Where does the time go?

Tuesday, sometime in the morning.

I wrote out a lot if this in the morning with views on the days activities, so instead of re-wording the whole thing i'm just gonna split it into 2 parts, before n' after kinda deal,

I try not to look at things like calendars, they only show me how much time has passed and what little I've got done since I last looked at one! Pug it seems has been pushed back again, This time its all about eccentric issues, I doubt they have ever been "right" from the start but it's giving me and MR F headaches!  The frames are still at his workshop and will probily be there for a while yet. So close yet so far!! The manifold needs some work and the valves need setting but that's about it, the rest is over to me me to make cylinder drain linkages and pipe work, and get it all bolted back together.

One of the main issues with not getting much done is the work factor, spending up to 10 hrs a day in a machine shop means less time for my own projects in my workshop, the latest job to be lobbed my way is 2.5 tonne of stainless that's all profiled in an peculiar way. 30 mm deep profiles will take some time and took best part of a day to program, so now that's running I've turned my attention I the next kit of Burrell bits,

Will has supplied me with 2 complete front wheel assemblies. Steam Traction World say use araldite to get all the wheels together as a "filler/locking agent" type deal ... So I spent a few hours cutting off large lumps of the stuff,  now looking certainly cleaner,  I'll throw em' in the sand blaster to clean it all, remove the sharp bits and get them looking lovely,

Next on the agenda is the pesky firebox door for the pug, so watch this space!

well that was my morning out of the way,

Now i'm safely home with a cup of tea in the quiet i can sort out the rest and get some  pictures out and fill in the blanks,

This is what the wheels looked like at the time i wrote the first half of this thing, bit messy!. well i used a angle grinder to take the studs off the back of the nuts so it was all flush and nice and then sand basted it.

After blasting the overall look was much better, I do like the finish i get from the sand blaster, its fine but gives a good key for paint and used in the right way can give you a nice cast look 

Next on the Agenda was the pug firebox issue, well i thought about it a lot before coming to the conclusion.. "Hell ram summat together".. so i did. A few hours produced a working "prototype" ... something to have a play with to see if the idea works, 

As you may be able to tell, its a bit ... Thrown together .. but that's kind of the idea. Its simple and effective, the end result will be more tidy and nice to look at but for the time being its functional as a firebox door, so as soon as the engine is in 1 piece again we can have a play and see if the door is still in the way and if so what changed need to be made. this way i wont spend all of next year building firebox doors all the time to get 1 that's the right shape and size and does the job we want, 

As i mentioned before about the "work side of things" i thought i would chuck in a couple of pictures of that, 

If there is any engineers out there reading this you will appreciate the amount of work involved, the block is some 2 meters long, .7 meters high and about half a meter thick, made from 1.5 mm stainless steel plate all bonded together to form a "block" of sorts. After a day of machining I've roughed out less than half the material. (for general scaling the round cutter marks are 100mm dia). there is a lot of machining to go! The machined face I've produced is around 13mm deep ... it will end up 30mm deep!!! so this job will keep me busy well into next week.. and then i have an identical one to do .... which is a mirror image so back to programming !

Thats ya lot for now, time i was letting the brain rest a while!