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Bluewater Bulletin
Bluewater Model Engineering Society Sarnia, Ontario
Vol. 33 No.5 February 2018 Editor John Lovegrove
Our next meeting will be on
March 19th, 2018 @ 7:30 pm
Northern Collegiate Room 128, Indian Road, Sarnia.
The February Meeting
The weather was better this time so our London and other out-of-town members managed to get to the meeting therefore the attendance was quite good.
Our Treasurer was present once again so we did have a report on our finances.
We had a visitor from "across the river"; Dave Dazer and we asked him to introduced himself: He is a retired school teacher and currently runs the Thomas Edison Museum in Port Huron. His main interest is in restoring Edison cylinder phonographs which means making some very tricky parts and he is looking for input on this – more later in "show and tell." He is also interested in restoring clocks and had already met Peter Esser in this connection.
Bruce Mannerow talked about a few things: His lathe is Chinese made and the motor likewise. It has a problem with the capacitor vibrating and he is concerned about whether this could be serious. (He has already had to change out the motor on his Chinese mill.) If anyone does need to replace a motor capacitor, Ampro Electric, 257 Tecumseh St. specialize in electric motor repairs and carry a good range of them.
He has also been scouting out a few YouTube videos: If you Google "Old Tony" you can watch all sorts of interesting videos on making things. I looked at one where he is using a CNC mill to make gears. Some time ago I used this technique to make a simple gear for someone and as one might expect programing the cutter path to produce the necessary involute curves is not a trivial exercise.
Another item worth checking out is "Click Spring." They get into discussion about reconstructing The Antikythera Mechanism
He was also talking about an adaptor he has that allows one to connect a small propane torch (that typically comes with a 1 lb cylinder) to 20 lb cylinder. This makes running much cheaper since the small cylinders are an expensive way of buying the gas. He put together the set-up he has himself but ready-
made equipment should be available from the usual people. Since the small torches are designed to run
on propane at cylinder pressure (which is well over 100 psi at normal ambient temperatures) the flexible hose has to be rated accordingly.
One item of interest is that Princess Auto in London has now moved. They were formerly on Exeter Road but have moved to the other side of the highway not far from Costco. If you exit the 402 at the Wellington Rd. and head south, turn left at the lights (by Costco) and it is on your right - you cannot miss it.
We discussed it at the meeting and Brian Lawson forwarded the following link to Rick Sparber’s website:
http://rick.sparber.org
If you get on to the website there are several subjects to choose from. Metalworking is probably the one of most interest and under that there are yet more options. You could probably spend all day watching everything that is on his site.
I do feel a bit uneasy about putting all these links in the newsletter. A lot of it is interesting, some can even be helpful for what we do but if making things is your real hobby then if you are not careful you can waste a lot of time watching this stuff and not get anything done in the shop.
Show and Tell
Starting with Dave Dazer’s phonograph items, here is a photograph of the pieces he is trying to replicate (you have to avoid sneezing while you are examining them.)
So far as the components made from thin sheet metal are concerned, if having one side left with a solder coating is not a problem the best approach is likely to solder a piece of the starting material to a thicker substrate (probably brass.) You then have to find yourself a small end mill and try not to break it. End mills are available down to some very small sizes but they are not cheap. To make a number of any one component, my approach would be to use the CNC mill and write a program. In fact, CNC mills typically have very high spindle speeds (which you need for a small cutter) and once you have established a suitable feed rate you can maintain that totally consistently. In fact, it might be better to use a larger end mill to do some roughing out then use the tiny one for small details and tight radii. If anyone else would like to make some suggestions please go ahead.
Nick Jonkman has started on a scale model of the 1830 McCormick reaper. This is the machine that started agriculture on its road to mechanization.
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To celebrate the centenary of its introduction, International Harvester (that McCormick was absorbed into) make a 1/6 scale model. Now, Nick is making his own version of this. Currently he is working on the "fingers" for the cutter bar. Here is a picture of a picture of the earlier model with Nick’s parts laying on top. There would seem to be some challenging parts to this machine, particularly the bevel gears that will be needed.
Ed Spencer brought along one of the bar frames for the 4 ¾" gauge Bayer Garrett he is working on.
Bruce brought along his 4½" Howitzer chassis
to show progress. The completed wheels + "pipe boxes" and axles are now mounted on the chassis.
They were plasma cut by Diversified Metal Fabrication Inc in London. Ed is also trying to sell his Colchester lathe. He made the toolpost for the lathe and brought this along to show us.
He also had a box of collets to give away; the choice of sizes was either ¼" or ¼" or….
He also brought along his tailstock turret
The components involved, including one of the lip seals used in the water pump, are shown in the middle of the photograph.
I have expressed disappointment previously about the quality of components from Hemmingway kits.
with four "proper" chucks mounted in it.
I brought along the nearly-finished oil and water pumps for my Sealion. The designs have been modified somewhat from Westbury’s original drawings, especially for the water pump (left.) This will now incorporate back-to-back seals to prevent water getting into the oil (and vice-versa.) The cover plates are also sealed using "O" rings in non-circular grooves. (Machining these provided an interesting programing exercise.) The pumps are driven from the crankshaft using a worm/skew gear arrangement.
These machines were in use from around the turn of the 19th/20th centuries and the last one was taken out of service in 2002. One obvious question was how they were powered – the answer is electricity. Just google Hulett Ore Unloader and all sorts of stuff comes up. The Wikipedia website has a link to a YouTube video of the machines in operation - which is well worth watching. One strange feature is that there is some kind of "house" on the large, top tilting piece, presumably someone was in there looking after part of the operation but it must have been a strange sensation being tilted backwards and forwards all the time. This is Don’s model.
Taking the gears for the oil pump, the OD was not concentric with the bores. In the case of the water pump the bores were slightly skewed relative to the OD. Maybe they have problems sourcing good quality components. Don Eastman called me to see if I would like to get some photographs of his latest project (to keep him busy during the winter.) It is rather too large and delicate to bring to one of our meetings.
It is a scale model of a Hulett (ore) Unloader. This was used to unload bulk cargo from Great Lakes freighters before self unloaders came into being. The machine runs on 2 sets of rails that are parallel to the dock-side and between these are 4 sets of normal rails for the railroad cars that the cargo is being transferred into. By moving along the dock, the machine could be aligned with the deck hatches on the ship. The carriage on the top of the bridge like structure can then move out allowing the grab to be lowered into the hold and pick up ~10 tons of material each time. There is a kind of parallel motion arrangement to ensure that the piece holding the grab remains vertical. When the grab is full it is lifted up and the carriage moves back to unload. To limit the movement required it actually drops the load into a movable hopper inside/below the carriage and this then moves across to discharge into one of the rail-cars or all the way back to dump in a bulk storage area behind the railway lines
The operator (ore hog) sits in an operating station that is in the vertical piece supporting the grab (one can see the opening in the structure.) He can then see into the hold and operate the grab to pick up material. The grab could be rotated to get to the best position. The arrangement would obviously not get everything out of the hold so initially they had guys in there moving material around manually but later they lowered in a front-end loader to help finish the job.
This is a drawing pulled off the web
Meetings for the rest of the Season
2018
March 19th (12th is March Break)
April 9th
May 14th
June 11th
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John Lovegrove
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