The Mini CZ Steam Engine Part 2

Here are all the rough components made excluding the cylinder head.

The pink flywheel is far to thick so I trimmed it on my diamond saw like a polony slice.

I turned a dop and then made it round on my Imahashi.

Got to love that pink…….

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Sigh, no one said this was an easy project. It broke while I was removing the dop.

So I cut another one and then I temporally glued everything together.

I just glued a cut scrap stone on the top to close the head off.

I made the inlet tubing out of silver.

This motor ran that evening. First shot.

I have got a video of it but I have not put it up.

I was really chuffed because all that was now necessary was to take it apart, facet it and re assemble it and we home and dry, right?

Wrong

While I was taking it apart, it dropped 200mm onto my bench and the upright broke in half.

Like, from the little vice onto the white wood.

That was really unfair, because is was not far and I had dropped similar things much higher without any damage.

It just landed in the wrong position. Frack.

So I made another upright.

Glued the whole thing together temporarily again and  it ran well.

And then, while I was removing the silver inlet tube—POW!  it broke again.

Well, I didn’t have any more material, so I ground out the chipped section and fitted a lime green piece intarsia style. Worked like a charm and it looks kind of funky to boot.

And all I had to do was just drill through the green part, and not have to position the inlet and outlet holes again.

Then I faceted and polished the new crank and upright.

The little crank is 8mm in diameter and has 68 facets on it and the upright is 30mm high and has 11 facets on it.

Then on to the flywheel. I first drilled 2mm holes in it and then widened them to 3mm.

Then I use my hanging motor and wet or dry sandpaper with water to smoothen the inside of the 3mm drilled holes.

This is a VERY delicate stage, because the sandpaper must remain cool, otherwise the CZ cracks without any trouble. And drilling this thing takes a while, with a large measure of patience thrown in

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I polish the holes 200 grit then 600 the 1200 diamond and sometimes 8000 and then finally 50,000 diamond.

The 8000 grit is neither fish nor fowl, but sometimes the design or material warrants that extra step.

I used the original dop to center it and then mounted it to the aluminum dop for faceting.

Like this.

Then I spent a whole  fricken day faceting it.

And I also cut the cylinder the next day.

The flywheel measures 18mm and has 50 facets on it.

The holes have four bevels each and the center polished part, making 80 total different planes including the facets. It gives for some serious sparkle.

The cylinder measures 14 x 8mm and also has 50 facets on it and is effectively made out of five separate pieces.

Nothing if not complicated.

There is a nice optical effect that occurs in the flywheel and cylinder, because CZ has a high refractive index.

That, and the fact that CZ comes in many colour makes it  interesting stuff to do a project like this with.

Now, if nothing more breaks, I have to facet two or three more pieces prior to re-assembly.

However, Murphy’s law says that is something can go wrong it will.

So I am taking it very casually slowly.

The next post will be when it is finished—or not.