Review of 2010

2010 has been been an interesting year for Workshopshed. I started the year messing around with aluminum blocks and an angle grinder. They get very hot but look good when cooled.



Also in January I commented on the London Model Engineering Exhibition, I did not have chance to attend but it was still the most commonly viewed post of the year. Another popular post in January was the article on the nano machines tiny metal working tools from SIEG.

In February I was doing a lot of reading and reviewed books on performance welding and some old books I found on casting.

March saw the arrival of my TIG welder, and a very rapid switch from small bottles of gas to a larger tank of argon from Weldair Supplies. In March was the first of three interviews for the year, Tim Adams from Gatergrotto explained how he made sculptures from scrap metal.



April was welding month, and as well as a couple of practice welds, I also made some storage tubes for my welding rods.

May allowed me some time to work on my knurling tool, however the result was some irregular shaped holes and got me thinking about fixing the problem by boring the holes on a face plate. May also had the virtual tour of the Shedworking book in which the workshopshed blog had a mention.

June had one of your and my favourite posts, Welding the Elephant, I also constructed a couple of welded garden obelisks to support some climbing plants whilst building works were done on the house. This also started a period where the shed was difficult to access or being used as storage for items from the house.



July started with shed week, of course I was interested in the workshop sheds and unfortunately the workshop category winner was not the overall winner.



August started with the most popular post of the year, an interview with Alan Ross and his fantastic sculptures. A second interview with Bob Wright later in the month looked at some of his home made tools and his train layouts suspended in welded frames hanging from the ceiling.



Alan Ross returned in September to provide a guest blog entry about bending and jigs.

October was an academic month and I read about early aeroplanes and pondered Sheffield Steel and drilling square holes.

Another guest in November, Vernon told of how he created a vertical slide for his lathe. The self repair manifesto was also popular with twitter readers.

A family visit the 103rd Model Engineering Show was a fine finish to the year.



See you all in 2011.

Stirling and hot air engines

Despite my scepticism one of my kind relatives bought me something from my carefully prepared Christmas list.


Stirling and Hot Air Engines: An Insight into Building and Designing Experimental Model Stirling Engines by Roy Darlington and Keith Strong

My relative explained to me that they were a little worried that I would be building engines in the shed and was there not a chance that they might explode. I pointed out that these were sealed systems and did not use a boiler so that should not be the case. When I read the first chapter, it mentioned that Robert Stirling was also concerned by the numbers of operators and bystanders killed by steam hence why he put the effort into developing these engines so should put everyone's mind at rest.



The book starts with an introduction to the two authors and why they are qualified to be talking on such a subject. It then has a quick history and explanation of how the engines work.

The next couple of chapters looks at design considerations, what factors are the most important in getting good performance from your engine and types of engines.

This is followed by chapters on each type of engine including examples that have been made by the authors and others:

• Gamma,
• Ringbom (free displacer cylinder),
• Low Temperature Differential,
• Martini (free power piston),
• Marble Engines,
• a unique twin-Cylinder boat engine,
• Stirling Silver i (twin-cylinder gamma engine for a boat),
• solar engine,
• Stirling Silver ii (single-cylinder beta engine),
• the engine used in the buggy on the cover,
• thermo-acoustic engines,
• other interesting engines

The chapter on workshop techniques and practices could be a book in it's own right. It looks at creating the various components, from cylinders and pistons to con rods, clevis, cranks and flywheels. The description on boring, honing and lapping the cylinder could be useful to people building any kind of engine.

The final chapter contains plans for a stirling engine Replica Stirling Silver II (Single Cylinder Beta Engine).



Like all good books, it does not finish there. As well as a detailed index there are also a glossary, bibliography and 7 appendices.

Hopefully in 2011 I'll have the opportunity to build a low temperature differential Stirling engine.

For more information I recommend you see

The website for the book with updated plans
Robert Sier's Stirling Engines site.
Pierre Gras' Stirling Engines site (in English and in French)
Or for details of a simple engine that can be built with minimal tools, there is Boyd's Tin Can Stirling Engine.

Helicopters the fly themselves

One thing I've seen a few times this Christmas is model helicopters, one of them was gesture activated and some even had cameras and linked to your iphone.



Impressive that these are, there are also people who make their own copters that fly themselves. One of these is William Thielicke from Bremen who has made Shrediquette an aerobatic tricopter/ tri-rotor. It can also hover by itself thanks to some clever electronics, three MEMS gyroscopes and a two axis MEMS accelerometer.

