I have just checked the photos of the crank on the Ruston 4YHR that I look after at Thelnetham Windmill. On that the hole is outboard.
The big end on the Ruston is whitemetal in a bronze shell. Before I moved to Norfolk, the "chief engineer" had run the engine without continuous oiling of the bearing (the centrifugal oiler ring had gone missing, so they just used the supplementary starting oiler well and ran for half an hour or more). The inevitable result was that when I became involved and ran the engine after sourcing an oiler, the big end went into melt down. We found somebody to remetal it and I spent many hours scraping to get a good fit and it runs nicely now.
I have used soft leaded gunmetal (LG4 I think) for my first stab at the Gardner mains - I avoid hard phosphor bronze as it eats unhardened steel for breakfast. If I have trouble, I have some white metal left over from when I made new mains for my full size Wolseley WD2, so perhaps I'll make myself a pattern and mould to cast some in BS3332A alloy (tin/antimony with a touch of copper to impart a little hardness).
Many thanks for your thoughts................John