Chris I can't help with the first or last parts, but a short while ago (comparatively speaking in my old age) I built an Orrery from a kit of parts. The thing was serialised over a number of months in a magazine with new parts being supplied with each magazine. Dave The Emerald Isle ________________________________ From: Chris Crosskey <chris.crosskey@xxxxxxxxx> To: "modeleng@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <modeleng@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Thursday, 15 March 2012, 11:36 Subject: [modeleng] Thoughts on future projects.... Hi folks, I need some advice... In the next month or so the move of my old workshop at my parents house to my new very much larger workshop at my house will be complete (it's only taken two years to sort it out :))... Given how I work I rather suspect I will want to have three projects on the go once I've settled in.. 1: The restoration of my horizontal mill... 2: Construction of an Orrery 3: It's about time I built something powered by steam... The mill is an old Herbert Simplimill, built like a tank, not all that big but weighs nearly a ton, I've got the vertical head for it and have tracked down some tooling... apart form just putting it back together and getting it running right I need to make some changegears for it as that's what it uses for setting speeds (and feeds) and I'm considering long-term putting Norton-style gearboxes on it for speed and feed selection.... The actual things I might do rather sooner than long-term is make a quill-based vertical head for it so that I can use it as a drilling machine, and I have a slotting head (from something else) that I'd like to get working on it too. Would welcome advice from people who have recommissioned mills or similar machines from a big pile of parts.... The orrery is just something I want for my lounge and if it takes me 15 years to get through that much watchmaking then so be it, I'll take it in easy stages, start off with an earth and moon, add a Sun, then the inner planets, then Mars, then build separate sets for the giants then get the whole lot working as one.... Don't need advice for that.. The third bit is the one where it gets more complicated.... I've got two things in mind.... A steam powered bicycle based on the Hope layout probably built onto a butchers bike or similar, or a steam paddle launch. The launch would need to have a disassemblable hull ...I know how to do the disassemblable bit but I've never built a boat hull before and would need a design that I could adapt... Hopefully by making it disassemblable I could build an 18-foot or so paddle launch which would fit onto a smallish trailer. I've seen a launch that size (paddle too) running off the boiler and engine of a 7 ½" Shay (literarally mounted in the hull minus its wheels with the shaft taken to the paddle drive.... I'd prefer to do it with a vertical boiler of some description and a freelance two or three cylinder engine.... Any advice welcome there too... I'd want the boiler to get within the model boiler regs for ease of certification (it's not that the regs are less tight, it's just it's ea sier to find a tester and cheaper to get done...)... are there any designs for vertical or marine boilers near the model limit? What sort of pressure would be sane? 80psi? 150psi? What does a 7 ½" Shay have in terms of bar-litres and engine bore/stroke? chrisc QA Engineer Vicon Motion Systems, Oxford. ________________________________________________________________________ This e-mail, and any attachment, is confidential. If you have received it in error, do not use or disclose the information in any way, notify me immediately, and please delete it from your system. ________________________________________________________________________ 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. 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.