Making a Trolley

Sep 08, 2005 4 Replies

Gentlemen,



As the season slowly comes to an end my thoughts turn to my next project, the Lister M, it has been suggested that the engine should sit astride a wooden trolley. I've never been a lover of wood because it don't weld to well and tends to char at the edges. Can you carpenters point me in the right direction of what I should do please. The material is not a problem as we have a couple of local wood yards, its the doing I have problems with.



Martin P


Martin,

You built a perfectly good trolley for the L type this year - why not just swap the engines for next years season?

If you are not confident with timber, build a metal trolley out of angle iron and then sit the long timbers on top with the angle on the inside out of sight - the best of both worlds.

Regards

Dan

A not so daft Idea from my friend Dan regarding the wood on iron, I wont swap engines as I want to be able to move them both about easily plus the holes for the L are made to measure and different to the M. I do now have an idea of a flat not angle fram to support the wheel's etc with the timbers on. Any further idea's greatly appreciated.

Mart>> Gentlemen,

I tend to make a framework from channel sections, welding on a bit of flat to make box sections where extra rigidity is needed. I then mount some timbers on the frame which acts as a gasket allowing the engine to bed down far better than directly onto the steel, particularly if the frame has twisted a bit due to thermal distortion. See the Ruston HR on my website (Nb - not a full trolley yet, but the channels will eventually be welded onto a trolley frame).

Good luck...

John Ambler Sussex, UK Return E-mails to snipped-for-privacy@skiprat.net

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Pour beer into a carpenter and have them do it.

Take two large bearers and put a few "rungs" between them, with paired mortice and tenon joints, wedged from the outside.

Find a book on Japanese joinery and make something weird but pretty (I posted refs to uk.d-i-y a while ago)

Find some pre-war book of agricultural photos and copy something.

If you're near Bristol, have a word with the timber-framers at

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(cheaper than you'd think).

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