Today I wanted to start reassembling stuff…
OK…Smokebox. As I said I unrolled a piece of 2" copper pipe, fairly heavy wall about 1/16" thick It took some effort and some heat. I annealed the copper with my torch…heated it till it nearly glowed. that softened it enough so I could spread it out by hand (with some effort) Then I rolled it out onto my cast iron table saw table. I had to give it what for with a rubber mallet before it really started to look flat. Mind you this is just raw material at this point. I laid out the smoke box as a rectangle that would wrap back into a piece of pipe. it had to come off the raw material the other way because it has to be larger in diameter than the original pipe. I marked it out and sawed it on the band saw with a wood blade. ( by the way I had carefully used a fine toothed carbide tipped blade on my table saw to slit the donor pipe open.)
I also drilled holes for the smokestack and rivets. Drilling large holes in copper can be tricky … I actually made a second try for my smoke box after screwing up the first … and it biting me on the hand! The second one got sandwiched between two pine boards clamped securely. I transferred the location of the smokebox hole onto one of the boards. then clamped the works into my drill press vise and drilled with my 1/2" drill bit (feeding slowly). worked great! I then drilled my rivet holes with a 1/16" drill bit using center punched starting holes. I busted a 1/16" drill bit in this process, though my little drill press mostly did a good job. I then wrapped the copper back into a smoke box sized pipe. I used a heavy piece of pipe as an anvil and my trusty ball peen hammer to form it to shape. I did re-anneal the copper once during this operation so it would form more easily and smoothly. once round and smooth with the ends bent back until they touched neatly, I silver soldered the joint to keep it honest. i touched up the shape a little and tried its fit against Emma’s boiler.
Once satisfied I added some rivet detail. Escutcheon pins driven into the holes from the outside look about right, in this case about 1/8" diameter nearly spherical shape. I clipped the pin flush(ish) with the inside of the smokebox and gave the pin a few whacks with the ball peen hammer to swell the inside end so it stays secure.
I also reassembled the Chassis. Jason’s new cast wheels look great with a nice new coat of black paint. I had to scavenge the short crank pins from the old wheel set to use on the new front axle. I had to drill out the threaded hole large enough to press the old crank pins into. now I could use the original hex headed screws to retain the side rods. Reassembling the wheel sets is fiddly, but Jason’s use of square ended axles and screws to retain the wheels is much easier than manually quartering the wheels and pressing them onto the axles.
the rear truck was a job in itself.
As this is actually the second Modified Emma I am working on (third or forth if you count the ones I made parts for) I already had Cut files for my CNC milling machine. So I set things up again, It has actually been quite a while since I used this machine so it took some study and trial and error to get back into the swing of making stuff. I have new clamping bits which are much better than what I had used in the past. I had some 1/8" end mills in the drawer on unknown quality. I used em and broke two of the three before i was done. they probably were not really sharp and I probably dont have the cutting feed rate and tool speed, nor the proper cut depth either but all is well.
the final product needed some deburring and cleanup with a file.
I had some nicely sized wheels in my bin…always gotta have a bin!
I drilled and tapped some holes and inserted some 1-72 hex head screws to hold the works together.
well that is enough for today!
