I can’t believe its been FIVE months since I had any updates to my steam tractor! The forum gave me an "Old Thread" warning when I posted this! I had no idea it was going to be SOO long!
While I haven’t had a ton of shop time, what little I had has been spent making the new mill feel at home, re-organizing my shop, and just generally improving things in my little hide-away.
But, today, FIVE months later (less 3 days) I’m making another progress post to my main project.
In my last post (way back in November), I had just completed the copper boiler. And now, I need to figure out a way to hydro test it. And to do that, I need a pump.
Dave Otto, hearing of my need for a pump, very kindly sent me this beautiful little pump casting. He was on the ball and sent it to me four and a half months ago. NOW, I’m finally getting around to doing something with it. Thank you, Dave!
The casting will lend itself very well to building the tender water pump found in Kozo’s A3-Pennsy Switcher book. I have to make a few changes to things, but I’m using Kozo’s plans with only slight changes. Here’s a drawing I made of how I’m going to make it all fit with Dave’s casting.
First, as with all castings, you have to figure out how to hold the thing. As it turns out, I was able to just clamp it vertically in my vise. I used a square to make sure it was perpendicular to the spindle. I was a little worried about it, but it seemed quite secure like this. Here I’ve just spotted the center of the plunger hole.
Next, I drilled it to 3/8”, 2” deep.
Dave, I assume this is a bronze casting? It machines like butter! I love it! It makes beautiful copper/bronze colored chips and machines like a dream! Thanks again for the casting!
The 3/8" hole is the long horizontal hole you can see in the drawing. However, you can also see that I need a short 5/32” hole way at the bottom of that hole. The problem is that I don’t have a long enough drill bit to reach all the way down there past the base of the pump cating. Even a jobber length bit isn’t long enough. I considered ordering an extended length bit, but instead, I just made an extension for the drill I do have (seen in the bottom part of the picture).
And here I’ve just completed doing a 1/2” deep, 5/32” hole at the bottom of the 3/8” pump ram.
Finally, before undoing this setup, I needed to bore a 1/2" lip to hold an O-ring for the plunger. This is the first time I’ve gotten to use my R-8 boring head. Works pretty slick!
And here’s the completed O-ring hole.
That’s it for today. Next, I need to start on the water inlet & outlet ports at the other end of the pump casting. Oh, yeah, and I need to add a tab to the casting for attaching the pump handle.
Thanks for looking in at my long-ignored build thread!
Kim