Hemingway 1/12 Ransomes and May horizontal engine

Bit of fettling and tidying up of the Ransomes engine ready for the weekend, mainly finally getting around to making proper fastenings to replace the temporary slotted screws that I had been using to hold it together

Excellent    You are at the transition from a pile of bits to an engine 

Thanks Roger! I'm quite pleased with how its coming together now.
I started on the eccentrics last night, beginning with the water pump one. I first centre drilled it in the lathe after facing and then moved it to the mill where I picked up the centre and drilled another one the required offset. I then put it back in the lathe, centred and turned the OD including the centre ridge, the backside I used a small grooving tool to machine. Recentred it and machined the boss complete with reamed hole. It still needs a keyway but I shall do that at the same time as the one for the flywheel. The kit has you make these from bronze with brass straps but I prefer the look of cast iron ones (plus I had a suitable piece to make them from in my box of bits)

Its been a while with one thing another, mainly cracking on with the 88" rebuild (I really need to update that thread) but fancied getting back into this tonight and made a start on the eccentric straps, a job I've been putting off a little bit. Marked out the basic shape and then machined the 4 halves to final overall size to give me datum edges so I can drill and tap the holes and shape them after boring on the lathe.

Some nice bluing and marking out there.  And the parts neatly prepared for the further operations ...    I've got all the usual marking out kit, as most of us probably have, but not so much of it seems to be done these days, by me included.  But somehow it always looks like a proper way of approaching the making of model engine parts, it links through to the tradition of the hobby.  Dave

Good to see you back working on the engine....

Been a bit of a break again with one thing and another but keen to get back into this and so thought I would start by actually finishing off some smaller jobs Ive been putting off. Firstly I thought Id look at the crankshaft and fit the crank web properly. This was fitted with loctite 638 and then drilled and reamed for a 1/16" taper pin before filing flush. First time using taper pins and pleased with how its gone. Next op on this is to machine the keyway, my thinking is I can line it up with the web doing it this way around. You may also notice my new item of workshop equipment and one of the reasons I've had a break from this is my UPT (one of the many parts to the spiral of tools to make tools)

Good to see you back on the engine, crankshaft is looking good ............following along 

Yes, good to see progress. 
I built the UPT several years ago and really enjoy using it, I haven't made everything for it but enough bits and pieces for it to be a pretty handy addition to my shop.

Dave

Your situation is tending to resemble my kind of progress with my model engineering projects over the years, with the rather long and unintended gaps, and other builds intervening as mood and interest dictates!  The pillar tool, though,  is well worth the diversion, makes using small taps so much less fraught, and much quicker as well. Recently tapped about 60  7BA holes in the cylinder blocks of a Stuart triple engine, that would have been some business without the UPT ..
But getting back to your engine build is a great idea :  uncompleted projects that already have many hours of careful work tied up in them become a bit vulnerable to an uncertain future of being a box of bits that never quite makes it to being the intended attractive object. Dave

Thanks everyone, was getting a bit fed up of it looking at me everytime I went in the shed.

Did a bit more tonight and got the outer bearing pedestal finished. The drawing has the cap held on by 9BA bolts going through the whole pedestal but I drilled and tapped 10BA so its similar to the main bearing. I then did a trial fit of the crankshaft to make sure everyrhing still turns now the crankweb is pinned in its final position (there is a journal on the crank that fits in the bearing so wanted to double check that that hadnt tightened up). Im going to have to start thinking of a base soon for this.

https://youtube.com/shorts/01RKqK8ae8A?is=UEbMe0FYx7rnGQXD

Nice to see some movement and I can definitely hear some puffing noises going on