Try mine http://www.boscott.co.uk I have just finished a 3D printer to make some of the small repeated plastic parts also from Ebay I have bought a PLC Controller to provide the logic interface>>

Paul Boscott>>

It has to be a prototype no-one else has modelled before. A challenge we can all take on, as anyone can always choose a subject that stretches their skills but is still realistic.

Neil

In 2010 I built an EDM machine to the words and music in Ben Fleming book "How to build an EDM". A very capable and handy machine for many jobs, and off the beaten track of steam models I usually build. It was refreshing and rewarding to see it working after the build. One of its' handier functions is pre- cutting the end shapes of HSS lathe tool blanks. It saves many hr of tedious grinding. I use .015" or .020" sheet copper bent to shape and held in the electrode holder to slice the blanks to any shape needed. Naturally the machine makes removing the odd broken tap or drill a doddle, and I find myself putting square holes and hex shaped holes on things just because I can….

On the model front, my next planned major model (a multi year project) is a model B-2 Erie steam shovel. This machine has a vertical boiler and 3 separate twin cylinder steam engines, and caterpillar tracks, and 26 different gears in the transmission, several bevel gears and spur gears too. The winch system to raise the shovel includes a steam actuated clutch on the main drum. This machine will be a major challenge, and I am designing and drawing the model up myself. I have two prototype units nearby to measure up and ponder over.

In ME I have seen the odd steam breakdown crane and a few diesel and electric shovel models, but not many. If you are looking for a change to making a loco, maybe have a look at the world of steam cranes and shovels. It is fascinating in itself (and you don't need a railway track to operate them)

JD

That's a lovely crane model Neil, well done.

JD

To Paul Boscott –

Just read your article in MEW 188 about the LED indicating surface finder. Very clever, well done! Won't be long until I make one myself now.

A further thought – Anyone with a mill using table travel stops and a centre lug could rig up a similar device on the sides of the centre lug to indicate ' end of travel reached' with more accuracy than just clouting the stop into the lug. I used to get fooled often doing that, as my stops would move a tiny bit with each clout and I couldn't feel it in the mill's screws. With a similar item to your surface finder, the light would come on with much less force applied when the travel stop reached the lug. I use a DRO now on the mill, but if I was using stops I would try this idea.

Thanks again, JD

The muff gun written up in ME dated to the middle 1850s. The ones I am on about dates back to the 1490s. This was a time when the armours of Germany and Italy were at their peak. Every great lord would have several ‘tin suits’ –‘plate armour’- which was finely ‘glacis’ and hardened to give protection against the dreaded English and their long bows.

These would range from the suits of Jousting Armour which had very heavy protection in certain parts through lighter armour for use in battle which came in two forms horseback armour and armour for fighting on foot to the fabulous parade armour in exotic designs.. As a side note they were based in the area of south and eastern Bavaria which are exactly the same areas that became the centres of car manufacture in the 20^th centenary ie. Companies like ’MAN’ (Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nürnberg). And in Italy in the districts of Milan and Brescia (Alfa-Romeo and Fiat etc).

At sometime in the 1400s ‘guns’ were found to be of great use especially by the Hussites of Bohemia. These folk used hand held guns, in infantry with wagons in formations called Wagonburg. A simple Hussite (like his English opposite number –a Long Bowman) could take out several heavily armoured knights whose armour cost many thousands of times more gold than the Hussite would ever see in his whole life. These guns were fired by slow matches. The serpentine lock was developed to make life easier for hand gunners.

Walking around with a length of lighted slow match (even on your hat) was not too good an idea (especially if you were rich and had an expensive hat). A smoking hat was not something to make you welcome in a beer hall! So sometime between the 1490s and the 1510 the ‘wheel lock’ appeared. It is this mechanism with all its subtleties which I find appealing. It seems to have been developed from two ideas, the ‘Monks Gun’ and a fairly common idea of using a hand wound wheel and the soft iron pyrites for making sparks to light fires. In Bavaria native flint is rare.

The Gunsmiths of Augsburg, Nuremberg and later Mannerheim and Brescia (in Italy) demonstrated their skills by making small Muff Guns for the town watchmen to carry in their muffs. These were sometimes called ‘Puffers’ and were about the size of a box of Swan-Vesta matches. By their design they could be carried about fully loaded with reasonably safely. It is their ‘lock work' which is complicated and is an artificers dream (or nightmare).

I do not want to talk about details of them any more on this (or any other public forum) as some folk may get the wrong idea. Mind you if you have worked for several hundred hours making just the lock, figuring out the solutions to all the problems the old ones solved and re learning their skills of fitting things as closely as they had. Then getting the confounded thing to spin and then to make sparks you will have achieved something.

I am quite prepared to e-mail a few remarks on the lock’s construction to act as a ‘sickener’ to those who want it and later if that does not put you off to I will go on with the correspondence.

Rdgs

Dick