The Steamboating Forum

The rods (steel center section) were machined from 1 1/2 x 3 cold rolled bar stock which left me with these and two 5 gal pails of swarf. Not seen is the 1/2 dia bore that runs lengthwise through the entire 13 inch length of the rod. The drilling procedure that Paul E. outlined in his articles in the Funnel worked quite well.

Ken

Made from bar stock. Yeah, I'll bet that produced a bunch of chips. They look great.

-Ron

More bits & bobs for the York. These are the weighshaft support bearings



Cheers

Ken

Whooo!!!!! Pretty!

The results of the work done over the summer.

Parts just came back from the CNC



Just need to drill & ream the last hole and install the bushing

Ken

Beautiful work Ken. So what all has been completed of your engine up to this point?

Thanks Wes,

I keep a spreadsheet of the BOM and currently I have about 60% of the parts completed. Some big parts are on the list to be started in the near future. These would include the back columns, bedplate, cylinders & crank. Before these, I'm going to bang out some of the "simple turning" jobs over the winter. These parts include a bunch of valve gear pivot pins, thrust bearing housing & standoffs, and maybe some of the water pump parts.

The completed parts include the pieces in this thread's photos in addition to the eccentrics & eccentric rods, crank rods, front columns, much of the air pump assembly and most of the threaded hardware (studs & bolts)

If I had to guess, I probably have two - three years of work left, then onto the boiler and hull.

Cheers

Ken

Ken,

I noticed on the Stevenson links that the pins appear to brazed on the ends. They look really nice, how were these cleaned up afterwards? Or was the brazing controlled somehow where the medium did not spread onto other surfaces? I'm doing some brazing and I need to clean off areas where the metal followed the heat. I was thinking about sandblasting?

-Ron

Ron,

Yes, the pivot is brazed onto the link. In the photos it's not yet drilled for the bushing.

I didn't use anything to control the flow of braze material during brazing. Cleanup was done with the use of a file on the flat areas followed with a quick bead blast to 'normalize' the surface. I felt the bead blast left too rough of a surface and this was taken back down through the use of sandpaper and a bit of elbow-grease.

I find that using good brazing techniques goes a long way toward reducing the amount of cleanup needed. Too much heat is usually the culprit leading to excessive spread of the braze material. Clean well, fixture, use the right flux for your filler, heat evenly around the joint and get the heat off the joint once the filler runs the joint and all should go well. Miss any of these and it will be necessary to play with the joint to get a good flow and this leads to overheating, or needing to use excess filler, all with potentially bad results.

To me brazing is a bit like painting in that if I resist the urge to make it just a bit better all turns out, if I mess with it when I know I should stop, all goes to heck in a hand basket!

I've had the best luck brazing steel using ESAB 's All State silver brazing alloy & All State 110 flux. It's available at welding supply houses that carry ESAB products (General in our area). I won't go back to any of the fluxes sold for the Jewelry trade (Harris, etc)

Be sure to tell us how your project comes out!

Cheers,

Ken