Dec 2017
Bluewater Bulletin
Bluewater Model Engineering Society Sarnia, Ontario
Vol. 33 No.2 November 2017 Editor John Lovegrove
Our next meeting will be on
December 11th, 2017 @ 7:30 pm
Northern Collegiate Room 128, Indian Road, Sarnia.
The November Meeting
My appeal to allow us to go back to using the machine shop at "Northern" was rejected. Despite the arguments I put forward, they would not deviate from the new policy that rooms with "special equipment" will not be made available to outside groups. However, Kris Davis, the Community Use of Schools Coordinator, did offer to see if a room more suitable than the cafeteria was available. So, Bruce Mannerow and myself met with her at the school on the Friday before our meeting and were shown a couple of options. Either would have been better than the cafeteria so the arrangement made was that we would let our members look at these rooms, when we met on the Monday, then decide.
This was therefore the first item of business. Kris Davis came along again, she took everyone to look at the rooms on offer and the decision was made to use the music room, 128, so we stayed there for the rest of the meeting. It is not far from the machine shop, we can park in the same area as before and the room is close to an access door.
Continuing with the meeting itself; as usual, our Treasurer gave his report and we are still solvent.
On the less happy side Keith Orr has suffered a stroke. I went into the hospital a few times to see him and he has been recovering well. He is now out of hospital and plans to be at the December meeting. I am sure we all wish him well.
Bruce brought in the CD he talked about last meeting with all sorts of machining information. It was available for anyone to borrow.
He also talked about Tom Lipton and the books he has written as training aids for machinists. Looking on the web, a couple are mentioned: Metalworking - Doing it Better and Metalworking - Sink or Swim. Bruce also talked about his technique for machining a six-sided block with faces at true right angles.
There was some discussion about NYCNC. Apparently, they have now moved out of the big city to Zanesville OH in order to have more space for their extensive collection of equipment.
Show and Tell
Bruce is making further progress with his 4½" Howitzer and the chassis now has axles. The wheels are the same pattern as on his 18 pounder and he cast the spokes for
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKFU49w1DAo
There is also a video that they have made of a tour through the Starrett factory in Athol MA. This company really has some amazing equipment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7JqXbm-Nwo
Last month Bruce talked about the 3D printers at the Library. He has pursued this further and made a 3D drawing of a valve body, then had it printed. At the first attempt it came out really tiny but after making some changes a more realistic item was produced.
There was some discussion about the components for a 3" scale Allchin traction engine that was started by Garry Wilcox. Apparently, these items are still available. (Garry’s son Craig has been trying to sell them.)
Peter Esser was present at the meeting and is still involved in his clock-making (repairing) hobby. He now has a grandfather clock that he is working on.
Wells Foundry in London was discussed: There are some indications that the new Wells generation running the company is more amenable to doing small one-off jobs. No one was able to confirm this but Ed Spencer talked about the excellent results he has had with Molten Metallurgy in Paris/Brantford. Ted Guiducci is his contact there. Looking at their websites, both companies now use electric furnaces for melting the metal. Presumably the environmental people have put the kibosh on old-style cupolas. Maybe you get a better product as well because there is better control of the composition and temperature of what is being poured.
In the interesting fact series, Bruce had found some information on drills: If you take all the variations of material, handing, tip grinding pattern etc. etc, to cover the range up to ½", apparently over 30,000 different drills are involved. (When you look in the catalogue of a major tool supplier like MSC there are certainly pages and pages of different drills.)
Neil Blackstock mentioned that he has a set of castings for a Mountaineer narrow gauge locomotive of the type used during WWI for transporting supplies.
The drawings supplied are very vague when it comes to the oil and water pumps (they are even shown the wrong way around) and nothing is shown about how to make the inlet and discharge connections. Neither is there any provision on the oil pan casting for a connection to go to the pump. Since the oil capacity is very limited in the existing design I did make an oil pan extension piece and I was anticipating connecting into that. However, that is not proving easy to do so I now plan to make another oil pan extender piece specifically designed to mate up with the pump inlet manifold and also give a little more oil capacity.
Anyway, here is the oil pump and completed inlet manifold. (One
these out of a thermoset resin. Having already made the mould he can now use it to crank out the spokes for the wheels on his new project.
Stu Brownlow brought along the machinist cube he made. This is a bit like a set of Russian dolls with two smaller cubes inside the larger one. Stu outlined the approach taken but as is usual nowadays, one can find a YouTube video showing how it is all done.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xw3GzqgWg-8
can also see the oil pan extender between the engine block and the oil pan casting.)
A Picture from My UK Vacation
The key points seem to be making up the special tool to cut grooves radially outwards from the central holes made initially in each face. By doing this on all 6 faces, if the groove depths are great enough, the inner cubes will be released from the outer ones.
Just to fill in a little space, here is a picture of the Puffing Billy replica at Beamish:
This all works fairly well on 5 faces but something has to be done before taking cuts on the 6th side otherwise when the inner cubes are released, they will probably jam up on the tool and everything will be wrecked. The answer seems to be to use hot melt adhesive to temporarily hold everything in place while the final machining is carried out. I have been trying to get back to working on my Sealion. I never seem to get anything done during the summer and the last time I did get to working on it I finished the oil pump and then moved on to making a manifold to draw in oil from the oil pan. The first manifold turned out reasonably well but I got a dimension wrong. I then needed 4 tries to get the proper one right.
Meetings for the rest of the Season
2017
December 11th
2018
January 8th
February 12th
March 19th (12th is March Break)
April 9th
May 14th
June 11th
Our Website
https://sites.google.com/site/bluewatermes/
TSME Newsletters
https://sites.google.com/site/tsmeweb/the-modeller
"Merry Christmas" - John Lovegrove
"BA HUMBUG", Is it deer hunting season yet - Bruce Mannerow