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

Material did arrive for the boiler i picked brass thinking it would be lighter than copper but the tube that arrived was thick walled and i thought due to its small dia i would machine the end caps as usual no material but i did have plenty 3mm brass plate so i cut a square and stuck it on to a small face plate with double sided tape also used a live tail stock steady but it moved so i tried again using 5min epoxy gave it 2 hours moved again then put it in a small 4 jaw chuck got so far then the tool just dug in. [ Guests cannot view attachments ]
So i just silver soldered the end caps now it was time to try it out. A 1" x 2" boiler gives a capacity of 22mil  (round figure ) to start i put in 15mls 
Sitting in the green house with the bedroom clock strapped to my wrist i lite the burner. The first run it ran for 1 1/2 mins then stopped it ran for a further 6mins which gave me a total of 7 1/2 mins so a little encouraged checked the boiler and remove 4mls of water the second run i put in 10mls of water again it stopped after 1 1/2mins then stopped again after 2 1/2 mins started again then 2 1/2 stopped boiler dry. I should have said i ran it yesterday for the first time under air just to check which connection was fwd and rev. and it ran like a Rocket and i thought no good i will never be able to reduce the revs will be really to fast. Today under steam it was the opposite too slow [ Guests cannot view attachments ] note the safety vale just a modern version of what Tubal Cain used ( he used cork on some of his boilers ) you will see in the next pics where i could see some leeks [ Guests cannot view attachments ] [ Guests cannot view attachments ] hopefully the pics are ok. Would really like to hear from someone who has the same engine how to make good connections and if maybe this engine runs better upside down. Should have said when starting under steam the flywheel rotates ever so slowly on its own really giving me the impression it would self start (before giving the flywheel a flick ) if press was great enough i`m sure this will self start. Really wanted to move on chassis maybe but need to find solutions to boiler first maybe should submit to Sandy boiler design for boiler of the year award ?