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tmuir

Renown Spare Parts

My package from over east arrived today with the brass rod I ordered as well as my 1/4 BSF button die so I decided to have a go at making the barrel part of a Renown safety valve.

I'm quiet happy with how it turned out even though it took me two hours.  
Showed it to the wife and she just shook her head and said 'I don't get it.'

Here is the barrel.



Now here it is next to the original tatty looking one I have.
Mine is the same size as the original except I made my thread 3mm longer to allow for the fact I still only have a 2.4mm parting tool. It just looks wider due to the camera angle.

The parts to the right of it are the boiler bush and the adjusting screw to hold the spring on that I made last week.


Now the bush tested for fit.


I've still got to order my spring wire and cant make the inner part of the safety valve until I get my 1/16 inch parting tool to make the grooves on the top.

Definitely need to improve my speed if I ever want to sell any.
Les

They look really good, and do you have any toolsteel to make your own parting off tool.
johnreid

You have to expect a learning curve. That sure looks like you have done a fine job. Real nice.
tmuir

Les Marsh wrote:
They look really good, and do you have any toolsteel to make your own parting off tool.


I've ordered some but its coming from the UK as the finest I could get in Perth was 3/32. I've got some 1/16 parting blades on their way and they were dirt cheap.
Cost me $18 including postage for 3 and one 3/32 blade costs me $36 in Perth.  
IndianaRog

Tony, I think you did a beautiful job on that...wives will never understand the joy derived from such a creative process!!!
MamodFan

tmuir wrote:
Les Marsh wrote:
They look really good, and do you have any toolsteel to make your own parting off tool.


I've ordered some but its coming from the UK as the finest I could get in Perth was 3/32. I've got some 1/16 parting blades on their way and they were dirt cheap.
Cost me $18 including postage for 3 and one 3/32 blade costs me $36 in Perth.  


Just grind one onto a piece of 1/8 square tool steel with an off hand grinder, it only needs to be an 1/8 long. Long thin parting tools snap like carrots!
flywheel61

That's a great job, Tony, can't wait to get my lathe, but  buying rare engines keep getting in the  way,     .

Cheers    

chris
tmuir

flywheel61 wrote:
That's a great job, Tony, can't wait to get my lathe, but  buying rare engines keep getting in the  way,     .

Cheers    

chris


Well just to help you out getting your lathe Chris I will buy the next rare Australian engine so you can save your money for a lathe.    
Classic

Tony, this is the kind of thing that Les and MamodFan were talking about, except that this one is ground from 1/4" tool steel.



I ground it in a hurry for grooving, not for parting, so I didn't bother to grind it properly parallel.  At the time I had a reason for grinding out the left side instead of the right, but I can't remember why now.  If you grind a parting tool, grind from the other side so that you can get the tool close to the chuck.  I ground a thinner tool for turning circlip grooves, but I broke it due to impatience

Your work on the valve looks great so far.  How will you calibrate the valve for correct blowoff pressure?

Peter.
flywheel61

tmuir wrote

Quote:
Well just to help you out getting your lathe Chris I will buy the next rare Australian engine so you can save your money for a lathe.
 

  , thanks for being so considerate, is that one or two engines,    

Cheers    

Chris
Reid

Inspiring results so early on, Tony!

So you've inspired me to pick up a poor condition small, tabletop Jensen lathe.
edit: it's a Sherline sold under private label, ca. 1984
http://www.sherline.com/usedmach.htm
AU roots too!

Rusty and dirty, I can salvage this machine in time and at least make some simple things.

Will learn by watching your gaining of results.
Practice makes prefect as I like to say when I can't spell check.

tmuir

Reid wrote:
Inspiring results so early on, Tony!

So you've inspired me to pick up a poor condition small, tabletop Jensen lathe.
edit: it's a Sherline sold under private label, ca. 1984
http://www.sherline.com/usedmach.htm
AU roots too!

Rusty and dirty, I can salvage this machine in time and at least make some simple things.

Will learn by watching your gaining of results.
Practice makes prefect as I like to say when I can't spell check.



