Winner Yulee Sugar Mill Model

[thebaconbits]

amazing job and continues to amaze!

 

[jumps4]

I took 2 days off because I knew this was going to be fun.
because the 1/16th rivets I ordered were only .060 instead of .0625 I had to crimp a dent into the side of everyone before holding it with tweezers and driving it in. it took about 20 seconds per rivet once I got going but there are 580 of them to do so far. I cannot foresee another project involving rivets in my near future.
thanks for viewing
steve

 

[jumps4]

I'm still working on the boiler and the steam piping. I don't have all the rivets in the boiler yet they hold the end caps on so they will be done later.
thanks for viewing
steve

 

[jumps4]

today I'm making the hand wheels for the steam valves. there will be 2 this size and another about half this size.
steve

 

[thebaconbits]

How cool is THAT!!!

 

[jumps4]

I still making pipe fittings valves and regulators...
thanks for viewing
steve

 

[JimDawson]

Truly a work of art. I wish I had the patients to do something like that.

 

[rdean]

My wife and I stopped by the Sugar Mill today while we were out flea-marketing. You must have done hundreds of hours of research just to get started with it and I can't imagine how many hours you have in the project now. You are truly a dedicated master machinist.

Ray

 

[jumps4]

my first piece was the cylinder, it doesn't look too complicated but it has an internal passage that goes around the center from top to bottom so It had to be sleeved. at the time I started I had never used a lathe of mill much so It wasn't just a matter of figuring out how to make the parts but also how to do the setups and use the tools. If you look close you can see the work improves as you move out away from the cylinder. some parts I'm going to remake now. I took very good photos and used photographic measuring software to accurately measure the parts I needed to make and scale them down.
half the mill is missing so to figure out what went where I did months of research about late 1840's to early 1850's mill engines. I located and measured every mounting hole in the frames and from that information I figured out what was where and the type of setup it was. there are no 2 Steam Engines alike unless they were ordered as a pair, I have looked at thousands of old pictures. the technology was advancing so fast. these engine were the space shuttles of their time and sent people running away when they started them. at this time the south had almost no railroads and the owner of this mill David Levi Yulee also built the first railroad across Florida saving the ships a trip around the keys to deliver goods to New Orleans. the company that built the mill was the
Novelty Iron Works in New York they built ship engines and complete ships. They set world records including the first steam Atlantic crossing. Their contribution in the Civil War among other things was the armor plating on the northern ship the Monitor with it's turret, the first iron clad to battle another iron clad the Virginia or Meramec it's also called. fought to a tie no damage to either.
I still research to make things like the plumbing to see what was used then and how it looked.
thanks for viewing
Steve

 

[wagnmkr]

I agree, this is going to be an incredible model.I am enjoying this thread a bunch.

Cheers,

Tom