Steam Punk Magazine

The other month, Steam Punk Magazine was kind enough to offer me a slot in their periodical, to enthuse about brass and making the flea chariot.

The article should be appearing in edition #6 "The Pre-Industrial Revolution" which is out now.



At a staple-popping 104 pages from cover-to-cover, it's filled with a selection of stories, poems, reviews, interviews, articles, and how-tos.

The theme for the issue is 'The Pre-Industrial Revolution', offering an opportunity for us to begin explore the pre-Victorian aspects of the steampunk ethic, and the many faces of steampunk before and beyond the constraints of the Duskless Empire. It also investigates the ways in which steampunk is often an unindustrial (if not pre-industrial) revolution in its own right. All on top of a glut of regular content, such as features on:

Alchemy;
The Luddites;
Victorian Martial Arts;
Creating your own steampunk sculptures;
Building your own windmill;
An interview with British steampunk outfit 'Ghostfire'.

Issue #6 of Steampunk Magazine is available printed on recycled paper through the mail-order page of Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, and also (as ever) for free download through the Steampunk Magazine website.



The previous edition #5 had a good article on Metal Casting by David Dowling which is worth reading.

Making the Victorian Flea Chariot - Part 4

Finish

I was thinking about "aging" the brass but when I cleaned it up with a minidrill and wirebrush following the brazing it turned a nice dull colour. Hence I left it that way. I do intend to investigate some of the techniques people have told me about incase I need them for a bigger project.

Display Case

Finding a small domed glass case supplier was a difficult challenge. I looked around a few suppliers back in the summer with no success their products with either the wrong shape or very expensive. Eventually a private seller on ebay came to the rescue and I purchased a dome with "Japanese Figures Garden Scene". The dome was glued to the base so that had to be gently cut and coaxed from the base. The figures and their felt disk were removed and the base was varnished. I decided to turn a slot into the base so that the dome could be removed.

I wandered around a few coin shops in London looking for a cheap coin 1820-1870 and was eventually directed to a shop on Cecil Court that had a series of boxes where a coin could be bought for £1. I finally settled on an 1857 French coin with a relief of Napoleon III.

The chariot is secured with a small cube magnet glued to the coin. A tiny flake of steel glued below the axle (brass is not magnetic) of the chariot to allow it to be lifted off.



Carry Case

I also needed a way of carrying the fragile glass display case around. I had a look in the office for a suitable box and noticed that there were some fake wood books on the shelf that were not actually being used. I used some metal strips and some magnets to produce a catch to keep the box closed in transit.

I took the hands off of a "helping hands" to leave just the magnifier on a stand. The dome and magnifier were then wrapped in bubble wrap to keep them in the case. I suppose felt/velvet/velour and some kind of foam would be better but I did not have access to those.

Summary / Management Overview

The investigation part of the project has been going on and off since the summer and I've had some rough designs in my head since then. The build process took about 12 hours spread over several days between Christmas 2008 and New Year.

It's been a learning exercise making the flea chariot, there were some small mistakes made along the way and almost a disaster with the problem brazing. I'm happy with the end results and so far all of the people I've showed it too have been impressed or amazed.



I'll conclude with a report of a much earlier and sophisticated flea carriage from the 1800s.

" A few years ago, a Mr. Boverick, an ingenious watchmaker, of London, exhibited to the public, a little ivory chaise, with four wheels, and all its proper apparatus, and a man sitting on the box, all of which were drawn by a single flea. He made a small landau, which opened and shut by springs, with six horses harnessed to it, a coachman sitting on the box, and a dog between his legs : four persons were in the carriage, two footmen behind it, and a postilion riding on one of the fore horses, which was also easily drawn along by a flea. He likewise had a chain of brass, about two inches long, containing 200 links, with a hook at one end, and a padlock and key at the other, which the flea drew very nimbly along. — (Jamieson't Modern Voyages and Travels.) "

There will undoubtedly be more reports on such items in the Flea Circus Research Library Blog.

More Flea Chariot articles.

Making the Victorian Flea Chariot - Part 3

Brazing and Soldering

Prior to silver soldering the components I did a practice exercise to make a small brass cube. I had intended to complete all 6 sides but due to time constraints over Christmas I only completed the three sides. I will finish this off if I get some spare time.



