Takin a break

That is something that we all need now and again. Funny how certain personality types find "takin' a break" in work. Not work you neccesarily get paid for (not monetarily anyway, though sometimes it works out that way) But in good, honest skull and bone sweat.

Craig managed to get invited out on the water to 'work'. (and you can read the smiles in his post about it.)

Me, Been making chips on the lathe and crunching numbers for my Stirling engine. Won't lie about it, I am cheating some this go-round. I found a couple of old "green machine" weed whackers and since they were junk, disassembled them for spare parts. In this case, a press fit crankshaft, connecting rods and pistons (with RINGS! Woot!) along with bearings and seals. (of course this means my original plans will need modified just a bit. Scrapped more like it. NO plan ever survives the first engagement.)
I might have been able to restore them, but honestly, the company is defunct and finding parts would have meant tracking down more broken ones. Naw; time to play. Side note, I also managed to get another 8 pounds of good solid cast aluminum for my stocks. Those particular machines were made damned beefy. These units weren't worn out in anyway. Just plugged up with Mud-dauber nests.(which is abrasive and really gets shit screwed up in carbs and the like.)

This newer design will be smaller since the pistons are nearly half an inch smaller in diameter. Since this is just an experiment with a design, scaling down is not an issue. It does mean that all of my past calculations are shit though. Oh well, I am not going back to re-work all of that. I will only do enough to figure the sizes needed for the tube works and the exchanger but that one is easy as it is just a ratio issue. Still, lots of modeling to work on, have a simple design for the crankcase laid out and now have to do the woodwork. Going to try and do it in 2 pairs of castings. Mirror images of each other I guess you could say. That will make final fitting so much easier (and if I ever get offered cash to build one, I will have the basics to make it faster second time)

It has been really nice to be able to look at the headlines on the Drudge and not get irate; just shrug it off as there isn't a damned thing I can do about it.

Now I just need to figure out what to do with those 3/8" cable drives from the shafts. Hate to pitch good steel like that.



(By the way, My next post is my 500th. Gonna have to do something special for that post. Never thought I would get past 200. Didn't think I had that much to say. LOL,)