Noel,

thanks for your welcome.

I moved to Haslen, Appenzell-Innerrhoden three years ago. Before that, seven years in Beringen, Schaffhausen. Before that, life in Germany.

Best,

Chrissie

Good morning Howard,

Switzerland seems to have a culture of maintaining publicly accessible workshops, where you can use workspace, equipment and sometimes advice. They are organized in different formats, some are partly supported by public funds, the rest comes from volunteer work, yearly membership fees or (for non-members) at a half-day / full day rate, which can get quite expensive actually. And so I frequently opt to  _buying_  a needed tool for my little private workshop. 12 km away in St.Gallen there is such a public workspace with a dedicated woodworkshop, metal workshop, pottery and textile workshop. The metal workshop is rather well equipped with all kinds of welding equipment. The also have a sufficiently sturdy boring/milling machine, which btw. I used to machine the flat side of my steam engine “Danni”‘s flat surface of the cylinder, where the steam chest gets soldered onto. Other than that, there’s really noone at this place who is into the kind of precision manufacturing that a little model steam engine requires. So I’m not overly enthousiastic about working in an environment with sparks flying around my ears and oftentimes really loud hammering, flex grinding etc..

May I point your attention to a 1st comment of mine, at the end of this thread on this forum? That may give you an impression of where I currently stand …

Other than that, I have a blog where I post about my little adventures. This blog post shows me running “Danni” from the power of my lungs/diaphragm 💪, and this little video shows when I finally found out how to run “Danni” with much less strain with the help of a bicycle pump 🤓.

Chris

Hoi Roger,

I know model ICE only from my early RC model aircraft times, although only in the commercially available kind like OS PET, OS MAX and Cox types. Manufacturing those probably comes with some challenges of their own. Since I’m only starting at manufacturing engines myself, I thought steam engines would be a good start. Especially as long as you cut out the steam part, and resort to compressed air or the power of your lungs/diaphragm.

Pfäffikon isn’t really out of the way from where I live. Across Wasserfluh mountain pass and Hulftegg pass this would even make for a nice ride on my Ducati Monster, if you’re interested.

Chris