Dear Al Our hearts go out to you all at this time of a great national calamity. We particularly think of you, whilst your eldest son is doing search and rescue, and trying to control looting, in these foul and dangerous conditions. To talk of more happy things - Pierre's engine sounds interesting indeed! I spend most of my time making tools. Presently, rather crazily at my age, I am making a small, but heavy and hopefully precision, screw-cutting lathe. This is being machined from large lumps of solid cast iron - producing masses of swarf and dirty carbon dust! When visitors see my workshop, they ask 'What do you make?' I answer, 'tools'. They then ask, 'what do you make then?' and I answer 'more tools'. In order to divert these questions, I made a few stationary steam engines, including one oscillator from scrap with a 1/16" piston. I was making a Stuart 10V engine from castings, when I had the crazy idea of making one half that size, about 3 inches high. It was easy to reduce the plans to about 48%, but from there on everything had to be made out of the solid (mainly brass). The making the body of the engine, the flywheel, and the minute slide valve, created interesting problems. To my amazement the engine runs beautifully on compressed air, making a noise like a bumble-bee! Looks quite pretty, too! Cheers! Hubert > Date: Wed, 7 Sep 2005 14:04:24 -0700 (PDT) > From: Allen Messer <al_messer@xxxxxxxxx> > Subject: [modeleng] Re: Steam engine RPM ? > > Sounds like a very interesting engine, Pierre, in > fact, it sounds a lot like one the power plant for a > free lance locomotive I am working on at the present. > It is fabricated from Steel and Brass and is all > bolted together as I do not have a heat source for > Silver Soldering. > > Thank you for your concern, but I am app. 400 miles > from the Gulf Coast. My eldest son is there with the > National Guard, doing search and rescue, and trying to > hold down the looting. >> MODEL ENGINEERING DISCUSSION LIST. To UNSUBSCRIBE from this list, send a blank email to, modeleng-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word "unsubscribe" in the subject line.