Morning guys - Wheres that week gone?
Bill, the model show was a 'plastic' one but unlike the apparent diminishing of ME ones they seem to go from strength to strength. Very frequent, always well attended by exhibitor and visitor alike the hobby is flourishing. The sad part is all that organisation for what is a very good show having to be cancelled at the last minute - must be gut wrenchingly disappointing for the guys who have spent so long putting it together.
John - Living in 'your' Peterborough I can well appreciate how well you are used to snow. I lived in Newfoundland for a time and saw a 'fair bit' of it there
. When we do have a good fall here though it bemuses me how, as a nation, we seem so surprised by the effect it has. As a newly trained soldier in Jan 1963 the first place I went overseas to was for further training at Fort Churchill in Manitoba - now that
was snow
Well - things are back on course on this project. The ali swarf has been cleared but it was worth the effort to make a bit more before doing so as the major machining on the main ali parts for Jefs petrol engine have been done so it was worth the digression
These have been boxed and stored for a later date and attention returned to the Corliss.
First up was to deal with something that was overlooked when machining the bedplate - the mounts for the handrail stanchions. The base was drilled and small pads turned and JB'd in place. The pads were reamed and the stanchions will eventually be Loctited in place
One of the things that has been bugging me is the drain valve situation - there are drain valves shown on the drawings but shown only for the slide valve cylinder - I cannot see anything relevant to the Corliss cylinders.
Though this will only run on air there is always the possibility that oil could build up and hydraulic. Having studied every pic of stationary engines of the type in several books of George Watkins I can find little evidence of noticeable drain valves on Corliss engines per se. There are a few that have pipework with quarter turn valves but having spent sometime drawing one out as small as possible it would still look over-scale. However, there are quite a few that show pipe work coming from the sides of cylinders and disappearing into the foundation, possibly to finish at an isolated valve somewhere. That is what I have decided to emulate.
The cylinders were drilled through about 4mm in from each end the hole ending about 2mm deep in the end cover. The covers then had a channel milled to connect the hole to the cylinder. (They are offset from the centre line so as to miss the lower, centrally located, stud)
The hole positions were transferred to the bed-plate using hardened pins in the holes and these centres picked up and drilled on the mill. A recess was milled for O rings to act as a seal. Holes were drilled from the side to intersect and counter-bored to take tapped bosses JB'd into place
That doesn't seem like much for a weeks attention but a lot of it was spent making my mind up how best to go about it. The pipework coming from the cylinders will go through the base top and from there will be connected to a point on the exhaust pipe after the Condenser outlet. I'm working on that now so more pics a bit later.
The weather is still not conducive to painting outside but I did manage to get some on the outer pedestal yesterday as a test. I can't say I'm over enamoured with the colour - it is decidedly different to the label
Tha's it frum the ol shid fer now bors
Regards for now - Ol' Tug