First Castings Kit?

The Stuart Turner (or is it just Stuart these days after business sell-off?) V10 kit is the standard starter kit which will take you through all the necessary beginner's operations. (including breaking off screw taps!)

There is an optional book but there are a few typos and omissions. Some things you have to work out for yourself.

Try to join your local area's society of model engineers for then you will find manyexperienced machinists to advise and help you.

The price for the starter castings of the V10 is only about £70.

With the current exchange rate look at PM research,

will ship to the uk no problems, and were very helpful when I ordered a no 3 kit from them.

Dave

Have you been to ST's website? They do several kits for £66+VAT an

postage. (S50, 10V, 10H). There is a book to accompany the 10V, whic may make it an attractive proposition for you.

I can strongly recommend Hemingway - nice kits, nice people.

Mat

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I can well recommend kits from Greenweld that should be within your budget:

particular one that may be of interest is a Stirling Hot Air motor; all these are 'classified' as kits, they still require a lot of engineering skills and machining to complete. Tom.

DR_G wrote:

With the current exchange rate look at PM research,

will ship to the uk no problems, and were very helpful when I ordered a no 3 kit from them.

Dave

And the mandatory crashing of saddle into headstock.

. . . .and the tee-shirt.

I'll second the opinion on Hemingway - good stuff but not engines.

The standard "starter" is indeed the 10V but it's not as easy as it looks - the parts are all small and fiddly and every mistake can cost you a new casting.

How close to London are you? SM-EE does a six-Saturdays course on building Tubal Cain's "Polly", which takes you through all the basic techniques needed to build a small steam engine and boiler , with the advantage that its all made from standard materials. You'd learn a lot more from Polly than from a 10V. If you are interested, the details are at

Or you could build one on your own.

In message , Norman Billingham writes

[snip]

Agreed! I would even go so far as to suggest that you avoid castings until you have sufficient experience to recognise, deal with and even know when to reject a sub-standard casting. As well as "Polly" there have been a number of good simple projects published in both 'Model Engineer' and in 'Engineering in miniature'. The common denominator of all is that they use standard bar and sheet stock rather than castings.

Above all, don't be too proud to choose something very, very simple. I speak from experience having never cut metal before I started my Alice in 1982. Only now (apart from the painting) is it nearing being finished.

Yes, that was a problem for me. My lathe had a chuck with a 6" backplate.....it was difficult to hold some of the parts

See if you can borrow etc. one or both of these :-

ISBN 1854861042 : Building simple model steam engines : Tubal Cain

ISBN 1854861476 : " " Vol 2

Come to think of it, they're only £5 each from Amazon

All the best, Peter W.

Norman, Mike,

I am in Sheffield, nowhere near London thank God. In an ideal world course like you mentioned would be perfect, but unfortunately I no have a young family now, so Saturdays could get busy.

Regarding the plans and instructions with the Hemingway or Stuar Turner 10V kits - how good are they? Are they step-by-step affair showing what tooling you need or are they more of a 'turn this, mil that' kind of thing?

I am used to building both plastic scale models (I used to build the for a local model shop) and model gliders, so intricate work isn't big deal. I've got plenty of patience, but as you say maybe a ver simple model would be best...How about the Stuart Turner Oscillato Engine at £34 +vat? Alternatively, does anyone have a source o plans/instructions for a non-casting engine which I could build. I hav found an excellent supplier of metal stock locally, who is very friendl and knowledgeable about the machining of different metals, so I have great source of cheap material.

Peter - I will look for the books, but I am reluctant to use Amazo again after my copy of 'The Amateur's Lathe' never 'turned up'. bought it locally in the end.

Regards,

Garth

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and knowledgeable about the machining of different metals, so I have a

Garth, look here:

recent discussion on the same subject with some very useful links. The turner kits come with a set of drawings and thats about it, but you can get a book to go with it. Im in the process of buiding a 10H from an incomplete casting kit, well actually just the bed plate and some optimism ;) of course you could design your own oscilator/other engine, they are quite simple really, and when you think about what was achieved a hundred and fifty odd years ago it isnt any longer in the realm of rocket science, you can get away with a lot of sub optimalities and still have a cracking runner. My first engine was built from some scrap printers for bar stokc, a piece of channel ally for the base and some luck: the eccentric was machined in my only chuck (a 3 jaw) by assembling it 'wrong' so jaws 1 and 3 were swapped. then the valve throw was designed based on this. Piston valve, but it seemed hard to do inlet and exhaust, so I drilled a hole at BDC for the exhaust, and timed the inlet to open just before TDC, bit like a 2 stroke. The little end was made from a piece of paperclip, and the crankshaft was turned offset as per the eccentric, stroke based on what I could make rather than a calculation....

The point is if you know the basics of an engine just try and make one, worked for me and that first oily rattly engine is one of my favorites.

hth,

Dave

I seem to recall MAP as it was then published some drawings for non-castings model steam engines, certainly they did for model IC engines. They maybe still available from Traplet or Nexus (which aren't Nexus any longer I think, probably the shower who've trashed ME) or possibly The X-list who took over the old Aeromodeller plans when they were deleted. . I'll try to dig out the old catalogue and have a look.

Richard

In much the same position, I dropped a vague hint, and was given a kit last Christmas - so the gauntlet was thrown down - no choice involved. It was the Stuart V-twin oscillator (about =A366), and it took me 6 months to build (maybe 20 minutes a day). The cost of the model is only part of it as you find you need taps and dies and collets, but I learned a great deal (including not to trust drawings - as there were

3 mistakes).

I am not sure that an oscillator is the right way to go, but start with something simple. Just making a true cylinder and fitting a piston can be quite an exercise. I was amazed how much time I spent making a fairly simple model, but it was time well spent.

Steve

You do not need collets.

In message , Charles Lamont writes

.... if you have a four jaw chuck. Or am I missing something?

Collets for milling presumably?

Garth

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I am amazed you say that. I wish I had bought my ER25 collet set ages ago. I had been struggling to hold and face tiny little spring seats in my 3-jaw without overtightening and marking them. The collets allowed me to grip them tightly without damage. They were also useful to hold 1/8th bar when threading it - less risk of it turning and being marked. They are so good at holding small work that I think anyone doing small scale modelling should consider getting a set. They are of course excellent for holding end mills or slot drills in the lathe - when using a normal chuck I have found the cutters can get drawn into the work - I have messed up several items that way.

Steve

All Hemingway kits come with an excellent set of drawings. Some (e.g. the knurling tool) with instructions - which are usually reprints of articles from ME or MEW.

ST kits come with a set of drawings and that's all. For the 10V there is a book available but its old and a number of things have changed - in particular the crankshaft no longer comes as a single forging - you have to build it up from bits of steel.

Neither comes with any instructions on how to machine - its assumed you know. The ST book is more about how to hold castings etc for machining.

When SMEE started to run courses, the original intention was to build the ST oscillator - abandoned in favour of Polly for the two reasons I already gave - you can make more mistakes more cheaply and you learn far more techniques. The ST engines are exercises in machining and fitting - Polly and her ilk involve a lot more techniques.

Polly is the first engine in Tubal Cain's first book. Lots of detailed instructions and much easier if you start with a piece of copper tube for the boiler rather than trying to "roll your own".

Have fun!

Norman

But he would have to use castings to learn that. :-)

I too would start with an oscillating steam engine without castings. You have enough chances to ruin something and to learn a lot. I'd stay away from Stirling engines and flame lickers in the beginning. They require some skill and precision and there is nothing more frustrating if your first engine doesn't work.

Nick