Mamod steam engine restoration

[Damian Axford]

So...

My dad has had a couple of Mamod engines in his shed for years, collecting rust and a surprising number of woodlice.  As my kids are nearing that age where steam things are relevant, I've nabbed said engines and am embarking on a restoration project.  I say I, but Rob and James have already got stuck in with a major contribution of elbow grease.

This week, we put in a fairly solid couple of hours dismantling the traction engine (an SR1 AFAIK) and starting the clean-up.  Mostly with wire wool and wet/dry paper, although we did progress to files later on.  Also got bored doing it all by hand and spun up one of the wheels in the lathe to great effect, albeit at risk of losing fingers.

Here's some pics of the before and in-progress....   a few bits have actually cleaned up rather well, but I forgot to take pictures of those - so that'll will have to wait for next week :)

[Damian Axford]

Minor progress this week (distracted by UAV discussions), but established that the dremel wire brush wheel is pretty useless as removing rust from the fire box panels.  However, the dremel sanding cylinder worked fairly well - much faster than hand sanding/filing.  Tempted to try a bench grinder...  but don't have an appropriate wheel