Table of contents for July 2025 in Model Engineer & Workshop

THE BRADFORD CUP The Bradford Cup is awarded to the author of the best article or series in Model Engineer during the previous year. Because of the change of title and range of content, articles appearing in Model Engineer in issues 4734 12 January 2024 to 4761, 24 January 2025 are eligible for this year’s competition. Next year the competition will cover a full year of Model Engineer & Workshop. Graham Astbury recounts the story of the cup: At Bradford MES, we were always short of copy for the Bradford MES Monthly Bulletin as members always seem to hide their lights under their bushels. In an attempt to encourage people to write articles for the Monthly Bulletin, the Committee thought that some award for the best contribution to the Bulletin might…

SMOKEBOX AND SUCHLIKE You may be pleased to hear that no Loctite need be used in the manufacture of this part! The smokebox G/A is shown at fig 42. The chimney and door are to be made from Rob Roy castings. The door is normally supplied together with a ring which is not needed in this design so try and buy it without if possible. The shell is made from laser cut mild steel, on grounds of cost. As mentioned before, the steel supplied at the thicknesses needed is specified as CR4, which is very malleable and does not work harden. You may find steel a bit more tricky to silver solder than brass, but not much - once you get used to it. The laser cut parts have already…

These articles by Geometer (Ian Bradley) were written about half a century ago. While they contain much good advice, they also contain references to things that may be out of date or describe practices or materials that we would not use today either because much better ways are available of for safety reasons. These articles are offered for their historic interest and because they may inspire more modern approaches as well as reminding us how our hobby was practised in the past. APART from the screwdriver slot, the external hexagon, as on bolts, nuts and other components, is the most common means of effecting tightening and loosening.. Yet, of course, it cannot meet all requirements and alternative means to the same end are pin holes, multiple slots and sockets, which…

Atailstock chuck adaptor, photo 1, allows mounting a rotating lathe chuck in the tailstock of the lathe. This can be useful for holding work that cannot be supported on a centre, photo 2, or by using the fixed steady. Examples of usage would be pipe that needs to be machined on the outside diameter (OD). This can be held by the chuck inner jaws and then the OD machined. If a 4-jaw chuck is mounted on the tailstock, irregular work pieces can also be held for machining. If you are a follower of the ‘Cutting Edge Engineering’ channel on YouTube, you may already be familiar with the use of a tailstock mounted chuck. As a starting point, I looked at the various smaller 3-jaw and 4-jaw chuck sizes. This indicated…

You may be wondering, why write an article about making an ashpan? Well not all ashpans are simple boxes stuck under the firebox of a locomotive. For some of the larger engines the ashpans could be rather complicated affairs with very elaborate operating mechanisms. The ‘Princess Royal’ Pacifics of the London Midland and Scottish Railway were one such class of locomotive. The ashpan was of the hopper type and because they had wide fireboxes it meant that the sides had very little depth and the slope was very shallow. Also the door operating mechanisms involved many rods and cranks and was very complicated. Due to the lack of depth on the side slopes they were fitted with two doors on each side. These were operated by a lever on the…

The Model Engineer & Workshop Reader Survey We would like to start by thanking everyone who took part in the reader survey. It’s been a time of great change for everyone involved with the production of Model Engineer & Workshop (ME&W), and the coming together of the readers of Model Engineer (ME) and Model Engineers’ Workshop (MEW) has created a new audience with a wide range of interests and expectations. There were nearly 340 surveys completed, more than enough for the results to be statistically valid, so we now have a good idea of what our readers think. Note that the survey focused on the old magazines, their content and how articles are presented. This was not looking at the design aspects of the magazine. We found 69% of respondents…

Cutting knurl holder 24: Start with the ‘cube’ and ‘tongue’ that fit 14, then drill and counterbore for the fixing screw 15. Set the part in the machine vice at 30 degrees, see photo 11, and machine the slant surface and the tapped hole, made using a ‘with plate pin’, see photo 12 (described in Model Engineer 4588). Mark, photo 13, and machine the ‘polygon’ to clear the 80mm diameter; finish with the chamfers. When machining the angled surface, shown in photo 12, 1mm vertical feed leads to 2mm length reduction for the length, L= 45. Cutting knurl bearing 26 and washer 28: Made of silver steel, must be hardened and tempered in the usual way. Cutting knurls 27: I used ones from the Zeus range; bore 8mm, external diameter…

I dropped in to see the members at the Stafford and District Model Engineering Society at their fine site located in the Staffordshire Showground. Founded in 1971 the club is now a company limited by guarantee, and they have established an excellent facility in the showground. They have established an excellent working relationship with the Showground authorities and have access to their site without any restrictions. A fine stone tablet at the site entrance shows the club logo and who they are, photo 1. I asked about vandalism and they said that they have had some smaller problems in the past but now their side of the showground is used by the local constabulary to train their police dogs and, as if by magic, the vandalism has stopped. I wonder…

For far too many years I gave a course of undergraduate lectures at the University of Southampton on the properties of polymers. It was always popular, possibly because I included demonstrations, many of which went spectacularly wrong. Everyone remembers those. Only one student ever worked out that the same demos went wrong each year! I started the first lecture with the words: “Everything you can see in this room, including yourself, is a polymer. It is odd that the polymeric state is not emphasised elsewhere in your courses.” The same sentences could be offered to readers of Model Engineer – metals predominate and polymers rarely get a mention. I have had an involvement for many years in engineering, both as a model maker and as a manufacturer of small scientific…

Continued from Model Engineer & Workshop issue 4765 LUBRICATING YOUR ENGINE I was speaking to a gentleman by the name of David Hudson at the Midlands Exhibition and admiring his 5 inch gauge BR Class 2. He had obviously not followed the drawings available as it was all built correctly. One thing I noticed on his engine were three little pipes that disappeared beneath the side platform, so I asked him what they were for. His reply came as a complete surprise; he said with twinkle in his eye, “These are formy atomiser”. I said that I need an atomiser on my BR 4MT which I am designing so I asked what is inside it, to which David replied; “Nothing - you just need to direct the steam oil into…

Some work pieces that are required to be milled or drilled on the XY table of a vertical milling machine are either too large or of an awkward shape to be held in a milling vice. For this type of situation, a clamping arrangement has been devised with moveable jaws that are somewhat similar to those of a four-jaw independent lathe chuck. These would allow almost the entire milling table extent to be used for holding essentially any shape of work piece. Photograph 1 shows the clamping jaw arrangement which consists of a swivel block which is clamped to a tee nut in the milling table tee slot, and a sliding jaw with guide rods which is pressed against the work piece by two M6 capscrews in the swivel block.…