Thanks Charles, yes, I think you may well be correct about the slot in the valve being for positioning and preventing rotation; as soon as the pin engages, the valve's movement is restricted to the vertical direction and the horizontal holes align, from the cylinder inlet, through the valve, throught the inner cylinder wall and finally through into the cylinder 

Yesterday I got the moose clear coated and ready for paint. But, the clear added a little bit of a yellowish cast to the antlers, and deepened the brown colors on the fur/hair sections, and I really like the combination as is. Not going to do any more painting on it! So, got it hung in place in the window opening to the Engine Room that opens into the room next door - used to be an exterior window there till I added the Engine Room last year. This is Steamy Von Moose's new home! The horses you can see in the background are not my carvings. They were done years ago by the past owner of a local amusement park - he carved miniature replicas of the full size horses in their carousel and sold them.

And, yesterday and this afternoon I knocked out a new steady rest. Here it is next to the original Sherline one that came with my lathe. As you can see, the new one is MUCH larger. The original one was fine for the base lathe, could hold up to about a 1-1/4" diameter workpiece. With my lathe set up with riser blocks (Sherline accessories), I can turn much larger diameters. On my Diesbar build, and later on with the Brunel engines, I'm going to want to have a steady rest that can handle up to a 3" or so diameter. I'll be mounting the cylinders on a faceplate, but I need a way to support and guide the blanks to face the ends, without risking them coming off the chuck. So, I dug out some ball bearings, some brass flat bar chunks, and picked up a 1" thick piece of large diameter aluminum pipe from McMaster-Carr. A little milling of grooves and drilling/tapping, and its a bigger steady rest.

With that done, I'm ready to wrap up this build thread, and should be starting the Diesbar build tomorrow!   

We had a fantastic run today at the pond with the RC submarines to kick off the new summer season outdoors. Absolutely perfect weather, warm sun, light breeze, great turnout, dives equalled surfacings! The pond was really full, we had a lot of rain this spring, and another gully washer yesterday as the storm that postponed qualifying at the Indy 500 rolled its way east and past us. The owner of the property treats the pond so no Weed Monster in residence to grab onto subs/propellors, and he has big shade trees and a barn right next to the pond. Perfect plave to run.

Ok Dave thanks for your reply.
Andy

Hi Andy

I can't put my finger on it right at the moment, I made an aluminum piece like a parallel with the proper 1/8" per foot taper on it. then it was just a matter of putting the bushing blank on the aluminum part in the vice and cutting the slot for the broach body. What I don't remember is how I figured out how deep to cut the slot. It just needs to be deep enough so the broach can enter the bore, then you can shim from there, after the first pass. I would do a test part before I committed to the flywheel.

Dave