These are all the bronze castings and raw material that come with the kit for the vertical bottle engine. Also included
in the kit is a bag of fasteners, gasket material, brass sheet for the cylinder wrap and teflon for packing.
Quite a few years ago I bought the P.M. Research Inc., located in Wellsville, New York, Vertical Coke Bottle Style
Mill engine at the Canadaguia Steam Pageant show. Not having a shop yet the kit went into storage. Well I finally
dug it out of the box and started to do some work on it. As this is my first steam engine kit I need to take my
time to make sure I don't mess up. I'm going to document the process with pictures and words as I go along.
Unfortunately I forgot to take some pictures of the first few operations of doing the flywheel and belt pulley. The first thing I did was turn the flywheel and belt pulley castings. After some deburring with a Dremel tool and diamond burrs the castings were finish turned.The castings were held on the inside rim. I made sure that the castings weren't running out to much. Then a light cut was taken on the face to just clean up the surface. Then they were turned 180 degrees so that the finished face is against the chuck and the second side was machined. The shaft holes were drilled 1/32" under finished size. A stub arbor was then turned and threaded so the wheels could be mounted for turning the O.D. Procedure is the same for both castings. |
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A view of the stub arbor used to turn the wheels, with the belt pulley finished. Note that the cutting tool has to be mounted upside down and in the back for turning with the compound rest on the Sherline lathe. This takes a bit of getting used to. The compound rest is set at approx. 5° to give you a crown. |
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A picture of both wheels semi-finished. All that needs to be done is final sizing of the holes. |
As of 1/21/08 this is as far as I have gotten on this engine. It's been three years since I started it and probably be a few more years before I will ever get it to near completion. |