Nov. 2019
Bluewater Bulletin
Bluewater Model Engineering Society Sarnia, Ontario
Vol. 35 No.1 October 2019 Editor John Lovegrove
Our next meeting will be on
November 11th, 2019 @ 7:30 pm
Northern Collegiate Room 125, Indian Road, Sarnia.
The October Meeting
Because of the threatened CUPE strike, we had
received notice that the school would not be available
for our October meeting. My wife’s quilting group
uses a room in the basement of the Cannon Davis
Memorial Church for their sewing sessions and she
kindly made arrangements for us to use this for our
meeting. As it turned out the room proved quite
satisfactory and it was decided that we should pursue
using it on a regular basis next season. One
downside is that parking is not too convenient and
another is that there are some issues over locking the
entrance door after everyone has arrived. However, if
the school board keeps increasing the fees the way
they have been, we will likely need to look for
somewhere else.
I enquired about a refund for not being able to use the
school. Apparently, we will not be charged for
October but there will be no pro-rata refund on the
insurance because that is for the year irrespective of
how many times we use the school.
Being the first-meeting-of-the-season it was also our
AGM. I counted 14 members present so the turn out
was fairly good. The main order of business was to
elect club officers for the 2019-2020 season and all
positions were declared open. No one apart from the
incumbents wished to step forward, therefore the
existing set of officers was returned unanimously on
the motion of Brian Lawson/Tony Koolen. The
executive therefore remains as follows: President;
Bruce Mannerow, Secretary/Newsletter Editor; John
Lovegrove, Treasurer; Nick Jonkman and Librarian;
Don Hayes.
Bruce lead off the discussion talking about the oil leak
on his Chinese mill. The rubber in the oil seal on the
main spindle had become hard and so it did not retain
the oil properly. Getting everything apart and
replacing the seal with something more suitable was
not too difficult, the real problem was getting it all
back together again. I gave him a hand doing this
and getting the shafts, gear clusters and selector
arms all in the way they are supposed to be is quite a
task. (A midget with 4 hands is what you really need.)
Anyway, it is now all back together and working again.
conventional spray painting with the coating material
reaching relatively inaccessible places.
He went on to talk about the subject of metrology or
the technology of measurement. There are several
videos prepared by Mitutoyo that can be brought up
with the following link.
https://www.mitutoyo.com/online-training/
A lot of what they discuss is really too advanced for
what we do but it is interesting to see what has to be
done in shops that work to a high standard of
precision and/or have to work to recognized quality
standards with proper calibration of measuring
instruments against traceable standards.
Several of us know Rick Carlsted (we seem to bump
into him every year at NAMES.) One of his claims to
fame is that he has made a model of the steam
engine used in the Ironclad ship “Monitor,” which was
involved in the American Civil War. Apparently, he is
now a recognized expert on the engine and people
regularly come to him for information. This is a link to
the YouTube video showing the model working:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWn8gQ9Ykpk
This is a link to the Wikipedia article on the ship itself:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Monitor
As is frequently the case, the model has been built to
a much higher standard than the original engine.
Bruce’s next item of discussion was the plans service
previously run by the Model Engineer magazine.
Their stripped-down operation no longer offers this
but it has been taken over by sarik hobbies.
https://www.sarikhobbies.com/model-engineerbuilder/
There was some discussion about Eagle Rock
knurling tools. These have a reputation for being
really good. Here is a link to their website – the really
good part comes with a $$$ price tag!
https://www.eaglerockonline.com
Show and Tell etc.
For the last meeting Tony Koolen brought along the
rear wheels for his Case traction engine. This time he
brought the front wheel assembly that had been
finished using the powder coating and sintering
process. One virtue of this technique is that an
electrostatic system is used to help apply the powder
and this results in a more uniform coating than
(Apparently, the steam engines used in normal
service could not do this.) Although the tunnel
locomotives burned coke or anthracite to minimize
smoke there were still a number of fatalities with
people being overcome by the fumes. Electrification
was carried out in 1907-08 to solve this problem and
the electric locomotives did the job until diesels came
into service in the late 50s. The normal locomotives
then had enough power to pull the trains straight
through without the need to stop and hook up a
special locomotive. During the electric era, power
was provided by a coal fired generating station on the
Port Huron side running at 3300V, 25Hz.
