Office of Steam Forum for Model & Toy Steam Gas & Hot Air Engines

I bought this steam engine from France, knowing that it was very old. I have never seen anything like it, and I doubt that it is a commercial casting kit. But I know no history of the engine, other than what is engraved in the steam chest cover, which says:

J. Gapihan
Mecanicien
Redon

The bore on this French engine is 1.163" which would be 29.540 mm. Nothing is standard. The threads are not BA, Imperial or Metric. They could be clock makers' threads from that period. The castings are sand cast. Three brass castings are used, frame, cylinder and flywheel. The nuts are all different hex sizes and definitely are not Imperial dimensions and don't seem to be Metric, either. Metric threads became standard in the 1890's in Europe. My guess is that this engine dates to before the 1890's.
 
The stroke seems to be about 1".
 
I removed the back cylinder head, with the thought of installing an O-ring piston seal, but there are two sand holes in the bore that would cut the O-ring to pieces. One has been sort of patched with lead.
 
I tried to look up the maker's name on Ancestry, with no results. There is a minister with that name who lived in the right time period, but the word on the name plate means "mechanic" as told to me by a French teacher, who I am sure would know the difference between a mechanic and a minister in French. But I doubt if she knows the difference between a mechanic and a machinist.
 
When I got the engine, it would run, but not very well, as the slide valve leaked severely due to it not being able to seal because it was not made so that the steam would push it against the cylinder surface, but instead rode on the end of the valve rod. It was nothing like the common slide valve, invented in England. I made a new, conventional slide valve and valve rod and now the engine runs fine. But even with the old valve, the engine has been run very much, and I believe it had been run on steam, from the residue I found inside the cylinder. I should make a video of it and put it on Youtube.