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

 I made a simple collet to hold the snout of the spacer.





I could only take light cuts, but this worked, and the part was finished.



I have been wondering about getting hold of a 3" chuck, which I could then hold in this chuck (a 6"), just to make it easier to hold smaller parts. I don't know if that's a good idea or not.

Anyhow, then I went back to my cylinder. I made a mandrel to hold it, and set up on rotary table in the mill. Here I'm squaring the steam chest, to get the bolt pattern properly aligned.



I did have to mill chunks out of my "nut" to allow clearance for my center drill, but I knew I was going to have to do that, in order to maintain some overlap and clamp the cylinder well.



I tapped the holes by hand, but using the mill to keep the tap square. I can disengage all the gears so that I can turn the chuck easily by hand.



Family shot, such as it is. 3 parts and a red headed step child.  The bronze part that was ruined will go on the shelf marked "sacrifices to the god of machining".



And the cylinder head even fits.



I actually managed to get the holes for the outboard end lined up correctly. I thought I would have to skew them because of the poorly positioned steam ports this end.



It even fits the other end (although it doesn't go there). Just checking hole positions.



Well, that was good. Just got to tap the gland mounting holes and steam chest cover holes and the cylinder is complete. Now to decide which part to make next.

It seems like I only went to the shed 5 minutes ago, but 2 days seem to have slipped past.  :shrug:

It does take me a long time to make parts, but there’s a lot of other things going on as well.