My new Scorpion

tmuir · My new Scorpion

Here are some pictures as promised.
Picture of decal on base.

The whole engine, it is missing its funel but that should be any easy fix when I get some brass pipe.

Minor dent to end cap on boiler and in the picture the whistle is seized solid in boiler.
I've already removed it and freed it up be heating with blow torch and quenching in water and removed last of calcium using my pickle solution (For those that don't know its a mind acid I use in jewelery and I save the old stuff for using on my toy steam engines. Cant be used on steel parts though)

With a little work this will clean up nicely.

The cast base is different and the whistle has minor differences too, not sure what that means though.

Will post photos of differences later.

yosa

It's a corker Tony, I like verticals anyway, and the Scorpion is a nice example.

Looking forward to the finished pics mate, and hopefully a video of it running.

tmuir

Of course there will be a vid of it running but not tonight.
I've got all the small bits now soaking in my watch cleaning solution to shift all the dirt of them and then it will be time to get out the brasso.
Have already wiped clean the base with a damp soapy cloth (Its cast iron and not painted underneath so don't want to leave it wet or it could rust) and given it a gentle polish with my car polish and it came up pretty well.
I'm very pleased the decal is 100% complete.

yosa

The Scorpion decal is an attractive one, nice to see it in such good nick.

tmuir

A couple of pictures of the differences between my two scorpions.
Firstly the Whistle.
The one on the left is my original Scorpion and the one on the right is the new one. The new one is pink as it hasn't been polished and has been in my pickle solution. Notice the new one has a hex bar that the handle screws into and the other a round one. Handle is also longer on the new one.
Handle also screws into a blind hole on my new one and screws all the way through on my old one.

The bases.
The one on the left is my original Scorpion and has no Decal or evidence it ever had one and is much simpler.
My theory is the one on the left is a much earlier model and as they got more popular the spent some more money and got a fancier base made and a Decal put on it.

yosa

They are quite stark differences Tony.

Is another possibility that the new one is earlier, and as time went by, things were cheapened.

Where have we heard that before?

Mamodman123

Looks great Tony! should clean up a treat

flywheel61

They both look really good Tony, interesting to note the small but noticeable differences with the various parts. It appears that Mamod wasn't the only one to do this.

Cheers

Chris

tmuir

sparky

they are very diffrent, nice buy mate, have you fired it or are you going to

tmuir

Havent fired it yet, as I received it in unfireable condition.
Safety valve stuck shut, whistle seized open and had 3 iron nails in the boiler.
Have fixed safety valve and whistle, removed nails from the boiler and just finished rinsing the rust out of the boiler, never had orange water come out of a boiler before.

Have cleaned and T-Cut the base and polished all the small bits.
Have removed heavy soot deposit from inside the firebox now just have to polish the boiler and flywheel and its finished.
Too late to do that tonight now so will do that tomorrow and hopefully fire it tomorrow night. Will of course vid it.

sparky

now thats going to be something to see cant wait

tmuir

Well so you dont have to hold your breathe until tomorrow here is a video of my other Scorpion running with it very dodgy burner that came with it.

yosa

Beautiful Tony.

Wallace

Nice one Tony! Looks great.

My old man is in Sydney at the moment, and wants to get pics at the powerhouse museum, of meccano.

I told him to take any pics of any toy/model steam engine he sees. Fingers crossed

Sandman

Great vid Tony.

I particularly liked the sound.

Unmistakeably pure steam.

tmuir

Sorry guys and gals wont be a vid of my new Scorpion tonight. Just had to work back for an extra 5 hours tonight.
Nothing like doing a thirteen hour day at work.........

tmuir

Just fired the Scorpion and it worked well.
Will upload the video later.
There is a slight leak around the safety valve that may require some lapping to fix and unfortunately I had to solder the whistle in.
At some point I think it had been dropped on the whistle which dented the top of the boiler and it must of damaged the thread as it just stripped when I was screwing the whistle in.
The thread is directly tapped into the brass end cap so no bush to replace to fix it.

SPOKESMAN

Can you pack the thread at all, say with plumber PTFE tape?

tmuir

SPOKESMAN

Sounds fair enough!

tmuir

Uploading the video should have it posted in the video section within 5 to 10 mins

SPOKESMAN

Just watched it - great stuff.