This should be interesting to watch if she sticks around. 

No pun intended, I'm sure.  (Neighbor's daughter was on the Middlebury College champion hockey team.)

dave

Well, of course the proof of the instructions will be how well the kit goes together.  But the pages you show, with lots of photos, looks quite good.

dave

Jeff, which EV?  I'll be interested in hearing about how your trip went, as well as some photos of the new treasures.  

I should get back to the machine shop this afternoon.  Lunch with one of my geology profs first...

dave

That structure fits nicely in the scene, doesn't look mis-sized. 

dave

G'day, all.  It's 67, up from 59!! last night, heading to 83.  Still humid, but not oppressively so.  

It looks like the new paint I was using on the pulleys went bad in the bottle.  It didn't mix well, and has a lot of gunk in the bottle clogging the nozzle.  And that's after 4 minutes in the vortex mixer!  I'll look at the paint job today and decide what to do next (besides checking the other bottles in that set.)  

The morning is booked, cleaners then lunch with one of my UNH geology profs.  I'm sure he wants to complain about being department chair in the face of substantial budget cuts.  I do try to help out by sending the department some money each year for student projects, and occasionally I hear back on how they spent that (one time for unbudgeted travel expenses when the ticket price doubled, another for external lab charges to support analysis of samples...)

dave

I got the main line shaft hangers installed (I did it so the shaft is removable.)  I used thick CA and accelerator.  These will take a bit of stress particularly when I go to install the belts, so I wanted a tight bond. 

The paints I wanted for the pulleys arrived, so I painted them, too.  This is the "Green Stuff World" Steel & Silver metallic set.  Frankly, I was disappointed with those paints, there was a lot of gunk in the bottle even after 2 full 2-minute sessions on the Vortex mixer.  It did spray OK.  The color I wanted has a "tin" sense to it, which is close to the pulley color on the Iron_Joney video pulleys.  Tomorrow, I'll probably test out those pulleys on the main shaft.  Gluing the pulleys into position will have to wait until I get the auxiliary shafts constructed and installed. 

dave

On another topic:  It seems that most things ordered via Amazon Prime will arrive -next Wednesday-.  I did a quick sample, and found 1 thing that could be delivered tomorrow, just about everything else was next week.  

dave

Showers started this morning, cloudy for the rest of the day, but much cooler.  I'm not complaining.  

Turns out the condensate pump for the air conditioner wasn't working, that's why there's a puddle underneath the heat exchanger.  A quick call to the service company told me what to check, the GCFI outlet had tripped.  I'll have to keep an eye on that.  At least the new drain hose on the dehumidifier is working (no leaks.)  

Off to do the main line shaft on the machine shop...

dave

I stumbled across this video on the last extant gasworks in the UK:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-xBegNoKnI  If you have a gasholder, this will show you how the gas was produced (from coal) and the process and buildings for that production.  LOTS of modeling inspiration here.  Gasworks were common in the US through the post WWII period.

dave

Thanks for the unboxing photos.  So far, that looks like a well organized kit.   How are the instructions?

dave

Cool and rainy in SE NH, but we can use the rain.  I'm not complaining about temperature, 66 heading to 75.  

Tom, I recently moved my prescriptions from CVS to the local supermarket.  The people in the store are good, but CVS' IT -sucks-.  When their phone system hung up on me, that was the last straw.  Their automated systems lose prescriptions and auto-fill others, despite my asking them to NOT do that.  

My steel 'shafts' arrived last night, so I'll probably install the shaft hangers today.  I'm trying to decide if I can do that without gluing the shaft into position.  (2 ways to do this:  (1) locate and glue the hangers onto the shaft, and then install the entire assembly.  Advantage:  easiest.  Disadvantage:  everything that goes on the shaft has to be in position.  (2) Glue the hangers but let the shaft float.  Advantage:  I can then install different pulleys on the shaft if I change my mind again about machine locations.  Disadvantage:  A lot more fiddly!.)  

dave

Quote from: nycjeff on July 09, 2025, 07:51:35 PMHello Dave, it's coming along really nicely and I'm learning quite a bit about steam powered shops. Good job Sir

Yeah, I find this kind of "in depth research into something I knew nothing about" to be my favorite part of the hobby.

dave

Quote from: PRR Modeler on July 09, 2025, 05:30:07 PMI agree with Jerry Dave. Are you going to blacken the shafts?

I got some steel wire for shafts (arrived late today.)  The mock-ups use some different stuff.  Looking at videos of machine shops, the shafts tend to be lightly weathered steel.   So in short, I probably won't weather/paint/color the steel wire shafts.     From an Iron_Jonsey video:


Since I need to do 12 paddles, I'll think about a jig to cut them to the same size and drill the hole.

dave

Since I'm going to attach the drive shaft to the 45 degree braces (probably not the best prototypical approach, but it works well), I decided the easiest way to do this would be to tilt the structure so those braces are parallel to the ground:


Then after pondering shifters some more, including the fact that the shifter control arm would also need to fit on the white metal shaft, I decided that it's better to "give up" and create new shifters from pieces of styrene.  Here's a mock-up, not quite oriented correctly.  But you can see the shifters, the arm, and the 2 wheels on the auxiliary shaft.  For The Real Thing, the aux shaft will be cut into 2 pieces, to go onto either side of the cone pulley.  But with this, I can work out the wood framing that I'll glue each aux shaft/shifter assembly to.


Finally, particularly the paired wheels need to be perpendicular to the draft shaft.  So I did a jig to drill out their center hole:

Any comparison between this and a 4-piece chuck is deliberate    Something I learned from watching all those machine tool videos.

dave

Well, Karl, that must have been 'exciting' for the caretaker.  I'm sure Words Were Uttered...  Good luck with the internet install, it's my sense that fiber in general goes in better than copper wiring.  

Muggy but much cooler here today.  In a couple minutes, I'll head down to the train room, hit the exercise machine, and then prepare for the new driveshaft wires that should arrive later today.  Another thing I ordered was a set of metallic paints (that I learned about from that Barbados Rex YouTube channel.)  These should work well for getting different metal tones on the driveshaft, pulleys, machine tools, etc.  That should arrive tomorrow.  But while I'm waiting for that stuff, I'll mock up one of the aux drive shafts that gets 2 narrow pulleys (driven and idler) and cone pulley, along with the shifter.  I should be able to assemble those parts on the bench, and then glue the entire assembly to the ceiling joists on the shop above the machines.

dave