Chris's Marion 91 Steam Shovel

[crueby]

Looking really good Chris,
I see the elves are starting to get over there camera shyness........what are they up to I wonder


Cheers Kerrin

Huh? Oh, couple seem to have wandered into camera range. Unusual, they don't normally get in the shots, muttering something about an open warrant from the North Pole and witness protection...


 

[crueby]

Hi all,

Erik Ein-Bier here, I am foreman of the shop elves local chapter that owns Chris. The silly human went off somewhere today without posting our latest work on 'his' model, so I am stepping in to do it.   



We got the pivot post for the top of the A-frame head turned down to shape,

then flipped it around and bored out the center, leaving the bottom of it intact to hold the bolt to secure it to the head assembly.

Here it is installed on the A-frame:

Next up is to make the pivot arm that this post holds, which has fittings to hold the guy stays up to the top of the main boom.

Oh, and Zee, sorry about the mess we made at your shop on our little vacation last week! Fun place! Really sorry about how the elfprentices recycled and refilled that bottle of booze they were drinking from. Um, at least the alcohol will kill most of the germs. Hope it doesn't effect the taste too much... 

Hopefully tomorrow Chris will be back posting the updates. Lazy bugger!

[zeeprogrammer]

Oh, and Zee, sorry about the mess we made at your shop on our little vacation last week! Fun place! Really sorry about how the elfprentices recycled and refilled that bottle of booze they were drinking from. Um, at least the alcohol will kill most of the germs. Hope it doesn't effect the taste too much... 

Once again they targeted the wrong shop. 
You seem to be satisfied with their work in your shop so I suggest you keep them there.
They seem to lose it when they go out.

Now I could be wrong. It may be that my own fellas kick your fellas out, clean up your fellas' mess, and leave me none the wiser.
I have good fellas.

[crueby]

Well, so now that I have wrestled the keyboard back from the elves, an update for this afternoon on what I did...

Made up the U-bolts to hold the A-frame legs in tight to the head assembly. Threaded some rod, bent in the vise, little finessing to get them to fit:

The swivel arm at the top is nearly 3/4" thick and quite wide, so bolted and loctited two 3/8" thick bars together to get the blank, then milled the front edge to shape on the rotary table:

While the back edge is still straight and able to be held in the vise securely, drilled and bored the pivot hole:

Then trimmed off the wedges at the back, and milled them to shape. The center has a slight arc, the rest of the edges going out to the ends are stright.

Here it is test fit on the A-frame.

The attachment holes in the ends need to be drilled/tapped, the lead edges need to be rounded over, and the arms out to the sides tapered a bit. Not sure how I am going to do the rounding over, dont have a quarter-round bit large enough. Some people have used router bits for this, but I am leery of using them on metal. Have to experiment a bit, may just sand and file the shape in since it is not a critical dimension, does not have to match up to another part.   

[10KPete]

Router bits work fine for metal, in the lathe or the mill. Just run them at the appropriate speed for the size...

Pete

[crueby]

Router bits work fine for metal, in the lathe or the mill. Just run them at the appropriate speed for the size...

Pete

Good to know Pete - thanks! I assume for a large radius, it would be best to take several light cuts?

For this part, with its oddball shape, it was an easier setup to use the belt sander to give it some taper and do the rounding.

Next step was to make the links to connect the guy rods up to the boom. Took some steel rod, and bent it to shape with pliers, using the technique used commonly to make rings for jewelry, bending them in a stack, then sawing across them to make the seperate links.

The links were then connected up and bent closed, with the eye for the guy rod in place, and the ends silver soldered up.

After some cleaning, test assembled everything. The links are held on the head pivot with posts and washers.

For now, the A-frame is tied back with some string, when the main frames are made, a long series of bars goes from the top of the a-frame back to the frame under the boiler.

Time for some more paint, I think...

[crueby]

With the swing circle and booms pretty much complete (main thing missing is the crowd engine, going to make that along with the swing engine, which is identical), time to make up the main framework for the steam shovel. It consists of four large lengthwise I-beams (originals are almost two feet tall) and a series of crosswise beams to connect them. On the original the long beams were rolled out in one piece of steel (Marion had their own steel manufacturing and rolling plant), while the cross beams were cast to shape with the mounting flanges integral to them.
For mine, I debated between two options, milling them out of solid and silver soldering out of three pieces of thin stock. I have decided to go with the pieced-up approach, can fall back on the milling option if this does not work. For the model, the center webs are a little under 1-1/4" tall, the top/bottom webs are a little under 1/2" wide, all from 1/16th" thick steel bar. Here are the stacks of stock for the beams, all 32" long, which allows room for trimming the ends to final length.

Holding them for silver soldering is the trick - too thin to easily and reliably run in screws on the thin dimension, so I am going to use a set of clamp bars to hold the three pieces for soldering. They will be spaced about 6" apart, and be up on short stands to allow room to get the torch in underneath for heating. Started with some lengths of 3/16" thick steel bar stock, chain drilled just inside the pattern to remove the bulk of the material quickly:

then came back with a small mill and cleaned out the inside to shape/size:

Here is the set of clamps:

The one on the left has the wider web put through to show how it will hold - still need to do a  few things before I can try soldering one up: mill the stock down to the final width, file the inside corners of the clamp square to fit the stock closely, and make some short posts for the clamps to be raised up on. The lower corners will get a coat of Nicrobraze to keep any stray solder from sticking the clamps to the beams.
Seems like it should work out, hopefully as well as the clamps for the swing circle did, I hope!

[zeeprogrammer]

Oh good grief. Just keeps getting better and better. 

[crueby]

Oh good grief. Just keeps getting better and better. 

Thanks Carl!

Thats what I have come to really like about making entire vehicles/machines/etc rather than just the engine portion of it - there are so many different shapes of parts to learn how to make, it constantly keeps extending the fun into something new!

[10KPete]

You've become a true fabricator, Chris, with only one skill missing: gas welding.

 

Pete

[scc]

Chris, I'm just catching up again after a busy spell away.  I cannot believe your rate of progress and extremely high skill level along wit such detailed posting    I once asked you what the secret was and you said "retirement"......I'm retired, only 72 and relatively fit, but seem to have so little shop time!..........WELL DONE YOU!                   Terry

[wagnmkr]

I have no words left for this build, so I just sit back and enjoy ... and appreciate the skill involved.

Now, if Zee would only get on with the Stanley Steamer ....

Cheers

Tom

[zeeprogrammer]

 

Now, if Zee Chris would only get on with the Stanley Steamer ....

[crueby]

You've become a true fabricator, Chris, with only one skill missing: gas welding.

 

Pete

Like mig/tig welding? There is a local welding supplier that has classes, on my want list to take them someday. I took the one on copper working a couple years ago, very useful for the boiler and sheet forming.

[crueby]

Chris, I'm just catching up again after a busy spell away.  I cannot believe your rate of progress and extremely high skill level along wit such detailed posting    I once asked you what the secret was and you said "retirement"......I'm retired, only 72 and relatively fit, but seem to have so little shop time!..........WELL DONE YOU!                   Terry

Thanks Terry!