Yes I've seen those machine but have no experience with them but I have seen photos of some fantastic stuff made on them.

Get yourself a couple of good books on lathes too as its amazing the number of little questions I've had come up as I've started to make stuff that I've found the answers to in my reference books.
tmuir

I was suppose to fix the water damage to my retaining wall today but instead I decided to have a play on my lathe.

I made a Renown overflow plug and bush today which I need for my meths burner on the Renown steam roller and a trunnion bolt for a cylinder.

I'm quiet pleased with the results even if its not perfect.





All my Renown parts I've made so far.
Les

They look good to me.
Wallace

Looks great Tony  
Les

How much more have you got left to do?
tmuir

I'm making parts for several engines at once but I need to finish the SV and make a plugging bolt for the whistle bush to finish one vertical and now I have made the otherflow plug I need to make the rest of the meths burner for my Roller and then I'm done on those two engines but I have a few more engines needing parts.
Reid

brought forward for new views

This is great stuff, Tony!

tmuir wrote:
I was suppose to fix the water damage to my retaining wall today but instead I decided to have a play on my lathe.

I made a Renown overflow plug and bush today which I need for my meths burner on the Renown steam roller and a trunnion bolt for a cylinder.

I'm quiet pleased with the results even if its not perfect.





All my Renown parts I've made so far.
tmuir

Received my parting tools today so I can make the remaining part for the safety valve now and ordered my spring wire so should have that within the week.

I need to order some more brass stock and a reamer before I can make the cylinders but may wait until next pay before I get them.

Tooling up and buying material is really starting to hurt my wallet.
oldstuff

tmuir wrote:
Received my parting tools today so I can make the remaining part for the safety valve now and ordered my spring wire so should have that within the week.

I need to order some more brass stock and a reamer before I can make the cylinders but may wait until next pay before I get them.

Tooling up and buying material is really starting to hurt my wallet.


Yeah, but I know you're having fun. Those parts you made look great, Tony.
tmuir

oldstuff wrote:


Yeah, but I know you're having fun. Those parts you made look great, Tony.


Oh definately having fun. I actually need to get a clock put in my workshop as I've already come inside after being out there for 'a while' wondering what the time was and discovered it was 11:45pm on  a work night.  
tmuir

I got my parting tool on Friday so today I spent some time in my workshop and made up the stem for my safety valve.
Now all that is left is to make the spring up which hopefully I will be able to do in a week or so when my bronze wire turns up.
But here is all the parts I've made so far assembled.



I'm quiet pleased with this even though I've made a couple of mistakes as it has been a good learning experience for me.
oldstuff

Looks fantastic, Tony. How did you do the knurling on the barrel?
tmuir

oldstuff wrote:
Looks fantastic, Tony. How did you do the knurling on the barrel?


I bought a knurling tool for my lathe. I think I will get another just does straight knurling too as some of the parts I want to make use straight knurling.
johnreid

Great work!
Les

Very clever.
Wallace

Coming on nicely. Always wondered how the knurling was done
tmuir

Wallace wrote:
Coming on nicely. Always wondered how the knurling was done


It's basically a tool held in the lathe tool holder with two hardened wheels each with half the hatch pattern on them.
You simply wind the tool into the object you want to knurl and depending on how much pressure you put on it will make the knurling deeper or shallower. To get different patterns you use different wheels.
Wallace

Thanks for that.

Tony, I know when working on engines sometimes the last thing you feel like doing is getting pics.

But if you ever get a chance some photos of cutting threads and knurling would be great.

Would be interesting to see.
Brandt

Great work Tony.


Looks like it has been a productive weekend for Renown engines rebuilding with us both producing on each side of the country. LOL
tmuir

Wallace wrote:
Thanks for that.

Tony, I know when working on engines sometimes the last thing you feel like doing is getting pics.

But if you ever get a chance some photos of cutting threads and knurling would be great.

Would be interesting to see.


