Some of you may of seen the engine in the show your garage section in brew room, here is the tender, the sides are held on by gravity at the moment - its not really a welding project, but I guess its creative metal work which many of us enjoy
HI Luke, Thanks for your compliment
The only bits i have bought was the wheel castings, these were raw casting, i bought some larger ones for the main engine, and the cylinders too.
the rest is made from stock material and off cuts i could find.
Oh i forgot the copper for the boiler too.
I started buiding the frames first from 1/8" mild steel and just started to build bits on to it.
The brass sides is 1/16" sheet, i cheated a little, i did the profile on a 5 axis CNC milling machine my filing is good but not that good !
My grandad made an engine and tender. No cnc, he was an old school engineer. Everything by hand, proper lathe (where gear changes are done by manually moving the belt!) he made a lot of the parts rather than buy unless necessary.
I helped out a lot as a kid so know how much work is involved in these things. He died last year so its going to a museum where a model club is based. I've been offered all the plans if I wanna build my own tho
Re luke:5 axis milling machine? work? friends in high places?
I slipped it in at work, was easier to do a program and mill it on one hit rather than band saw and file it
Re: SHUG,
"Old skool "is the best .. and im sure your grandad did a fine job too.
I done a coulpe of things on CNC machines, just to save a little time and takes some hard work out of it, 99% I have done at home in my work shop over the last 15 years ! also many jigs and holding fixtures for those tricky bits.
Hi Jim,
I keep saying "next year"
But its coming along now. I do enjoy working on it. Also like to have a nosy what others are up to on here..
Makes a change from watching Big brother (yuk)