The first thing I did was to clean all of the parts using wirewool and checked that they fitted correctly.

Because there are many parts it is difficult to clamp them all in place at once. However because the parts are in close proximity it is not possible to silver solder them in multiple steps as the later steps would melt the first and the model would fall apart.

The solution to this issue is called step soldering. This requires solder with two different melting points. The higher melting point solder is used first then this is followed by a lower melting point. For complex models this can be extended to even more steps but there is a limit to how many different solders can be used. I only had one type of silver solder but I also had some soft solder so I decided to use those two. I used a cotton bud to apply flux to the joints and heated the components with a mini gas torch.

I initially used calipers to hold the parts but as the parts were heated the brass softened and it crushed the parts.



So after some swearing, bending and filing to get the axle back to it's original shape I tried again using croc clips with a more gentle clamping force.



The body was then soldered using soft solder (and appropriate flux) and an electric soldering iron usually used for soldering electronic components.



For the wheels I has originally intended to rivet them in place. Having never done this before I tried it with my test piece. That snapped so I scrapped the idea and used soft solder instead. I wetted the wheels/axle with WD40 and then fluxed the washer and tip of the axle before soldering. While the solder was cooling I checked that the wheels still rotated. I set up for the next job and gazoing! ... somewhere on the floor of my workshop is a 2mm brass washer. I made another washer a soldered that onto the second wheel.



Thanks to Mike Freeman for his tips on silversoldering and cleaning flux.

The final part of this construction notes will look at the display case and carry box.

More Flea Chariot articles.

Making the Victorian Flea Chariot - Part 2

Machining the parts

Both the axle and the wheels of the chariot needed to be machined. However due to a lack of appropriately sized material, I also ended up machining the hook at the front of the chariot.

To turn the 4mm brass rod down to 2mm for the axle, I needed to support the rod at both ends to stop it bending when being cut. I did this using a female centre to support the tailstock end of the rod. Once this was complete, the ends were sawn off and the axle were carefully machined down to 1mm.



I also created a small test piece shown in the top of the picture below to practice attaching the wheels. More on that in part 3.



For the towing hook of the chariot the rod needed to be even thinner, I wanted it to be 1.5mm. This used the same technique as above. However the rod was bending as it was machined meaning that the middle was fatter than the ends which were supported. The solution to this was to run more passes with a finer feed. Keeping the tool clear of swarf (dust) and additional cutting fluid seemed to help with this too.

Both wheels were machined at the same time using a small parting tool.



The holes in the wheels were first spotted with a very small centre drill and then drilled to 1.2mm to give clearance on the axle. Because the drill was so small I needed to use a small drill chuck mounted in the larger chuck of the tailstock.



Thanks to the chaps from the Model Engineering Clearing House for their tips on drilling with very small drills.



The wheels were separated with a junior hacksaw and then filed smooth.

An offcut from the axle was also used to make the washers that held on the wheels. These were thinned/smoothed by rubbing them on some emery cloth. You can see them in the middle pot of the photo of the parts box below.

Manual Jobs

The base of the chariot sawn from a piece of brass strip and rounded with a file. Then using a magnifying glass and a needle file, the stepped edge was added. The front of the chariot was made from a slightly thinner brass strip and filed to shape. I had wondered about using some kind of tool for bending this to shape but it turned out that it could easily be done by hand. I simply bent the strip around the base of the chariot. A photo with the digital camera showed where it did not fit properly and it was coaxed into line with a bit of rubbing.



Because the parts were so small I kept them in a plastic container to avoid loosing them and helping when I came to pick them up.



In the next part of these build notes, I'll be covering the issues with brazing and soldering the components together.

More Flea Chariot articles.

Making the Victorian Flea Chariot - Part 1

Design

As mentioned in the first flea chariot article, the design of the chariot was based on those seen on pathe newsreels and from the Tivoli Gardens flea circus. The spokeless design for the wheels was on the difficulties given the size because I did not really have any ability to drill holes around a circle I made the wheels solid. Although it does not really need a dividing head to do this job it does accurate positioning for the drilling. Rather than creating the design on a 2D Cad system I used a 3D modelling tool (Carrara Studio) that allowed me to visualise the results. I then created some rough sketches of each of the components what I required and finally added some measurements.

