Shop Notes 1/3 - Back to the shop edition, starting work on a steam engine kit.

Got a 1/4hp steam engine kit for Xmas.  Now that work has died down a bit I figured it was a good time to finally start putting it together.   But where to start.....

Flywheel's nice and easy, not a lot of critical dimensions, may as well start there.

indicating the faces (not critical but if done right it makes it look a lot less 'wobbly' when in action)

Doesn't look like much changed, just cleaning up the faces, drilling and boring the interior to .625", and a good kiss with sandpaper+scotchbrite.

I don't have an arbor press so I tried broaching the keyway on a drill press instead.   barely worked.

Well that's one part down, total time a couple hours.

First packing nut.  Another easy one to start getting back into the groove

Boom, another one knocked out.

Starting work on this one but it's vibrating pretty bad due to the long thin arms.  It tried miticating by strapping everything solid together but no-joy.   Piece caught and it ended up shredding one of my mill cutters (oh well such is life)

Literally strapped the whole thing to a 50lb lead acid battery.  That worked good enough to do some heavier cuts and get this done in a reasonable time.

Alas that's as far as I got for today.  Tomorrow I'll try making a jig for the base so I can flip it over and do the remaining operations on the top of the base

Hope you enjoyed🤠