Author Topic: Building Kozo's New Shay locomotive  (Read 194033 times)

Online crueby

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Building Kozo's New Shay locomotive
« on: June 15, 2014, 09:59:16 PM »
Finally got started on my first locomotive engine project - been building small steam engines for a bunch of years now, and think (hope) I am ready for a project like this one. The one part that I am still nervous about is the boiler, but hopefully by he time I get that far in I'll have a lot more practise with silver brazing (also know some Live Steamer guys that can help me out if needed).

Below are a few photos of the progress so far - have the main frame rails and bolsters done - not too much to look at, but was a lot of layout/drilling/tapping. You will note that the rails are offset to the left on the front/rear endplates - the Shay's have the boilers offset since the engine is vertical on the right side. There are also a lot of bolts holding nothing as yet on the endplates - they will hold footplates, handrails, etc later on. The endplates are brass - the original engine had them made up of a stack of large timbers, so I have scored the brass to outline the timbers, and will woodgrain in the paint later on.

I cant recommend more the drilling guides that Kozo shows in his books - takes just a few minutes to make one, and makes accurate repeatable location of matching holes in the parts SO much easier. The last few photos show the guides for the holes in the frame rails, to locate the bolsters (crossbars the wheel assemblies will mount to) as well as the footplate brackets/brace bars still to come. The smaller guide has holes at three different angles for the different brace bars - would have been a pain to lay out each set of holes manually on the rails.

Offline b.lindsey

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Re: Building Kozo's New Shay locomotive
« Reply #1 on: June 16, 2014, 02:49:39 AM »
Nice start crueby and some great pictures so far too. This should be quite a project and I look forward to following your progress.

Bill

Offline PStechPaul

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Re: Building Kozo's New Shay locomotive
« Reply #2 on: June 16, 2014, 07:07:58 AM »
Appears to be a huge project but good to see some impressive progress. I like the Shays after riding on the train at Cass maybe 20 years ago, and last summer at the Threshermen' reunion at Rough and Tumble in Kinzers PA.

Offline ths

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Re: Building Kozo's New Shay locomotive
« Reply #3 on: June 16, 2014, 08:40:56 AM »
Good beginning. Are the buffer beams meant to be made up of three pieces (or are they?), or was it an expeditious move to use materials at hand? Looks good though. Hugh.

Online crueby

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Re: Building Kozo's New Shay locomotive
« Reply #4 on: June 16, 2014, 02:56:11 PM »
Good beginning. Are the buffer beams meant to be made up of three pieces (or are they?), or was it an expeditious move to use materials at hand? Looks good though. Hugh.

The original engines used massive timbers for the ends, stacked up like a wall. Kozo changed that to one piece of metal in his model, probably for rigidity at this scale. I am using his method, but have added the score lines so i can paint them up to look like wood. The original main lengthwise beams were i-beams, i think, am going to verify that and if so will add a bottom plate to get that look as well. Some details get lost in scaling down, but it is fun to try and keep as many as possible.

Offline kvom

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Re: Building Kozo's New Shay locomotive
« Reply #5 on: June 16, 2014, 03:09:31 PM »
Kozo likes to use a lot of brass on the 3/4" scale engines, but there's nothing wrong with using steel to save money.  Good start on this one.

Offline ths

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Re: Building Kozo's New Shay locomotive
« Reply #6 on: June 16, 2014, 08:52:33 PM »
Thanks for that. Hugh.

Online crueby

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Re: Building Kozo's New Shay locomotive
« Reply #7 on: June 18, 2014, 01:28:13 AM »
Got some good progress on the drawplates - nice to have some simple parts to practise silver soldering with. Made up the backer blocks for the drawplates first - did not have brass in the right width for that thickness, so used it as another chance to practise, and soldered up two pieces to get the width. Came out good - his instructions are great.

As for the drawheads themselves, started with the thin backplate - used up some C260 that has been in the drawer for a long time (hate machining the stuff, seems to smear easier than it cuts, now only get C360 or C353 which machine so much cleaner). Had to thin it a bit with the fly cutter.

Next squared up to size the blocks for the drawheads and silver soldered them to the backplates - used a couple small brass screws from the back to hold them together. One went great, the other needed a retry on the soldering, think I stopped too soon and there was still liquid flux in the joint, the solder had not flowed completely. Maybe did not have both sides heated right - still learning....

Once both were soldered, drilled for the drawbolt. Switched to a thin mill bit and milled out the centers of the drawhead cavities, then angled the piece 15 degrees (used a scrap piece as a guide to get it same each time) and milled the angled sides of the cavities. Went in and drilled/tapped the holes to attach the drawheads to the thicker base and used the sander to round off the front faces.
All attached to the frame ends, came out looking good - happy with the results. 10 pieces down, about a thousand to go!