No probs Wallace. Will take some photos when I next make some parts.
MY thread making is pretty basic at the moment as I haven't bought (or made) any tap or die holders for my lathe yet so at the moment I just wedge them in place with a dead centre in the tail stock. Its pretty basic but it works fine for what I'm doing at the moment.

I need another safety valve for my Scorpion engines so once I've got the spring wire and the correct size die for the thread I will make it up and can show the knurling set up.
tmuir

Received my Bronze wire today and I must say its the best 94p I've ever spent.


Well actually I spent more than that as Blackgates told me they had sold out so I also ordered some from Reeves 2000 and then blackgates must of found some so sent it to me anyways. So now I have about 20 meters of 24 SWG Phosphor Bronze wire, so enough to last me pretty much for ever.  

I got myself a 1/8 bar and wound the end of the wire around it and then chucked it up in my lathe and hand turned the chuck with tension on the wire until I had wound up enough to make about 3 springs.
A drill press would work just as well or even just a rod held in a vice and the wire wound around by hand would do in a pinch as long as you keep tension on the wire.

I simply snipped off the number of turns I needed and using my round nose pliers then stretched it out to the length that looked about right.

Fitted one spring onto my trunnion bolt.
Perfect!


Fitted one to the safety valve, good enough.


Filled up the boiler and the burner, pinched the whistle off one of my other engines and fired it up.
Even with the bent crank shaft that made the flywheel wobble all over the place it ran great so I'm very happy.

The only thing I may do different next time is to use a 2.5mm rod instead of a 1/8 inch rod just to make the coils slightly smaller in diameter but I would say it worked great.

I completely recommend buying some of this wire and giving it a go to replace your worn out springs rather than pinching ones from pens which always seem a little weak and at 94p for a couple of meters it will probably be the cheapest item you ever buy for fixing engines.  

Now here is a picture you won't see often.
Two Renown verticals together.


Now I just need to figure out how to make the whistle.  

Didn't make a video of this run but will do another and film it another day.
Les

That is a nice sight and a handy tip on spring making as well.
oldstuff

I never thought about making my own springs, but you're right. Ball point
pen springs are often too weak. Is this bronze wire tempered or hardened
somehow?
tmuir

oldstuff wrote:
I never thought about making my own springs, but you're right. Ball point
pen springs are often too weak. Is this bronze wire tempered or hardened
somehow?


I don't know exactly how much it is hardened but being a wire it is probably just work hardened when they draw it through the die.

I dare say if you heated the wire up red hot it would loose its spring which is probably why the original spring was no good on the trunnion bolt as the whole engine at some point was in a fire hot enough to desolder all the small parts off the engine.

I probably have enough wire to make between 100 and 150 springs now so I'm pretty much set for life now for springs.  

I can now even fix my Bowman and Luton Bowman safety valve I have lying in my box of bits.  
mogogear

Tmuir- so where did you pick up the  bronze wire tip??
Wallace

That's great Tony  
flywheel61

That's great Tony, and now for the Scorpion springs,     .

Cheers    

Chris
tmuir

flywheel61 wrote:
That's great Tony, and now for the Scorpion springs,     .

Cheers    

Chris


They are a bit more trick as they are cone shaped so will need to make a jig for them.

mogogear
I have a couple of books that recommend to use phosphor bronze wire and looking at my old OZ engines I could see that was the type of wire used. I just followed the directs from my Wells engine book on how to make them.
Mamodman123

Thats some great work you've done there tony!

Never thought about making my own springs!
James

That looks great Tony!!
tmuir

Mamodman123 wrote:
Thats some great work you've done there tony!

Never thought about making my own springs!


At 94p plus postage for 2 or 3 meters of wire thats probably enough for most of us to last some time as you only need about 15cm of wire per spring, less if you make 2 or 3 at the same time.
Its also more in keeping with the old engines than fitting a new stainless steel spring from a pen.
Nick

How exactly do you make these again?

How much tension do they have? I might have to give it a try.
steamyjim

Well done Tony!
tmuir

Nick wrote:
How exactly do you make these again?

How much tension do they have? I might have to give it a try.