Tools and Materials

Given that this was my first project using brass, I decided to make some soft jaws for the vice. The size of the components I was working on meant that I had to hold some of them in some part finished toolmakers clamps.



Other tools used were a junior hacksaw, standard files (for rough shaping), needlefiles and a magnifying glass. I've been given recommendations to always use your sharpest files and saws for dealing with brass but I did not have any real issues with that. My junior hacksaw blade was due for replacement anyway so I used a new blade with that.

I also used a variety of clamps for the brazing (more of that in a later article) and a selection of tools/materials for polishing the parts before assembly.



The materials were fairly simple, some brass strip in two different thicknesses and some 4mm brass rod. The design actually called for thinner rod so I had to machine it down from 4mm to 2mm. The details of this will be covered in the next article.

More Flea Chariot articles.

Victorian Flea Chariot Launch

The Victorian Flea Chariot was revealed to members of Imperial College's STOIC Alumni Association (PSTOIC) at their annual dinner at the Rembrant Hotel in South Kensington. The theme for this year was "Something Amazing".

Thanks for the excellent photography from Martin Evans.



More Flea Chariot articles.

Victorian Flea Circus Chariot

The idea to make a Victorian Flea Chariot came about due to my interest in Flea Circuses. I wondered if it was possible to make one using simple techniques such as would have been available in the 1800s. Although there were no details of those used in the early days of the flea circus, I had seem some in videos. Hence I based my design on those from Elsie Torp's Danish flea circus and those seen on the British Pathe Newsreels.



The chariot is approx 10mm long by 7mm wide and made from brass, the wheels are 5mm in diameter. The wheels and axle were turned on a lathe and the other parts were made by hand with hacksaw and files. Mostly the chariot was made without needing maginifcation but I did use a magnifying glass for the filing and fitting. A digital camera was also used to check some of the details.



The mounting is an old victorian era french coin about the size of a 2p, the chariot is secured with a small magnet and a tiny piece of steel glued below the axle (brass is not magnetic). I picked up the glass display case on Ebay for a bargain. A new groove was turned in the base so that the dome can be removed and replaced. The carry case in the background is some fake books made from wood which I got from a junk shop many years ago.

Watch a quick demo of the flea chariot in action


It was a fairly straight forward project with a nice range of different skills including turning and brazing as well as some manual metal working. I did have some challenges when building it and more details of how it was made will be published via the workshopshed blog over the next few weeks.

Thanks go to:
William Howard school Brampton for teaching me about metal work
Dowty Group Services for training me on lathe use
Stroud College for a class on brazing skills
Eric Christoffersen from the Svenson's Flea Circus for his tips on making chariots

Flea Circuses evolved out of the skills of watch makers and jewellers and were made famous in the 1830s by L.Bertolotto who turned the bias from the construction skills to the performance. They remained popular until the 1960s and many peoples grandparents have seen one. I've been researching this topic for about 4 years now and regularly make new discoveries which I publish along with other flea news on the flea circus research library blog.

http://tinyurl.com/FleaChariot

Miniature Engineering

In the process of looking for information about making my flea circus chariot I've tracked down a few other people who like to make small things. Charlotte and Martin Willmott made the papers recently with their models of tiny kitchen tables laden with food.



Laurence and Angela St Leger makes miniature automata approximately 1 inch tall powered by the pull of an almost invisible wire or a tiny crank.



Award winning model engineer Cherry Hill makes some very small components for her 1:16 scale working traction engines. Often this requires making tools that in themselves are smaller than a 20p coin. Details of her workshop can be seen in the Model Engineers Workshop Special Autumn 2008.

Other Suppliers of Miniature items

• Miniature

Tools for miniature modelling

• Micro-tools
• Tick in time
• Watch tools

Clock Makers

• The British Horological Institute
• W R Smith Clocks

A range of computer microscopes

• Digital Blue QX5 Computer Microscope
• Digital Blue Smithsonian