Baldrick - A Two Cylinder Single-Acting Rotary Valve Engine

[PaulR]

Hopefully this will work out better than the eponymous character's plans... even though mine is only about half drawn so far!

Made a start on some of the basics yesterday and continued today. Chopped off and filed to length one of my last pieces of recycled suspension-file hangers for the base and faced two pieces of brass angle to length for the cylinder supports. Faced the cylinder blanks to length and bored them. Drilled pilot holes for fixing the cylinders to the angle, superglued them together then enlarged the holes. Separated one pair, made the clearance holes and threaded those in the cylinder. Made the cylinder end caps which are just a push fit for now, will fix later.

Facing the angle (there's something strangely satisfying about holding angle in a 3 jaw chuck!)


Parting off one of the end caps. Had some nasty squealing when I started but it disappeared after regrinding the tool


Gotta love superglue...


The parts so far. The angle will fit on top of the base, just arranged like this for a blurry photo!

[crueby]

Looks (and hopefully smells) a lot cleaner than he does too!   

[PaulR]

Today was just a case of marking out, drilling and threading holes. I've ordered some copper tube to connect things up, in the meantime I can start on the pistons and rods and try to figure out what to do in the middle bit!

[PaulR]

First piston and basic rod finished. Not very exciting to look at I'm afraid 

[PaulR]

Just a bit of progress today: made the second piston/rod and started on the end for the other. Still need to cut the clevis slot but I'll do the two together rather than set up the vertical slide twice. Might also do some rounding to make it look a little less brutalist!

[Michael S.]

Good progress. I'm very curious to see how it develops.

Michael

[PaulR]

I'm very curious to see how it develops.

Me too!! 

Today I finished the essential parts of the fiddly middly bits. Next will be the bearing/valve block although I've yet to decide exactly what that's going to look like 

[Sanjay F]

I like the design and build as you go methodology 

[PaulR]

I like the design and build as you go methodology 

Can be a bit scary but touch wood no major design flaws have materialised yet!

Today I made a flywheel and was about to make the connecting rods when I found I have no 1/4" square brass so went for round bar instead  Just need to mill the flats on the overlapping ends and they'll be done. I'm still waiting on the copper tube but as it's coming by Royal Mail it's probably delayed by them having to change horses on the mail coach and deal with our 18th century quality roads. Utter crap.

[PaulR]

Finished the connecting rods and made the shaft/valve. I milled part of the (longer) inlet slot in the vertical slide but finished it by file as it was chattering badly. I couldn't find a way to mount it for milling the narrower exhaust flat so I did that with two careful hacksaw cuts and some filing. Just need to drill the central exhaust hole and that's done. The copper tube finally turned up so now I need to tackle the last part, the bearing/valve block, which I still haven't quite decided on how to make.

[Roger B]

It's a cunning plan, does it involve a turnip?

Nice start 

[PaulR]

It's a cunning plan, does it involve a turnip?

Nice start 

I suppose I could put a blade on the flywheel and make it a turnip slicer? 

[PaulR]

After a weekend of mental faffing about, today I just picked up some bits of brass and made the bearing/valve block, soldering the two parts, threading holes for mounting and making the hole for the shaft/valve. Here it is loosely put together with temp screws etc. I just need to make the inlets and air tubes and some holes to solder them into and it'll just about be done.

[Sanjay F]

Great job Paul, looking forward to seeing her run 

[vtsteam]

Me, too.