Progress on Building the Stuart Turner Victoria Horizontal Steam Engine And Designing The Frame For The Makita 2107F Bandsaw

The Stuart Turner Victoria Horizontal Steam Engine

I’m still working on the base for this engine. Actually this is the second base – the Stuart Turner casting kit has the real base but it needs a sub base to sit on. The sub-base was, in the real engine, made from wood, but I had a piece of steel channel that I decided to use at least as a temporary base. I may change it for wood in the future.

The holding-down lugs have been brazed on to the channel steel base and the ends closed with plates sawn from a 1 m square sheet of 2.83 mm black steel using the Bosch GST 25M Professional jigsaw.

Now I have milled and filed down the lugd and end plates to match the steel channel and covered the whole baseplate with car body filler.

Sanding flat is in hand at the moment.

I’m sanding the base outside to keep the dust out of the workshop but because it’s a boring and slow job and it’s cold outside (16 Deg C – freezing for Thailand) I do a few rubs on the sandpaper then go do something else. Like writing this Post. Then go do another rub on the sandpaper.

Designing The Frame For The Makita 2107F Bandsaw

I’m still working on this using AutoCAD to make the drawings.

The (updated) prototype has been such a success and so useful that it’s a permanent (temporary) attachment to the work bench. It will remain so until the real one is built.

The prototype Makita 2107F Bandsaw frame on the workbench has also proven vital to obtaining some vital dimensions to use in the actuel CAD design. Centre-line of fixing screws to centre-line of cutting blade, just for one example.