Corrugated Roofing

The steam shovel model has progressed to a point where it could have its corrugated roofing installed. But where do you find "scale" roofing?
Make it of course.

Forming roll dies were machined for a hand cranked Chinese built beading machine with an 18" throat. At first it would not work very well because it was not rigid enough and flexed. However machining some of the ridges off the rolls it works much better, as can be seen by the sample tested.

The metal being formed was salvaged from the side of a discarded clothes drier. That is a good source of material. I use it all the time. Now I can proceed and form the roof, and the machine has enough throat that I believe I can do it in one piece if I start at the center and work both ways.
After I showed the sample piece to a friend, he suggested that I could start manufacturing scrubbing boards. That is real good advice, except 100 years too late.
Birk

Boiler Boring

Several days ago I started work on the boiler for the model steam shovel. It needed to be 5" diameter to be scale size, and I was able to find a piece of 5" seamless tubing down at the plant where I use to work. Real good stuff. Only the wall was so thick it about broke my arm to pick it up. It would probably withstand several thousand pounds per square inch internal pressure which was also a bit more than I needed, so I decided to bore it out until I had a more reasonable wall thickness and get rid of some of the weight. My standard steady rest would not accommodate the 5" diameter so I rigged up a Rube Goldberg type steady rest from some pieces of flat bar stock that was laying around. I did not even cut the pieces to length. For contact supports I used skate board bearings. (Those kids will learn not to leave their skate boards laying around unattended)



The bottom ends of the bars are bolted to a 3/4" plate that is clamped to the bed, but as you can see the upper ends are just clamped together with some sturdy C-clamps. The boring bar was only long enough to reach half way through, and when this picture was taken one end had already been bored out and the boiler tube flipped end for end and a couple passes had been made in the second end. The whole operation went very smoothly from start to finish, and the thing has been tore down and put back on the metals rack.
It is such a simple thing that I hesitate even posting it, but perhaps someone will pick up and idea that they can use sometime.
Birk

More Rivets

I better bring you up to date on the model steam shovel. As of today I have the bucket complete and operational. I put lots of rivets in it. Hopefully the same number as in the original. Oh!, and it has teeth too. It is always exciting when babies get teeth.


That almost finishes the "shovel" end of the machine, Now I need to move back towards the rear and work on the "Steaming" end.


Rivets really set a model off, and I install a lot of them. There are dozens in that bucket alone. Rarely do I ever set one with a hammer. I always use a rivet press. It is so much faster, and easier, and I end up with a nice looking head on both ends. Shown below is my assortment of rivet presses.


The red one is a commercially built one that my dad once used on the farm on his mowing machines. It will easily squeeze a 3/16" rivet. The gray one is one that I made out of 3/4" plate steel to install 1/8" rivets in the frame of a model steam roller, and I also used it to rivet the frame for the Steam Shovel shown above. The tiny little press was used to install hundreds of rivets in that Hay Press and a model Manure Spreader. For those rivets, snipped off 19 gage wire brads were used. They are about .035" diameter. They have heads that look like finishing nails, until after they are pressed and then they look like rivet heads. The press with the deep throat was made just last Friday, specifically to rivet the bucket together. For that I used 3/32" rivets.
All the presses have cups in the anvil and screw the shape of the head. If it is desired to change the shape of the head, just change the shape of the cup. For screws I use square head set screws or socket head screws because they are a little harder than a regular bolt. The last two presses I used a piece of tool steel for the anvil. That makes changing the shape very simple.
If pressing rivets seems a little strange, dig out your century old history books and see how they did it. Yes, they used jack hammers sometimes, but where ever it was feasible they used a press, big ones!
Birk

Post Drill

You know, my wife and I actually have interests in common; Babies. Of course she prefers the people kind, grand babies, great grand babies, other peoples babies. Where we differ is that I prefer the mechanical kind. I seem to have this warped mind. Most often when I see a full size mechanical something or other, I have a desire to make a "baby one" of it. So I turn out babies as fast as I can work them into the schedule.

Today's baby picture is of a blacksmith post drill. The reason that they are called a post drill, is not because they were made to drill posts, but because they ware almost always mounted on a post or column the the old workshops. This one is a 2" scale model of a full size one in my collection of antiques. To give an indication of size, the base it is mounted on is 3/4" thick. I hope you like looking at it.

Work Bench

I ordered from Lindsay Publications, one of those wonderful "Model Engineering" books written by Henry Greenly in England, and published in 1915. That century old book is as interesting today as it was when it was new. In the first chapter Mr. Greenly discusses setting up a shop for model building; space, tools, machines, etc. One of the highly recommended machines was a hand shaper. Shapers must have become obsolete cause I could not find one, so I proceeded to make my own, by looking at the picture in the book. There were no dimensions given so I just had to guess at them. Therefore I do not know if it is the right size, but here is a picture of the finished "hand" shaper.



Another very important tool was a good bench vise, so I proceeded to make one of those to go along with the shaper.


Then they were mounted on my workbench. As you can plainly see, I'm now ready to tackle any small job that comes along.


Yes, the tools all work! The files for instance, are tips from needle files. The tin snips will cut foils, though its just hard to get your fingers through the handles. The brace actually has a working chuck with jaws like a full size one.
Birk

Ball Turner

A ball turner is kind of a unique accessory for your lathe. Most every machinist at one time or another will have a need to turn spherical shapes. The easiest way is with a ball turner. You can buy one, but they are simple enough to make yourself, and there are all kinds of instructions out there on building them. Usually the cutting tool travels in a circular arc in a horizontal plane or else in vertical plane along the centerline of the workpiece. I have built a couple of them, one quite large with a capacity of about 6" diameter and the other smaller, with maybe 2" diameter. I'll just show the small one today. I need to mention this is a demonstration picture. Normally when I'm turning ball ends I hold the work in one of those 5C collet chucks. That way I do not risk having the chuck jaws strike the ball turner, and cause all sorts of commotion.



On this one I used some features of a plan that I found, but modified it so that it would work on the quick change tool post. I have found it handy for making the balls for fly ball governors, ball ends for guard rail posts for railing around models, etc. One use was to form the ball ends on a helping hands work holding fixture for silver soldering.



For this demonstration picture I just clamped three pieces of brass and positioned them together. From here it would be a simple task to daub the joints with flux and silver solder it together. To assemble that same configuration without the fixture would be a difficult task.

By the way if you do not want to build your own helping hand fixture Harbor Freight has an in store coupon sale going on right now, till Feb. 11, for $1.97. (normally $3.99) It is smaller and does not have as many joints to move and position things as my home made one, but at that price I could not pass it up, even though I already had one. They also include a magnifying lens. Take that off attach a nice handle and do a little detective work on the side.



In closing I suppose a ball turner could be compared to a bull on the farm. It is not the amount of work it does to earn his keep, it's the occasional service it performs.
Birk