this , but must have forgot.
the rear cover also has an inspection hole on it . this was quite straight forward to mill out now I've got me new toy. before it would have probably meant drilling and filing to shape because of the curved surface.
the two end flanges where straight forward turning and then drilling the water tube holes.
I soft soldered these onto the body.
then came the job of soldering in the tubes , and here I made a mistake. I saw some brass tube of the correct diameter (4mm) at one of the exhibitions but never gave any thought to the I.D. so bought enough more on a whim than anything. probably thought I'd be saving on postage. Anyway after I soldered them in I really noticed how small the bore is
I don't think it's going to be doing much condensing like that, so I've ordered a long series drill to at least open them out a bit.say to 3mm.
silver soldering I can do , but soft soldering is another matter as you can see. It also had to have the front face flat , and not trusting being able to clamp it securely on the mill, I resorted to spending some time using burrs in the proxxon and emery on a piece of glass to bring the face true.
and here is the complete condenser. Water enters the bottom pipe, flows down the lower set of pipes , and back through the top set and out via the top pipe while steam from the L.P. cylinder enters the larger upper pipe on the body and condensate is drawn by the air pump via the bottom pipe. well that's the theory anyway! at least it looks the part.
and yes it was a pain cutting down to size 60 off 10BA bolts...tho' not nearly as much a nuisance as finding out you hadn't made the flange deep enough for standard washers , so had to to turn down 120 of them...
thanks for looking
peter