3" Burrell Traction Engine build.

Burrell Traction Engine, Horn Plates (Part 1) If you have read the blog thus far then thanks for putting up with my bad English. Even using Grammarly is not helping me however, I'm guessing if you are reading this its because you're interested in the build rather than an English essay. Horn Plates Hornplates I did try to go down the route of getting these Lazer cut professionally however the work required to produce the drawings proved too much, and so a set of 1/8" blanks were purchased from Bridport foundry. The disappointment came when I found they supply metric 3mm for the blanks, as I guess 1/8" is difficult to obtain. Maybe they could have increased the size to 4mm which would have been a better solution to prevent flexing by the pump under load. In fact, my 1" Minnie has 2mm horn plates at (1inch: foot) and just the axle and crank was made wider to accommodate the thicker plates. Well, I started marking out some holes to pin the two plates together. It...

Burrell Traction Engine, Bearings, bushes and Bearing Housings. The bearing housings for the split gearings and the bearings for the shaft tubes are shown below. The latter being an item I acquired, and simply needed to bore the hole out to 1 inch to suit, these are some sort of (good) Bronze, easy to machine with a high-quality finish. The castings are in the as-delivered state, and require some thought to machine ....! The bearing halves for the crank bearing, photo from Bridport foundry. It's bronze material I'm told, I guess its the better new old stock. We will see when I start to machine it. However, all in plus postage £30 for this slab.  Finally, the finished shaft tubes with the preserving Red Oxide paint finish preventing any unwanted corrosion to the fresh cast-iron surface after machining.   (Note the empty Gin bottles are not all mine I do have help). A start has been made on the larger of the 2 bearings and a Mild steel accurate gauge plug has been made. This is ...