thomas oliver 1

I have made a good few gaskets in my time from most of the materials suggested. Mostly I use good quality thin Hallite which is a heat proof gasket material obtained from a specialist shop dealing in plastic sheet, rubber sheet, and gasket stuff. Nowadays some brown paper is sealed on one side to make it waterproff, which also strengthens it. If using brown or thin paper, place a piece over the port and rub it over with your greasy oily finger which will mark the edges. Push the paper with a suitable small ball bearing into a bolt hole and tap the ball with a hammer and this will cut the hole. I also use a multiple punch to punch small holes in each corner ot the port hole and then cut the outline with a scalpel. It is then best to trim slightly oversize, bolt together and trim around with the scalpel as suggested. I used to use special silicone called Hylomar on my motorcycle joints by smearing around, bolting up lightly and leaving to cure. Then a final tightening

Liberator nose wheel would be a fair bit bigger. Looking at the scale of the wheel, It is a bit too big for a single engined Spit or Hurricane, so I reckon it falls in the mid size Blenheim class. Pictures I have of Blenheim tailwheels show outward dishing of the hub but I note that in the shot the rims have 5 holes near the periphary on both sides so this might indicate separate covers screwed on. Lots of wartime aircraft had slick tyres.

Having made several diesel engines, I would not advise using any sort of grinding paste. Brasso would probably do or 1200 grit Silicon carbide. If the contra piston can move at all, it will not require more off than a fraction of a thousandth of an inch to fit correctly. The contra piston should return up if a small prime it given direct into the cylinder. I have done this hundreds of times and there is little danger of damaging the engine. The C/P should snap back up with a click.

Steve, Merely trying to help in case, as I said , you had no previous experience.

I'm afraid you will need to sell a couple of more items If you need to make a variety of parts. You will need a micrometer, a digital vernier, some suitable HSS spare tools( forget about TC for now- is difficult to sharpen but needed for cast iron or difficult metals) a tailstock die holder, a drill chuck, various taps and dies, a tap wrench, a bench grinder etc. etc etc. Start by making as many accessories as you can on the lathe as this will give valuable expereince if you have none previously. Tailstock die-holder is a useful start.

I have two Junior 60s. One is powered. by an OS 20 FS which will allow it to take off from grass comfortably. I have seen more powerful engines recommended but feel they are not really necessary. The second is electric with a Tornado motor and is a real rocket on full power, and 8.4volts. The power pack is mounted upright at the front of the cabin and just squeezes in. This keeps the Cof G OK without ballast. I have been flying the OS powered model since the first engines were released- a long time ago I guess. Have lost count of the number of flights.

I used to use Perspex to turn model engine tanks and never had any problems. The latest supplies of Perspex seem to have a different composition and do melt with the tool friction. I have lately had this problem on my Pultra lathe which is a high speed. I tried all sorts of coolants including water and found the material developed cracks due to thermal shock. I then tried air cooling by blowing with a small vacuum cleaner and this effected a complete cure of the problem.

I use engine cambelts made of rubber, cut and joined with superglue for my power hacksaw, and clamp the joint while it sets. it seems to give a strong joint. Tomol

It is possible to obtain piano wire in imperial sizes. I can buy 1/16th in at a model shop in Stockton on Tees., and they do have other sizes.

Cored solder is not a lot of good on steel. Obtain Bakers Soldering Fluid - still available. Wash off afterwards, as it is derived from hydrochloric acid. You can still apply the cored solder to the joint.

Engine has the wrong needle. It looks to be and ED Bee or ED246 MK2 type. This will devalue the engine.

A lot of Britiish made diesels had 4BA size needle valve assemblies in the mid range size. The PAW NVA is 4BA and would fit directly to these and would not cause restriction of airflow. Only if a 5BA sized engine of about 1cc, like a DC Merlin were to be bored out to fit a PAW 4BA sized NVA would there be any restriction.

I think Motorvatio Models is the chap who took over from John D Haytree. He is John Walton, 10 Lansdowne House, Lansdowne Road, Leicester.