Shrediquette MM6 FPV winter flight

If you are interested in building an automatous copter then you should head over to DIY Drones where you will find everything you need for such a device and even some stuff that could be useful for other projects. There is also a build log for Shrediquette.

Wood Pattern-Making

I've been reading Wood Pattern-Making by Herbert J McCaslin. It's the 1997 reprint of a much earlier book and I have to recommend it as being an interesting and potentially useful read for people interested in casting (or woodworking).


Wood pattern-making

It's important to realise that this book is ONLY about pattern making, there's nothing about casting in general and a small amount about how you would use the patterns once you've created them.

The book starts with an introduction to some of the woodworking tools you might use for making patterns, more tools and techniques are introduced as the book progresses. Likewise the patterns it starts with are also simple to make. The each chapter looks at a different problem and logically introduces new concepts such as cores and core boxes, turning and split patterns. It finishes with complex curved and flanged items and hand-wheels and flywheels which are more complex than you might imagine. Some of the problems raised such as pattern strength may not be an issue for the small patterns model engineers are likely to make but the techniques mentioned are definitely valid and the worked examples are excellent. There are questions at the end of each chapter if you want to use the book as a study guide. You really need to read the book in order to get the best from it but once you have then you can use it as a reference book for specific problems. There is a comprehensive index and plenty of diagrams. I can thoroughly recommend this book.

Model Engineering Show Report 2010

I visited the model engineer exhibition at Sandown Park at the weekend.



Given that I took my 2 month old daughter, I managed to bring down the average age of the visitors somewhat, this also gave me a perspective on the accessiblity of the location. Most areas were accessible with the lift or ramps with the exception of the "Sports Bar" which had been renamed the "Engineer's bar" for the day, we also shortcutted up some steps to the landsdown bar which would have otherwise meant going outside to get to those exhibits.

The exhibition had a slightly better layout that last year. The main room of the exhibition was again on the ground floor but the outdoor railway track had moved up from the racetrack to the parade ground. This meant for a smaller display but massively improved the access to see the trains. Also in the parade ground were a selection of traction engines, I think there were three but they kept moving around faster than I could count them...

The entrance hall was populated with a tracked tractor and two real steam model railways. Up some steps to the sports bar was the first room of the Society of Model and Experimental Engineers, this had a good selection of models including a traction engine with a movable anchor (for ploughing) with details of how the wheels were designed to dig in when the cables tighted up.

Through some doors from the foyer was the main trade and exhibition hall along with a large area for eating, drinking and socialising. There was a good selection of trade stands with supplies of metal, castings, machine tools, hand tools and much more. A big thanks to Chronos and Tracytools who both provided the items I'd previously discussed with them at a good price too. I had intended to buy the Story behind the models but the MyHobbyStore stand had sold out before we got there.



Also on the ground floor were a selection of clubs including an impressive display of working models from the Stirling Society and more from the Society of Model and Experimental Engineers. It was good also to see some models from my local club the North London Society of Model Engineers.



Up some steps (or via the slope outside) got us to the Landsdown champagne bar which housed a model making area, schools exhibits, a tank and a full sized 3litre car which had been built from scratch.

A quick trip up in the lift got us to the models that had won awards and unlike last year I managed to find the club room which also had an impressive selection of models along with books and magazines for sale.



I did not managed to attend any of the lectures this year but there was a large audience for the one I saw through the window which I believe was on sharpening tools.

All in all a good event this year with improved layout, a friend who was a first time visitor with his son described it as well worth the entrance fee. My daughter loved the steam engines but the noise of the Stirling engines put her to sleep, my top priority project for next year will of course be a Stirling engine!

Toolmakers Microscope

A couple of people have mentioned that they are having difficulty reading the verniers on their calipers. The chaps on the Model Engineering Clearing House suggested using digtal calipers which was then followed by a discussion on the accuracy of using such a techniques.

This got me thinking about an article I'd seen sometime back about using a USB camera for a centering camera. It turns out that Mike's also had the same idea and he's already produces some software that allows you to measure things, he cleverly set it up so you can calibrate the camera using a simple ruler.

Given Mike's images and results perhaps a microscope is overkill, a camera should have sufficient resolution although looking at some microscope reviews the 20x mode looks to be about right. The built in LEDs are also a useful feature of such microscopes.

If you wish to use Mike's CentreCam software, I would advise checking with Mike about any compatibility issues before purchasing. However some of the some of the top end USB microscopes available already come with measuring software.