3" Burrell Traction Engine build.

  3" Burrell motion work Work started a few weeks ago on the weigh-shaft bracket, a tricky casting to deal with. I made a start by centre drilling both ends for the shaft and then made up a difficult setup in the milling machine to try to hold it square for drilling horizontally. This worked to a certain degree, basically the length means any miss alignment is amplified massively but within a reasonable tolerance I completed it.  I was then able to turn one end a bit, to stop it looking like an egg. I'm reasonably happy with it, certainly there are probably more out there that look like mine, and maybe some in the bin. I guess if a complete disaster happened it would not be too much trouble to cut the casting up and machine a truly round centre tube and silver solder it back onto the original, to save the day as it not a cheap casting to mess up.        The alignment process prior to drilling   Often I believe the setup's are as important as the r...