Almost all British engine makers used a 16th in ( 0.0625) wire for lthe needles of most engine except the tinier ones like the ED Baby. PAW is one of the exceptions using 16swg ( 0.064). A PAW needlyles .will rarely fit most engines and the replacement. of the whole NVA is usually necessary. Engine collectors can easily spot PAW needles fitted to other makes due to their distinct pattern, and will devalue an engine accordingly. ,The commonest size used for the compression screws is 2BA, and PAW ones are quite long and could well be used for other makes.

My first model was a Keilkraft Lysander scale model, at age 10. On demob from the RAF in 1947, I soon took up building my own RC gear, before it was even commercially available. I have been modelling now for 77 years, including making umpteen steam locos and stationary engines, plus petrol and diesel engines. Running after free flight rubber models in the early days, and some early radio fly aways must have kept me fit. Tom O.

Richard, The ED 249 definitely has the cylinder the wrong way. As Mark says the tranfer port should be at the front and the exhausts at the sides. As I said, you will not be able to run this engine without a replacement needle valve assembly, as the needle and spraybar are sheared off. If you want to access an excellent site for engine information, try modelenginenews.org.- an Australian site which is a mine of information. You will be able to acces pictures of yor engine in Engine Finder.

The ED MK111 came with a glow head as a standard extra. It is not an RC engine - the lever is a cut - out which bleeds air through a small hole. The best cleaner is Fairy Power spray as agreed on most engine forums. The missing screw should be size 6 BA. It has most of the awkward to make bits, like tank and prop driver, which are valuable spares, but the spraybar is sheared off and the needle gone with it. A complete spraybar is about the most complex to make of any I know, and unobtainable. Standard 4BA spraybars will not fiit. The needle thread would be 2BA (3/16in) .

I have a length of cycle inner tube and one of motorcycle inner tube. I cut bands from these with scissors and find them amazingly useful for holding together all sorts of things. They do not stretch forever but increase in tension as expanded.

Erfolg, You stated that cutting a thread on a spoke would "quickly" blunt the die. This is the point with which I disagree. I have threaded and used spokes for a variety of purposes for over 60 years, including needles for spraybars, and I have never had the slightest trouble or signs of any blunting of my dies. It is very easy to put a sharp right angled bend in a spoke with a pair of pliers, and it is slightly springy, but not enough to trouble even a carbon die. No doubt whatever the formula of the steel, it would not be mild steel, and it would have properties developed in the drawing process, But these could easily be removed by bulk heat treatment. Thomas.

Erfolg. I have a large supply of spokes of all gauges , including motor cycle spokes. Before I posted my reply, I took the trouble actually to test several spokes with the results I stated. The 16 SWG spoke I made a right angled bend in was to my sense of feel a soft steel. It also felt soft when filed. Have you tested any spokes recently? I seem to remember that an 1/8" dia steel wire has sufficient tensile strength to support a double decker bus, if it were possible. I conclude that even a soft steel spoke will have the tensile strength to tension up a wheel strong enought to support rider and machine. Thomas

Where does this idea come from that bicycycle spokes are tough and will blunt even a carbon die. Spokes are soft and bend and file easily. The material is a special steel for rolling therefore must be capable of being easilly deformed, and will obviously thread OK. I do not think it needs anealing or normalising. Piano wire varies a bit in characteristics. I have had some which is softer than average, and looks lighter in colour, and some which was harder than average and strangely would not take soft solder easily, even with Bakers flux. It would only take a few seconds to heat and soften the end of a piece of piano wire with a little torch, and this would not materially weaken the wire very much. It would surely be OK for a push rod with the forces involved. A source of useful wire is old umbrella ribs. These come in a variety of sizes and are similar in quality to spokes.

I once visited a factory in Leeds making aluminium kitchenware. A guy was "brazing" the spouts onto teapots with a small blowtorch, silicon alloy rods and flux to suit the rods. The result was a beautiful filleted joint. I bought the rods and flux, which unfortunately had a terrific affinity for water and was costly then. I was quite successful in making nice joints and even taught boys to do it. The flux soon became liquid and would not work, so I never pursued this method. Later I bought two different types of rods at B&Q store - Taymar brand I believe. One was a fluxed rod for alloy ,and the other was a non fluxed rod. I successfully made many alloy headers for petrol engines for friends with the fluxed rods using a medium sized nozzle on my Seivert torch. The other rods were similar to technoweld rods and worked equally as well if you used the technoweld technique using a SS spike and a SS wire brush. I fixed the detached flange back on the downdraught carburettor of an OS 40 FS and lots of other jobs using this last method. So there are several choices of processes for joining aluminium alloy. I was in B& Q last week and they do not appear to stock Taymar branded rods nowadays but they do have various silver soldering rods.

