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Burrell Traction Engine, Horn plates (Part 1)

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's not evident in this photo but I bought some temporary fasteners used in the aircraft industry or handmade car body panel restoration.
These were available in 1/8" diameter and locate well, but require a tool to attach which I did not order outright so made a spacer to try one out. The tool has subsequently been ordered to make full use of the fasteners but I feel they are suitable for this purpose.

The next step will be to mark and cut the circular openings for the bearings to fit and drill some 200 holes for the dummy rivets, the packets of small rivets can be seen near the top of the above photo.

More progress to follow as my 3.1mm drill wears out, and I get my rivet snap tool out and start bashing.

The blue finish is engineers marking out blue, no discussion necessary here it just helps and I regularly use it.
   

First Bearing fitted, an early start in the workshop with fresh eyes to complete the last 0.017" cut to get a good fit. Now to decide how to keep the origin and separate the plates for the larger diameter hole.
Also how to cut it as the boring tool used here is almost at its max at 2". 


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