You have a good basic workshop. Why not jump straight in and start a 1" Minne TE?

If you've built a S10V, you will have gained reasonable machining skills. Minnie "words & music" are available in book form and there's more help on this forum

Blackgates have the Lincoln and Clarkson range of engines, horizontals in both of those.

Bruce/Polly have Anthony Mount's range of engines that are a bit different to the norm.

Not sure if Cotswold are still in business but the Armstrong or Garrett would be worth looking at though both could be done without castings.

Reeves have quite a few stationary engines as well as the PM research range mentioned above that can be got from Forrest Classics here in the UK

Or how about a predominantly bar stock design or two or three

If your dream is to build a traction engine you should start one. You have made a Stuart 10V and already have some of the skills needed. A traction engine just has more parts. Start with the simple ones and tackle the more complex ones as you gain experience.

When I started to build my engine, I had many years of experience in engineering design as a mechanical draftsman but very little actually using a mill or lathe. With practice and advice from others, I was able to build everything. Only took 7 years. My engine is a big model and weighs 700kg but I found that building very small parts can sometimes be much harder.

Paul.

Edited By Paul Lousick on 10/10/2020 13:12:30

You can always work on bits of a Minnie while doing another engine, you will need something to keep you occupied for a year or so if buying a commercial boiler anyway. I did a 10V and beam before starting my Minnie.

There are several ways you can look at Minnie,

It's one of the simplest with least detail that lots do castings for.

It's an ornament.

It's a real engine you can steam.

It's something to do.

After that

It's also a horizontal single with boiler attached that happens to move under it's own power

Seems we have similar ambitions! I started the hobby with absolutely no prior experience 2 years ago. My aim was to build a small traction engine and after a couple of months of building an oscillator, gyroscope, hammer etc cracked straight into a 1" Minnie.

I got as far as machining the rear wheel rims / strakes and spokes and attaching the strakes to one rim before deciding to take a pause. Firstly I wanted to increase my skill level and secondly wheel building is a lesson in patience….

My pause lasted for about 14 months and I built the 10V to gain some experience with castings and the ME Vertical Boiler to learn how to silver solder (I'm going to have one go at making the boiler for Minnie). The ME Boiler was also a good education on how a boiler works, what all the fittings are for, and gave me something to run the 10V on.

I returned to Minnie earlier this year and am on the cusp of finishing the wheels now – and deciding whether to start the boiler or take another pause. My father wanted to spend some money on me for my birthday this year – so I got him to contribute towards the cost of a Double Victoria…

In terms of cost – if you go with Minnie and start with the wheels then you only really need the castings for the rims and hubs and some 1/16th steel strip: this will keep you going for quite some time and cost just just north of £100. You will also need the book which seems to average out at £50 – depends on how lucky you are with ebay on a given day. I have also kept my eyes open and picked up the odd part from ebay when they come up – for example I bought a blackgates boiler kit about 12 months back at probably less than the price of the raw materials.

The Double Victoria is pretty steep – and I think would have been beyond me without my dads contribution – but it is a very fine looking engine and comes in a reassuringly heavy box… The ME Boiler was about £180 for a kit from Noggin metals – It is always nice to just have all the bits you need in one box!

Not sure you can make a wrong decision here though – all will keep you happily occupied for months. The key for me when deciding what to make has been choosing items that have detailed build guides available as I don't yet have the experience to be able to look at a big sheet of drawings and easily come up with a cunning plan….

Your 10V is looking good by the way – love the blue!

Dom

As Ramon mentioned there are different ways to approach the Stuart models:

-buy the full kit

-buy just the castings and use your own bar stock and fixings.

– Buy just the main castings and use bar for the simple parts eg cylinder covers from CI bar plus as above fixings and the smaller stock bought.

– Absolute minimum castings so probably just flywheel and possibly cylinders making things like the bed and everything else from scratch which would probably work out at 1/3rd the cost of a kit. It would also stand you in good stead for the Minnie where a lot more fabrication work is involved.

A good read would be Princess Royal and Goliath by Tubal Cain where he wrote up the construction of modified Victorias in ME

As to the Minnie questions

1) A couple of build threads over on Traction Talk forum but the trend is for bigger engines now though still worth looking at these threads as many methods are similar. There are also a few on here

2) There is not much difference is costs buying as you need or the whole lot, the most you are likely to save is in a one off postage cost.

3) Boilers can be ordered from several of the commercial boiler makers, usually at least a years waiting list so get your name down now. If you have not silver soldered before then do something smaller to practice on or know your limitations and order one in. I think my silver soldering is good enough now to have a go but at the time I needed boilers for my two engines I bought them, the Minnie from Blackgates and the Fowler from Western Steam.

Even though I have the materials – and have had a trial run on the vertical boiler- I'm still half tempted to buy a commercial boiler now the moment is nearly upon me. The only good reason I have to build one is that If I buy one I will always wonder if I could have done it.

On the other hand It will take me several months to build with no guarantee of success. Also my local ME clubs don't meet at a convenient time for my job (or meet at all at the moment) – so I'm unlikely to get the boiler inspected. The certification is one of the big advantages of a commercial boiler.

My current leaning is to have one go and if it fails buy a commercial one and build the Victoria in the meantime!

I haven't seen many start to finish build threads – but the book is good, and so far I have found plenty of hints and tips on here for the parts I have found to be tricky.

Dom

The last time I did any exact calculations for was on this one of mine which is the same size as a No7A, allowing for buying 12" or 300mm lengths of the smaller section material and larger bits by the inch, packs of 50 nuts in the various sizes, etc it was 1/3rd the cost and you would still have a lot of material that could be used on other projects.

If you knocked off the cost of the two box beds and made them for flat bar screwed & JBWelded together that alone would likely drop another £100 from the spend or they could even be milled from two lengths of rect aluminium.

Common metric fasteners look wrong on a model like this, you can bet nicer metric ones which cost about the same as BA.