Any machine from China will need a thorough inspection and fine tune, unless provided by the dealer. The C! lathes are a trifle small and I would go for the bigger sizes according to what you can afford. One of the bugbears of machines is backlash in the slides and digital readouts eliminate this - a very worthwhile feature. Any one figuring to add readouts to a machine - be warned. Some of them are very temperature sensitive and can go haywire in winter conditions. From what I have read on machining forums the electronic units are prone to burning out if overloaded. Replacements from the USA are recommended, as is a heavier motor. Power in reserve is always a boon when doing heavier machining. I do not go along with all this tipped tool and TC preference. TC tools can not have ultra sharp edges as the material is too brittle and chips easily, so TC tool have minutely rounded edges. They are expensive and difficult to regrind. HSS tools will do everyting a modeller needs, are cheaper and easy to grind to form shapes -a lot of which is necessary in the diversity of shapes required for modelling Additional accessories - a revolving tailstock centre is useful, a 4-way (not a 2 way) toolpost. An awful lot of work can be accomplished with a knife tool, chamfering tool, round nose tool, and parting tool mounted in a 4-way toolpost.. It is much quicker than QC tooling. Packing tools up to centre height is always a chore to everyone, and tools after regrinding may need packing up. I have countered this by making up a partioned tray with shims of increasing thickness, each one clearly marked with felt tip pen. Since My Boxford lathe is set to use 3/8" tools, and I have tools ranging from 1/8" to 3/8" square, I have a tray with appropriate packing of 1/4", 3/16",1/8" and 1/16" to allow the use of all size tools. Remember that smaller tools are much easier and quicker than big ones to grind. Then I have another with packing of shim sizes, up to 20thou., up to 30 thou. and so on for fine adjustment. The short time I spent making these up has repayed itself many times over. My latest efforts are in milling or fiing tapered packing strips to adjust centre height. This works well. Another system I have used over the years is to stick the packing to the bottom of the tool with thin doubled sided sticky tape, so that the packing is always in place with no fiddling. Then lately I have made a good few tool holders with a sloping slot for height adjustment milled for small toolbits, held in with two grubscrews. These are very quick to change. Other contributors have mentioned using taps and dies for screwcutting. One of the first jobs you could tackle is to produce a tailstock dieholder for 13/16" split dies. This is a must for model work and good for first practice. Nearly all British built model engines used BA series of threads. 0,1, 3 and 7 sizes are not used much at all. Just acquire the ones you want as you go along, and build up the set. You can usually manage with 2nd and Bottoming taps. The taper is not usually essential. If using Metric tooling, a full set from 1 to 6 will all probably be needed. Stick to British makes for now. Some of the foreign stuff is rubbish. Remember that each metal has a fixed cutting RATE. The speed at which the metal passes the tool tip must be a constant, so high speed for small diameters, lower speed for bigger diameters. Key word for everything is Rigidity. Keep tool overhang to minumum and the work overhang from the chuck to a minimum. Use tailstock support for longer work or it will turn out to be tapered.. Consider this: A T union fractured on the car. To replace it would have required a half hour journey and a five minute walk to the main dealers. Wait in store for component and bill made out. Return journey and cost of several pounds. A part was made from scrap copper pipe and help from the lathe, soldered together in 15 mins. I have made over £4000 in my spare time over the last three years making parts for model diesel engines and selling them on Ebay. A lathe is a wonderful tool if you can lean to use it. Happy turning.

I never won a thing in my life. Maybe this time. Tomol

Be wary about charging gel cells. They do not like much more than 0.5amps rate. I am impressed by lithium ion cells and use them to power a geared down starter at 7.2 volts. These are much lighter than a gel cell and are strapped to the starter.