So, Back in the WKSP and have been milling out the standards to reduce the weight from 300 gms to 203 gms . so still more weight to lose !!  spending quite a lot of time in the allotment and also needing to water as we have only had half an inch in the past two months, so where did all the Aprill showers go??!!!

Willy

Lacking any 1/4 x 1/8 flat brass I spent an inordinate amount of time cutting and filing down a piece from some 3/4" angle to make the valve rod Anyway, got it to size and put in the holes and made some tool steel filing buttons to do the ends - can't remember what's best to do with these, maybe just red hot and quench to harden?

Those taper locks are awesome, what a neat execution for the size as well. 

I'm watching this with anticipation - we briefly studied steam driven (later electric driven?) steering (and gun turret) motor servomechanisms as part of controls theory in engineering skool.  The origins of modern controls theory were actually employed by the British to improve the speed and pointing accuracy of turreted naval gun batteries, which were done by manual labor.   

I do need to look into the local RC clubs.  My neighbor does RC gliders, which sound neat, but I'd like to do some of the traction machines and maybe a sub too - a club up north of me a ways has room for all 3 pursuits, something I'll look into once I'm fully retired.

Sounds like some fun future hobby time!  Thing I like about the subs is that its a lot like flying (which I stink at) but much slower motion, and if you mess up and bump something its not a big deal.
The US National Archives has a bunch of plans sets for Navy ships here:
https://www.archives.gov/research/cartographic/ship-plans
The indexing is good for the paper plans that they scanned in and have online, there are also a LOT of plans online that were scanned from microfilm, those are poorly indexed and take a lot of searching through page by page. I've gotten engine plans for steering engines, winch engines, etc for the early battleships, and I've noticed they also have plans for turret mechanisms, though I've never looked at them in detail - I think most of those were electric motor driven but not sure about the early ones.

Sounds like you have a good start, regardless the method.   

If you hold the drawing sideways and tilt at 10deg it may help, the red box is the overall stock size