I don't know the exact tension but going by feel they have about the same, maybe a bit more than the original springs.
But if you want higher tension you can use heavier gauge wire or just stretch them out a bit more so they need to be compressed further and so will have a higher tension.
alan2525

Reid wrote:
Inspiring results so early on, Tony!

So you've inspired me to pick up a poor condition small, tabletop Jensen lathe.
edit: it's a Sherline sold under private label, ca. 1984
http://www.sherline.com/usedmach.htm
AU roots too!

Rusty and dirty, I can salvage this machine in time and at least make some simple things.

Will learn by watching your gaining of results.
Practice makes prefect as I like to say when I can't spell check.



I don't have a sherline lathe but I have a small Taig tabletop lathe. These kinds of lathes are great as long as you realise it is a small lathe for small work! For small precision jobs they are lovely to use, the cost of accessories is cheap and you can make your own accessories for them too. I particularly like the taig as it has a chuck with soft aluminium jaws, you can easily modify these and bore them out with a boring bar to make chucking awkward items very simple.

What you can learn with a small lathe will also come into its own if you ever go in for a larer lathe. On small machines, the way the tools are ground, feedspeeds etc are more important as they lack the meat of the heavy cast iron castings of a larger lathe. On a big lathe you can really push a lathe tool or a broken carbide tipped tool into a piece of work and sometimes get away with it too! On a small lathe the lathe will tell you about it!
tmuir

Been getting into the swing of making overflow plugs.
I've actually made 4 so far but one is already installed on an engine.
Got one more to make for Clintons engine and then I can move onto some thing else.  
To get an idea of size the O ring is 1/8 inch diameter and the T bar is 1/16 inch rod.
oldstuff

Nice work, Tony. It's just these kinds of bits that often go missing.
When they do, it's great to have something this close to original.
tmuir

I am getting faster and better at making these but I still have a long way to go before I've got it completely mastered.
alan2525

How are you finding cutting the threads? Do you just use the tailstock chuck to square the die up with the stock?

Alan B
Wallace

Look great Tony  
tmuir

alan2525 wrote:
How are you finding cutting the threads? Do you just use the tailstock chuck to square the die up with the stock?

Alan B


I don't have a tail stock chuck yet, its on my wish list but I can only buy so many tools a month before the wife tells me off.  

For the taps I basically jam the dead centre into the back of the tool holder to keep it square and for the dies its a bit more suck it and see by simply holding the die holder square to the work and rotate the work by hand in the lathe chuck.
Not the ideal way but it will do until I buy the proper holders or make them.
steamyman

looking good, Tony.
tmuir

I made a Renown cylinder the other week but messed up the boring on it but tonight with some fine W&D on a dowel I managed to bring it back to a state that will do for a water pump, its not perfect but it was a good learning experience.
I also made a fitting piston for the cylinder tonight.
The piston rod on the cylinder is an old bent one that I removed and replaced from another of my engines but was fitted onto it just so I could check the fit into the cylinder.
Tomorrow hopefully I will make a new piston rod and the ring for the end of the rod that goes on the crank. I'm quiet pleased with the piston and may have a go at replacing the pistons on one of my week running Renowns to see if it improves performance.

spatial_pan

that is a very nice job.
Engineering is a brilliant activity, in a modern hi -tec age with cnc and cad there will imho always be a place for traditional skills be it turning or milling even bench fitting. I benefitted from a good apprenticedhip where I was exposed to a broad range of skills and even though I repair plasma and laser cutters electronically as well as mechanically now those basic skills still come into their own when a shaft or a pin is required and the alternative is to wait three weeks for a spare shipped from the states.
There is a second year apprentice in the workshop who doesn't even know which way round a hacksaw blade goes or even today had no way of identifying a thread or even know that  threads other than iso metric existed.
Sorry went on a bit there but your valve their demonstrates that if it is possible to manufacture beutiful things given the resources
xlchainsaw

great work tony ive been following this thread closely. australians are well known for their resourcefulness and inventiveness   you do us proud!
igy569