One is tempted to look back on steam locomotives as
great big powerful things but in reality they were not.
While in England recently I was reading some
displays about the suburban railways around London.
For a while both steam and electric locomotives were
being considered but aside from the smoke issues
with steam, the locomotives just could not get the
trains up to speed quickly enough.
Before I get on to Chuck Outhouse’s show and tell I
will mention my own: One of the last Items I need for
my Sealion engine is the carburettor.
He had to make some blanking pieces to prevent the
coating getting inside the hub region. He passed
these round, so that we could do the “thumb nail” test
and the coating does seem very tough.
With all that was going on I forgot to take any
photographs so the one above and that below were
taken by Tony and Bruce respectively and sent to me
afterwards.
Bruce has been working on the breech block for his
howitzer and below is a picture of the partially
completed item.
While working on it he experiencedone of the model engineer’s worst nightmares -breaking off a tap when he already had a lot of workinto the job. He eventually managed to mill it out witha carbide end mill, put in a plug and start over.
Don Eastman is embarking on his next project – a
model of the Sarnia Tunnel Station as it was in the
1940s. He had some pictures of the station from that
era showing the overhead power lines on gantries
and the electric locomotives used to pull trains
through the tunnel.
I have a book that was published at around the time
when the new tunnel was completed. This outlines
the history of the original tunnel that was opened in
1891. Special steam locomotives (decapods) were
built by Baldwin with sufficient tractive effort to pull
trains up the gradient either side of the tunnel.
The rotating part has indexing holes at 10 deg
intervals. They are marked 0, 1, 2, 3 etc. up to 35
which in reality correspond to 0, 10, 20, 30 …to 350.
degrees. The stationary part then has a series of
holes marked 0 to 9 and there is a pin to align the
chosen holes on the stationary and rotating parts.
As shown above it is aligning the zero holes on the 2
parts. The stationary holes are in fact 110 apart and
act like a kind of Vernier.
However, for manypurposes you only need to use one of these (assume0). The 36 holes on the rotating part are divisible by2, 3, 4, 6, 9 & 12, so in these cases the pin can juststay in the 0 position on the stationary part and theappropriate hole selected in the rotating part.
However, if you need other intervals you have to
change the pin position in the stationary part as well.
If the above was used to start with, below is what is
needed to move through 450 (1/8th of a turn.)
I have looked atvarious options here but since I have a casting for theoriginal Westbury version I thought that I would give ita try. (I have not been very happy with Westbury’scarburettors I have made so far and it will beinteresting to see how this one turns out.) Anyway,here is the partly completed main body.
Chuck has bought a 5C spin indexer (from Busy Bee I
believe.) These are a fairly popular item, I have one
and frequently use it drill holes or machine faces at
different angular positions around a workpiece. The
limitations are that you have to be able to hold the
item in a 5C collet and the angular resolution is only 1
deg.
Rather than trouble Chuck for a picture, the one
below is of mine. I have also left this item to last
because there seemed to be some uncertainty at the
meeting about how these devices are used.
Basically, it is easy to use the device for the simple
divisions (an integer submultiple of 36 – I think that is
the approved mathematical term) but you have to be
very careful for the more complicated ones. I
understand that Chuck has thoughts about using it for
cutting gears. Here the limitations will become very
apparent. In the normal range of tooth numbers; 10,
12, 15, 18, 20, 24, 30, 36, 40, 45, 60, 72 and 90 are
all possible with the 10 resolution, but apart from
these you are out of luck.
Meetings for the Season
These will be as follows:
November 11th, 2019
December 9th, 2019
January 13th, 2020
February 10th, 2020
March 9th, 2020
April 20th, 2020
May 11th, 2020
June 8th 2020
As far as possible it is the normal second-Monday-inthe-
month schedule and this time it works for March
because the school break starts the following week.
However, our luck runs out in April because the
second Monday is Easter Monday so we have to
delay a week.
Our Website
https://sites.google.com/site/bluewatermes/
John Lovegrove