Next up will be the footrails (am following Kozo's sequence pretty much)....

BTW - is there a way to insert photos into the text, but still use the 'attachment' option to upload photos? Or to do that would I need to externally host the photos?

Offline ths

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Re: Building Kozo's New Shay locomotive
« Reply #8 on: June 18, 2014, 04:46:11 AM »
Nice work on the drawbars.

In photobucket, I use the img option which copies the image to wherever you want to paste it. There may be a sticky here somewhere, perhaps search for photobucket (lots of less than civilised comments), or insert photo.

Cheers, Hugh.

Offline PStechPaul

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Re: Building Kozo's New Shay locomotive
« Reply #9 on: June 18, 2014, 05:22:58 AM »
You can try this. Right-click on the enlarged image (that you get when you click on it), and select "Copy". Then go to where you want the image in you text, and paste (Ctrl-V):

It worked for this image, but the others are not visible while I am editing the post. It might work if you have a second browser window open.

Online steamer

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Re: Building Kozo's New Shay locomotive
« Reply #10 on: June 18, 2014, 10:02:22 AM »
Thanks for the tip Paul! :praise2:

Dave
"Mister M'Andrew, don't you think steam spoils romance at sea?"
Damned ijjit!

Offline b.lindsey

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Re: Building Kozo's New Shay locomotive
« Reply #11 on: June 18, 2014, 12:26:47 PM »
You are really making some nice progress and some good looking parts in the process :)

Bill

Online crueby

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Re: Building Kozo's New Shay locomotive
« Reply #12 on: June 18, 2014, 02:25:54 PM »
You can try this. Right-click on the enlarged image (that you get when you click on it), and select "Copy". Then go to where you want the image in you text, and paste (Ctrl-V):
...
It worked for this image, but the others are not visible while I am editing the post. It might work if you have a second browser window open.

Hmmm, tried it, could not get it to work unless I did 'copy image location'. I think it only did since you copied the online url of the image. Looking at the html source of the post it looks like an external reference that way.

Online crueby

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Re: Building Kozo's New Shay locomotive
« Reply #13 on: June 23, 2014, 02:43:51 PM »
Next up are the footboards and such on the ends - fairly straightforward pieces with some more practice on silver soldering (getting better at it little by little, figuring out the amount of heat to use on small vs large pieces better).

The footboards start as four narrow strips bent to a 90 degree angle plus two thicker strips for the boards themselves. With the strips bolted onto the end block, the boards are clamped into place and drilled for temporary screws. Those screws hold the boards in place for silver soldering, and are then filed off flush.

The handrails at the top are a simple piece of brass rod, bent 90 at the ends and soldered into small lugs used to screw them to the end blocks. I heated the area of the bend to get a clean bend without cracking the rod.

The poling pockets, used to hold large poles to push cars on sidings, are made by boring a hole in the end of a piece of bar stock to make a thick walled tube. That tube is held with the angle table at 15 degrees for cutting with a slitting saw. That makes a set of little angled ringswhich are then soldered to a square plate. The plate is drilled for a small flat head screw that holds it to the end block just below the handrail ends.

Online crueby

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Re: Building Kozo's New Shay locomotive
« Reply #14 on: June 23, 2014, 03:03:50 PM »
I got a start on the boiler support brackets, which hang down below the main frame rails and holds up the bottom of the firebox area and also holds the fire grate. There are two identical brackets, so the outlines are cut from sheet brass and screwed together for machining. The screws go where larger holes will be in the finished pieces, so there is no extra hole left. With the two pieces screwed together, the outlines are milled to size. Then the center opening was sawn out to remove the bulk of the material, then milled to final dimensions. Then the holes for the support rods and fire grate were drilled/tapped. Kozo used metric screw sizes, I am using the nearest inch size threads.

A seperate lug plate is needed at the top of the bracket to bolt it to the main rails. The lugs were made all in one longer piece to make it easier to hold square - that piece was drilled for the bolt holes, including a smaller hole in the center of each one to screw into the bracket, holding it for silver soldering (oh, and I am using the term 'silver soldering' like Kozo does - some call it silver brazing, or hard soldering. Whatever term you like, depends what country and decade you are from, I think!).
With the brackets soldered to the lugs, the lugs were cut apart and trimmed to length.

The brackets were then bolted to the main rails, ready to make the support rods. That will be done in place, using the main rails as the building jig for the rods, so that everything comes out the right size. Enough for this time, more to be done the next rainy day!

 

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