Engine ready

[lostintime]

I'm kinda worried about the roller crosshead, I've had issues with reversing direction rollers prematurely wearing, but that was under different uses, and ran 16 hours a day 7days a week, and usually lasted about six months before bearing failure... so the limited use this will see it should be a non issue. 3" bore 5" stroke double acting twin

[fredrosse]

Nice piece of work, and lots of work to build a steam engine from scratch, as many of us know.
I notice that the valve gear could be fairly easily converted to the Marshall (or Bremme?, or Klug?) valve gear. This valve gear can give very equal valve events, forward or reverse, from thirty percent cutoff to 85% cutoff if properly sorted out. It also has the significant advantage of no sliding surfaces in motion, only shaft pivoting motion is used, a real advantage in my view. At least your (Hackworth"? ) valve gear does not require the more difficult machining of the sliding surfaces compared to the Stephenson valve gear that is typical of most reversing steam engines that I have seen.
When is it going into a boat?

[DetroiTug]

In tooling we used rollers (cam followers) in a similar configuration on telescoping torque tubes. Rolling on mild steel wouldn't last long. They will displace the metal they ride upon much like an ''English wheel'' works and shapes sheet metal. We tried hardchroming the surface which didn't help. The remedy was to line the soft steel with 1/8th thick O-1 tool steel raw, untreated. Those Gibbs are small enough they could be sent out for carburize and hardened. Any heat treater can do that. Casenite DIY also works.

[lostintime]

I can not take credit for it's construction, it was supposedly built in the late 70' or the early 1980's. I'm hoping to get the power package components finished this winter and begin the hull next spring.
I will look into the valve gears mentioned and will definitely look into heat treating

[cyberbadger]

I'm kinda worried about the roller crosshead, I've had issues with reversing direction rollers prematurely wearing, but that was under different uses, and ran 16 hours a day 7days a week, and usually lasted about six months before bearing failure... so the limited use this will see it should be a non issue. 3" bore 5" stroke double acting twin

I've got a 3.5" x 4" stroke double acting twin.

I am a sucker for steam engines with a long stroke.

I have thought about how I might make a similar engine with my limited foundry and machining skills.

It had never occurred to me that you could weld the cylinder block together! I'm actually not horrible at doing functional oxy acetylene welding, so your engine has given me some new ideas.

It's interesting to note all the variations in crosshead geometry on steam engines, I also don't think I've seen rollers like that before.

Very cool engine, Freds right, that engine wants a hull!

-CB

[TahoeSteam]

That's a great looking engine! Is there anything in place to prevent lateral (fore and aft) movement in the crosshead?

[lostintime]

The brass rollers are machined with a concave radius so they are bound on the track. The track itself itself is adjustable to take out backlash from wear.

[lostintime]

The power take off of it is a bull sprocket between the throws of the crankshaft for d60 chain to minimize bearing side thrust.

[dampfspieler]

Hi,

is it possible to show some more pictures of that engine?

Best Dietrich

[lostintime]

Some details