What with gardening and cooking yesterday, I always cook a special meal on a Saturday for the wife to give her a day off. Nothing got done on the engine.

Today started a lot better so I took my time as there is a lot of work to restart the crankshaft if I mess up.
Drilled and pined the second conrod bearing and cleaned that up and as can be seen the pins disappeared

The main shaft was loctited in at the correct spacings before drilling and taper reaming for the tappered pins as I did with the first shaft once again cleaned up and no sign that they have been pinned. I don't want it coming apart

The job I was not looking forward to is machining two 1/8" keyways the longest one is 1/2" long This was done using a 3/32" slotting cutter so was very slow as too much pressure on that would snap it like a twig. This meant that I had to machine down the centre and then widen it with a cut down each side

Final job was to cut and machine away the main shaft that passed between the two crank webs. At least that is the crankshaft completed

I needed a buzz coil for a little Stove Pipe Domestic I just got from a friend (the Herder engine casting set, with about 4" flywheels).  One of the things I always loved about my good friend George Luhr's models what how he hid the coils in a relatively small base and used 2 AA batteries for ignition so you could walk around with his tiny models. 

Well, I wanted to hide the ignition in the small coil box on this engine, so I was looking at how others used the standard auto relay's  and a regular coil for a buzz coil.  The complaint occasionally is that the 12v relay needs 12v for the ignition.  Enter George's use of the Modelectric 3v model aircraft coils.  I thought why not get a cheap 3v coil relay and try the same setup.  Well, I must say so far it looks great!  I need to hook it up to the engine and test longevity, but it seems to throw a wonderful healthy spark!

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcSCLNZwuL0" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcSCLNZwuL0</a>https://youtu.be/tcSCLNZwuL0

It can do a decent job, within a minute a day, but I had trouble keeping the clock running. The first run went over a week, but later on I had troubles. I think the spring I used for the clutch was a little strong and perhaps some of the gear axles, which are just 1/16" music wire, may have bent a little while adjusting the time. It's difficult to diagnose the problems with the clock when it will run for a few days and then just stop.

This was a winter project and I kinda forgot about it until now. Right now the workbench is clear so maybe I'll try and tear it apart, inspect the axles, give it a good clean and see how it runs after that.

Here's a video I shot the highlights the re-winder mechanism.

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dM3IGUsbnE" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dM3IGUsbnE</a>

Got the blanks for the steam chest valve faces and sliders mostly done, still need to trim the width of the valve face blocks to final dimension. Sliders on the left, valve faces on the right. After they are taken to width I'll start drilling the passage holes and mounting holes for the side panels, then mill the ports, then take a truing cut on the mating faces. As usual with bar stock, the faces of the bar are not flat enough, so will take a light trueing pass before lapping the faces. The sides of the chest will be added on, from some 3/16" x 1" flat bar, extending to the back face of the valve face blocks and screwed on from the sides. These sides will have holes down the outer sides to take the steam chest caps. Lots to be done!

Thanks for the confirmation. I chose this one to begin with because it did seem tried and true and there was a lot of work done on it by the originator.

You did a fine job on yours. Does it keep good time?

Cheers

Tom