Hi Gents,

Many thanks for your kind comments.

Simon – I have been itching to get started, but I knew if I did, I would rush the tooling builds, just to make them, so I took my time with them and am fairly happy how they turned out.

Ian – Once I had the Pennsy book, I knew I would have to get them all. As you say, they are works of art in themselves. I'm still short of the New Shay and the Heisler, but am hoping to complete the set soon. My last purchase was the Climax and I really want to have a go at the Skew Bevel Gears – They will have to wait though.

I got my copies from Camden Miniatures in the UK.

Phil – It looks like the Pennsy is the only one in Kozo's series that has cast wheels. The book shows the making of a pattern to take to a foundry to have the wheels cast – the other books show ways of fabricating the wheels. I'm still unsure which way to go with this, Friends Models in the US sell a set of cast wheels. As I'm a long way away from getting to them yet, it will give me time to decide what to do regarding these. (Kim over on Model Engine Maker is building the Switcher and has a great build thread going, I believe he is going to fabricate his wheels, so I'm watching out to see how he gets on before I really decide.)

John – That Shay looks lovely. Beautiful.

Here are a few photos of where I am up to:

My Hacksaw got a bit of work over the last few weeks. As part of the hacksaw build is to remove the fan from the motor, I cut the discs from 2.5" EN1A Leaded bar in about 8 separate sessions per disc – 10 minutes running, then an hour to let the motor cool down. It didn't get really hot, but I didn't want to risk it

I gave each a quick skim cut on the lathe then set about grinding up the tool Kozo describes:

And with that, work commences:

I have gone a little 'off piste' from Kozo's instructions, as my discs didn't cut exactly square, so the plan is to dial in the bore that has been reamed 5/16 in the 4 jaw to dish out the other side. The first one took ages, now I'm getting the hang of it, the last one took about 15 minutes to face, dish, drill, bore and ream.

Cheers

Mark

I'm still working away at the wheels. Not much left now.

One of the tools that I made before I started but forgot to post up was Kozo's centre indicator tool:

It is very good. It is quite easy to centre a a centre punched piece in the lathe.

Cheers

Mark

The last couple of days I have been sanding the wheels as per Kozo's instructions. As I already have a couple of hand sanding bars that I made up ages ago per Chris's instructions on Clickspring Here I used them, instead of making up another and I didn't like the idea of sanding the tread and flange by hand.

Today, the length of track that I ordered, arrived from PNP and I spent a good hour putting it together, just in time to try these out:

They have all had a coat of Metalguard Ultra, that leaded EN1a wants to rust by just looking at it.

Now they just need to be loctited to the axles and that is the first chapter completed. On to the tender truck frames and journal boxes next.

Before I started loctiting the axles to the wheels, I chucked up a piece of Phosphor Bronze, drilled and reamed 1/4" and made sure that each of the ends of the axles will fit to save having to mess about later with the fits.

Cheers

Mark

Hi Ian,

Many thanks for your kind comments.

I have been busy this week a bit at a time, getting the Journal Boxes and the Bearings made up. First job though was to sort out the Lathe:

It got to the point where it wouldn't turn on at all, or if it did, the speed was all over the place, like it had a mind of its own. A couple of weeks ago, I bought a new control board from Arc with the intention of changing it out when it needed it.

Unfortunately, because I had the old style board, I needed to change out the emergency stop and the front panel as well. I bought the whole lot from Arc as a bundle and this week, got the whole lot changed over and it has been no problem since. Result.

With the lathe sorted, I got on and got the Journal boxes to dimensions in the 4 Jaw, then drilled and bored out for the bearings. I made up a go/no go plug gauge at 10.01mm go and 10.06mm no go and got them all done. I only had to throw away 1 where I overshot the 10.06

I also got on and made up the barrel shaped bearings:

I then got the Journal Boxes set up in the mill, 2 at a time and milled out the groove for the arch bars:

Using the DRO, I got the first pair done, for a nice sliding fit on my gauge blocks set at 7.92mm (.312) then got all of them done, on both sides, the same.

Next up is 32 holes to drill and tap in these – it may take some time. I have decided to substitute the fixings Kozo calls out for these (3-48) with 7BA.

Cheers

Mark

Bit more done this week. I got the Jigs made up, cut up the material for the arch bars and got it brought to dimension then started making up the arch bars. This went amazingly well. Only 1 reject bar that I bent in the wrong place.

The other thing I did was to make up the pieces for the columns. I also had my first go at silver soldering. It didn't quite go to plan to start with. I think I either didn't get the parts clean enough, or I didn't get them hot enough, as the solder ran, but didn't join the parts together at first go.

I did them a second time, pickling them first, then re-read Kozo's instructions and second time went a lot better

I'm pretty happy with them. Kozo's instructions are spot on. They all fitted together beautifully.

Cheers

Mark

Hi all,

Many thanks for your kind comments, I was a little concerned that nobody would be interested.

I spent today making up the tooling and getting the springs wound and the ends ground down. Kozo's instructions are spot on – the springs are shown in the drawings as .240" OD – in my language 6.09mm, mine turned out at 6.05 – thinking about it, when I bought the spring wire for this (and for all of the other springs) I couldn't find any .039" only .038" – there is the missing .04mm

Having made up the winding handle at the start of this project, it got a lot of use today.

Here is the result of the winding session before grinding the faces- I actually made 10 that were good, the top 4 were either too long, or too short

I then drilled out a piece of spare steel bar and set it up on my bench sander to grind the faces. The grinding took a long time this afternoon, as I didn't want to get the ends too hot or overshoot the dimensions.

And here are the best 8 ready to use

All in all a good day.

Cheers

Mark

Thanks for the kind comments.

I got a bit more done this week. Starting with the tender frame. Not very exciting, just drilling holes and getting the stock to length. The bit I wasn't looking forward to was drilling and tapping the holes in the long side members. At over 15" they were too long to go in either my mill, or drill press. I ended up making a 'drilling jig' as a tight sliding fit on the end of the side member, then after drilling, I opened up the holes in the jig, to allow me to use it as a tapping jig. It worked a treat.

There are still some holes to drill in the end sills, but it is mostly complete.

With that, on to something a lot more interesting, fabricating the front steps

I cut up some small .04" strips and set them up to make the slots. Kozo shows using a vertical saw, I set mine up horizontally and took it really steady

Then got all set up and silver soldered the first step

I got the other one done to that stage as well. I was very happy with the silver soldering as I'm still a very novice beginner.

This is where it all went wrong. I had miscalculated the measurements for the slots in the steps somehow, and instead of them measuring 5/8" external at the tops, mine were 5/8" internal.

So, I started again, this time making double sure I got the slots in the right places

I'm now waiting on some 1/16" brass sheet to finish the backs of those, so have moved on to making up the rear step. Photos later

Cheers

Mark