Introduction of a new project for me, a 1:8 scale GP-40 locomotive!
I’ve purchased the plans for the project from JT Engineering. I still have a lot to figure out, but this won’t be a main focus of the channel, just a brief introduction to what I’ll be working on from time to time.
Got to experience the worlds largest operating steam locomotive this past weekend as it passed by a friends property in NE Ohio. It was huge and loud! Quite the sight to see.
I’ve been wanting to build my own version of a King Way Alignment tool for some time. I took inspiration from the original patented tool, as well as examples from several YouTube videos, and came up with my own.
Making some slow but sure progress on the Black Diamond wheel dressing mechanism. I have some CRS that is perfect for the pivoting section of the dresser, and a surprise eBay find made a part of this build considerably easier!
I recently made the long drive from Ohio down to Tifton, Georgia to attend one of Keith Rucker’s hand scraping classes, and in this video I take you along for the entire experience. Over several days we covered spotting, sharpening, scraping technique, precision measurement, and machine rebuilding concepts while hand scraping cast iron straight edges using traditional methods. This wasn’t my first exposure to scraping, but spending several full days immersed in the process gave me a much greater appreciation for the skill, patience, and consistency required to do it well. Along the way you’ll see demonstrations of power scraping and flaking with a Biax scraper, discussions on rebuilding machine tools, plenty of cast iron chips being made, and even a visit to the Georgia Museum of Agriculture where many of Keith’s earlier videos were filmed.
In this video I machine a pair of cast iron machinist straight edges from VintageMachinery.org
on my Kearney & Trecker 2HL horizontal mill in preparation for an upcoming hand scraping class with . These are the 9″ and 12″ Rucker Tool Co. straight edges that will eventually be hand scraped for precision work, but first they needed to be machined true and cleaned up from the raw castings.
Things did not go entirely according to plan.
Partway through the machining process I started fighting chatter problems that had me scratching my head, and I later discovered I had made a pretty significant setup mistake — the milling head wasn’t properly tightened. To make matters worse, after finishing the machining work, I managed to drop one of the straight edges and ding the freshly machined surface. Fortunately, everything is recoverable, but it definitely means more work when scraping begins.
