Excellent advice there from Jason.

In a spirit of enquiry, definitely not criticism since I am unsure myself: Why do we pin as well as Loctite? ( in Jason's illustration it looks silver soldered and pinned). If the "adhesive" is not strong enough to hold the joint why not just pin? I'm just having difficulties getting my head round the logic

Rod

Rod, I suppose it's belts and braces. I have read too many times on forums of loctited crankshafts letting go and slipping or pressed fitted ones not going together true or all the way. I generally prefer to silver solder and the pins add nothing to the alighnment Neil as they will not affect the position of an already soldered joint being drilled after soldering, they are just there incase the solder may look OK on the outside but has not penitrated the joint.

You also need to bear in mind that a lot of my crankshafts are for large hit & miss engines which have quite a punch when they fire and that puts a lot more load into the joints than the relatively constant force from a steam engine.

The other thing to watch with Neils 0.001-0.003" clearance is that of keeping things lined up when assembling, some of my cranks can be over 12" long and that 0.003" play in the middle could be 0.010 – 0.015" at the ends

Ron, one trick when soldering up cranks is to put a light CSK on the side of the web that will be away from the shaft/pin and feed your solder in from that edge, it keeps the solder off the running surfaces so less clean up and you should be left with a neat ring of solder filling teh CSK and hopefully penitrating teh joint.

> The other thing to watch with Neils 0.001-0.003" clearance is that of keeping things lined up when assembling, some of my cranks can be over 12" long and that 0.003" play in the middle could be 0.010 – 0.015" at the ends

I was trying to encourage the use of a press fit!

Inner and outer cheeks are just draw filed and if the pin or journals need cleaning up then just some work fine emery is all that I use, trick is to keep the solder off the bits where you don't want it.

With reference to Neil's concern over keeping the parts of the crankshaft aligned when assembling with "Loctite", I use the following method. I assemble the crankpin into the webs with the adhesive, aligning the other ends of the webs with a close fitting piece of steel, and leave to cure. Meanwhile I take a pair of matching "V" blocks with clamps, place them on a flat ground surface and clamp a length of ground steel bar into both, with a space between, wide enough to take the webbs, plus about 1/4". While firmly clamped, I apply a low strength "Loctite" to the undersides of the blocks and temporarily stick them to the ground surface (my drilling machine base). When all is cured, the parts of the crankshaft can be assembled with "Loctite", placed in the "V" blocks, and clamped and again left to cure with all the parts aligned. The last one that I did this way was for a ST No. 9. When finished, I held the first inch of it in a collet and clocked the other end. The runout was four tenths of a thou. The "V" blocks can be removed from the ground surface with a sharp tap with a hammer with a piece of brass interposed.

Just out of curiosity, would 1/16" taper pins with locktite be a correct way to go?