BRUNELL models

Hi John,

I bought a set of beam engine castings from them and I have to say that they were not good. There were two major problems:

The cylinder casting still had it's core firmly embedded when received which meant that after removing as much as I could, I still got through a whole pile of carbide tips when boring the thing. I eventually ended up slightly oversize by the time I'd machined away all of the casting detritus.

The casting boxes for the support beam had not been properly aligned resulting in the two halves of casting being misaligned. I had to scrap the casting and fabricate from scratch.

Having said that, the drawings were good and error free and to be fair to Brunell, I didn't ask to have the castings replaced, I just got on and fixed the problem. They may have happily replaced the offending items, I don't know.

I did discuss this with a chap who had bought a traction engine from them and he said he'd had a similar experience. Ultimately we both managed to complete our projects but have had better castings from other suppliers.

I know this doesn't read well and I don't mean to 'bad-mouth' Brunell as the resultant engine is something I'm very pleased with but it may be worth asking about their return policy if you're not happy with the castings you receive.

Hope it helps

Mark

I also had problems with my beam engine castings, though mine were not so serious as Mark experienced. I had quite a lot of sand embedded in the rim of the flywheel. So much that by the time I had cut through it, I had cut into the spokes by about 1/16". Also had a lack of metal in the beam support casting, although this was built up with filler before painting. I agree with mark about the finished model though, it looks superb. The problems with the castings would not put me off buying from them again.

Be aware that this is quite a large model and I found that my ML7 was close to its limits while turning the flywheel. The rest of the parts are reasonable easy though.

HTH

Moose

supplies me with quality castings before I start work on them,Carbide tooling is too pricey to scrap. All the best for now, John.