Thats what I have been doing wrong!!!  I should move to Australia!!!
xlchainsaw

igy569 wrote:
Thats what I have been doing wrong!!!  I should move to Australia!!!
yes move to land where you have to make do and if you cant get something you just have to make it yourself.l
tmuir

I've just come back in from tinkering in my workshop.
No photos tonight as I forgot to take the camera outside but I finished making the piston and then after a bit of 'adjusting' I've had my new cylinder and piston running reasonably well on my vertical engine.
It's not perfect and I had to out some W&D on some dowel and bore out the cylinder a bit more as it was sticking when it got hot but it now works well.

I still need to make a new spring and the nut for the trunnion bolt but the cylinder and piston do work.  

I'll try and take some photos and video tomorrow night as long as I can make it into the workshop.

It was a good learning experience, I made some mistakes and have learnt from them so hopefully the next one will be an improvement.
I still have one more complete cylinder and piston I need to make for my Renowns and one maybe two more pistons to replace worn out ones. Then I need to make one for my Parken and once I've done that I may actually got good enough I can make one for the other people that are after them.
Les

Well done and I look forward to seeing the finished articles.
igy569

Splendid work.  This is why I can wait to be able to afford a small lathe.   I keep hoping for one at the Flea......
tmuir

Been out playing in my workshop again.
Made myself a new spring for the trunnion bolt and wound up enough wire that I now have 2 spare springs for later.
Here is the completed cylinder and piston.
I did take some short cuts on this one.

The trunnion nut is original as I've 'borrowed' it off another cylinder and will be making a new one some time in the next week.
The piston rod is an original off another engine that was bent but I've now mostly straightened it and used it and the cylinder blot is original and avtually came with this engine.
When I received the engine it had been in a fire (I assume someone tried to run it with petrol   ) and the cylinder had desoldered from the block and got lost.
I had already pinched the trunnion bolt and nut to put with a spare cylinder and piston I got by luck off ebay that was missing this, hence why I had to make new ones.

Enough talking, here it is.


And on the engine.


I'll be posting a video of it in action as soon as I edit it and upload it.
Nick

I was interested earlier when you said you make your springs.

Do you have any tips as I am going to try it out?
tmuir

Nick wrote:
I was interested earlier when you said you make your springs.

Do you have any tips as I am going to try it out?


They are dead simple to make.
I use Phosphor Bronze wire as this is what is used on most old engines and it won't rust.
I had trouble finding the correct size locally and ended up ordering mine from the UK.
Reeves 2000 sells it as does Blackgates Engineering both have websites with reeves having online ordering.
I used 24SWG wire and it cost me 94p for 3 meters I bought several packets of it and now have about 20 meters of it, basically enough to last me years.
Measure the diameter of the bolt you want the spring to go on and get some metal rod the same size or a fraction of a mm smaller.
I wrapped the wire around the rod and put it in my lathe and whilst holding the wire under tension turned the lathe chuck by hand until I had wound up enough for 3 springs. A drill press would do or even the rod held in a vice in a pinch.
Then just cut the number of turns you want and rub the ends on a fine file to flatten the cut bits and stretch apart with your fingers or two sets of round nose pliers. You will need to stretch it a bit bigger than you want the spring and thats it. When you stretch it do it a little at a time so you don't over stretch it.
You can't use just any wire and I do recommend getting the phosphor bronze wire, even ordering it from the UK will cost you no more than a few dollars and will make you lots of springs.
johnreid

I wonder if the unwound Phosphor Bronze guitar strings wouldnt do?
tmuir

johnreid wrote:
I wonder if the unwound Phosphor Bronze guitar strings wouldnt do?


No idea, don't know anything about guitar strings, I'm guessing the wire would be atleast half hard as that the important part. Soft wire or freshly annealed wire won't work for springs. It needs to be already work hardened so it has some tension in it to spring back.
johnreid

I bet they would work as when I remove them from the machine heads they seem like springs. Could be a lot less expensive source, especially if you know someone who plays guitar and throws away old strings!
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