Looking forward to the casting series. Enjoying your series as I am building up my skill set to construct a live steam loco. I'm in no rush and its great that you are a fellow South African as all the other great channels are typically from North America or UK.
Great tutorial! I use my 123-blocks to square stock in the chuck. I will remember the wet rag hack. I would like it if you could discuss press fit tolerances as well (not everyone has machinery handbooks).
I’d love to see a video about the home casting. I would like to be able to produce my own castings in cast iron for model engineering projects. I can’t find a good source of info for how to achieve the temperature to melt cast what to add once it’s melted etc.
May I ask your opinions on a couple of points. When it comes to machining cylinders, I take a clean-up cut off the valve face. Use this to align the 90 degrees, then cut the front cylinder face, then the rear and bore so that the bore is true to the rear cylinder face, pretty much as you do. Then I take the casting and put it in a mill with a rod the same size as the bore and tap this down in the vice. Then I can measure from the top of the rod and machine an accurate distance from the centre line of the bore to the valve face, with a bit of maths. This would seem to be more accurate than your masking tape method? I'd love to hear your thoughts. Secondly, and probably more straightforward, would the be a problem with using JB Weld to fill an inclusion in a casting rather than sleeving? JB Weld is rating to 260C, but I don't know if there are other factors that I'm not aware of. Thanks for taking the time to read my lengthy comment.
I always recommend staying with a method that works for the individual builder. Having said that; I would consider the tolerance stack up on your milling setup as well as the cutter CL relative to the valve face. The minute you take a part out of a chuck your accuracy starts to suffer. I normally check the outer bore dimension to the valve face with a vernier on the lathe as I go, but generally this dimension is not critical on our builds, and I won't re-chuck unless its considerably out. I can only speculate on the JB weld, personally I've never used it in this application. I would guess that volume change due to water absorption will be a greater issue. I suggest the following. Machining a test button (blind hole into the same material-fill with JB weld), skim the end and check that a strait edge passes over. Boil in water with a little steam oil and check with a straight edge. If you do this a couple of times with no issues then it should be ok.
@@Lukers_tinkering Thanks for your very helpful reply. If I need to fill an inclusion in a cylinder I'll try the test you suggest before committing it to the job. I'm just thinking ahead as I have some cylinder castings that I haven't tackled yet.
Looking forward to the casting series. Enjoying your series as I am building up my skill set to construct a live steam loco. I'm in no rush and its great that you are a fellow South African as all the other great channels are typically from North America or UK.
Fantastic channel I'm learning so much
Thanks, I'm glad its helpful.
This is a great channel. I always look forward to seeing your process.
Thanks! A little different on small aspects...
Very nice work sir
Thanks!
Great tutorial! I use my 123-blocks to square stock in the chuck. I will remember the wet rag hack. I would like it if you could discuss press fit tolerances as well (not everyone has machinery handbooks).
@@improviseddiy thanks, will do...
I’d love to see a video about the home casting. I would like to be able to produce my own castings in cast iron for model engineering projects. I can’t find a good source of info for how to achieve the temperature to melt cast what to add once it’s melted etc.
May I ask your opinions on a couple of points. When it comes to machining cylinders, I take a clean-up cut off the valve face. Use this to align the 90 degrees, then cut the front cylinder face, then the rear and bore so that the bore is true to the rear cylinder face, pretty much as you do. Then I take the casting and put it in a mill with a rod the same size as the bore and tap this down in the vice. Then I can measure from the top of the rod and machine an accurate distance from the centre line of the bore to the valve face, with a bit of maths. This would seem to be more accurate than your masking tape method? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Secondly, and probably more straightforward, would the be a problem with using JB Weld to fill an inclusion in a casting rather than sleeving? JB Weld is rating to 260C, but I don't know if there are other factors that I'm not aware of.
Thanks for taking the time to read my lengthy comment.
I always recommend staying with a method that works for the individual builder. Having said that; I would consider the tolerance stack up on your milling setup as well as the cutter CL relative to the valve face. The minute you take a part out of a chuck your accuracy starts to suffer. I normally check the outer bore dimension to the valve face with a vernier on the lathe as I go, but generally this dimension is not critical on our builds, and I won't re-chuck unless its considerably out.
I can only speculate on the JB weld, personally I've never used it in this application. I would guess that volume change due to water absorption will be a greater issue. I suggest the following. Machining a test button (blind hole into the same material-fill with JB weld), skim the end and check that a strait edge passes over. Boil in water with a little steam oil and check with a straight edge. If you do this a couple of times with no issues then it should be ok.
@@Lukers_tinkering Thanks for your very helpful reply. If I need to fill an inclusion in a cylinder I'll try the test you suggest before committing it to the job. I'm just thinking ahead as I have some cylinder castings that I haven't tackled yet.