The Bolton -Bertinat -Bailey Triple expansion engine

[Michael S.]

Hello Willy,
I think it is nickel silver. In German "Neusilber".
The manufacturer with this stamp made dishes from this material. As a substitute for real silver.
It contains nickel and a few other metals.
The supports look good. I like your craftsmanship. With old tools.

Michael

The trade name was Alpacca.

[steam guy willy]

Thanks Michael and I am doing more research on this .................. I have been milling more dimensions on the condenser and slowly getting to the point where I need to start bolting all the parts together !!   I notice that the trade name is  Alpaca ? I thought this was an animal that has a special type of very fine wool !!I have around off some of that plate and it has got some patches of rust on it ..

Cheers
Willy

[steam guy willy]

so, all the crosshead guides are now in place and I will be machining the base before I can bolt them all together ..
Willy

[Roger B]

Looking good   

[steam guy willy]

Thanks Roger , and I have milled the base and temporarily put all the parts together to see how they fit ..I have a piece of 1.25" square steel as a guide to keep everything in place prior to drilling ..

Willy

[Michael S.]

It looks like everything is coming together well.

Michael

[Admiral_dk]

Nice progress Willy 

Per     

[steam guy willy]

Hi thanks for the comments  all , I am now filing up the standards to the dimensions using the thick glass plate to get them all the same .  I will have to make a few more jigs for the final assembly . fortunately there is quite a lot of metal on the castings but also a lot of blow holes and inclusions ..the six standards , two of them on the condenser will take a bit of time to profile

Thanks
Willy

[crueby]

Lots going on, com8ng along great!   

[steam guy willy]

Thanks "C". and I have turned up the locating rings to align the standards ready for drilling....... there  are so many dimensions to get everything in place to get this engine to work  and every .001" adds up as well as all the angles .... in the old days when men built these engines they used miles of piano wire to line things up ?!!! so perhaps all these elves and gnomes could be useful after all. ?? !!!!!!!!!!

Willy

[steam guy willy]

I have drilled the bolting holes and after carefully marking out the dimensions the holes are initially drilled out using an archimedes drill, the standard is then bolted to the dill  table and lined up with the clearance drill to drill through the base . The drills for the clearance and tapping holes are relieved on the lips so the drill scrapes rather than pulls through the bronze without grabbing  The relieved drills are kept in the holder that uses the resistor colour code  5BA, 6BA  and 7BA and also the yellow strip to show them used for brass and bronze...The  EZE_LAP diamond lap is used for Profiling the drill lips

Willy

[steam guy willy]

The mounting holes for the Condenser are drilled using the Proton cross slide  attachment  When I drill and file these bronze components I always collect the swarf.. the parts are now put together to assess the fitting. 

willy

[crueby]

Very n8ce forest of columns!   

[steam guy willy]

Thanks Chis for the comments and there is lots of work still to do with this quite complicated build using just basic tools  ?!!! am now working out how to drill the holes in the right place to attach the condenser... the holes have been drilled but it is not possible to spot through from the top so I have made a template for the accurate drilling . this will be attached to the base plate when the time comes .....the hole in the template were calculated from the drawings and the condenser but were not 100% in their correct places so I attached it to the condenser with the holes that were correct and then filed the others to be a perfect fit ..

Willy

[steam guy willy]

The template is made and extra parts attached to position it correctly and drill the tapping holes ..
Willy