A ROYAL RESTORATION - PART 3 - by John Phillips

Hearing all the activity in my workshop my next door neighbour John Hodson called in, just at the right time to find me pondering the best way to solve the missing inverted lever problem.  John has a nicely equipped workshop himself, where he builds small scale steam engines, so without much prompting, original lever in-hand, he disappears into his own workshop, to reappear the next day with a replica lever that just needs the final polish and plating.  How he did this was as follows..  The template was made in a single plane, profiled from 5mm plate, he then heated the neck and turned the handle section through 90 degrees and gave it it’s gentle curve,  A bit of grinding, filing and lo and behold a replica lever, (picture 3/1 opposite) clever stuff or what?  One less problem to solve, so on to the next one.

John’s prowess in the metal working department turned my thoughts to another minor snag, no exhaust system!  It’s pretty basic, there’s the usual tight bend from engine to a transverse silencer in front of the crankcase and thence along under the side of the frame to the rear. This one has the added extra of the decompression valve is also piped down into the silencer, to avoid oil spray onto a gentleman’s trousers.

The bit that I thought was going to cause to most trouble was the tight bend down to the silencer, but as it is 1 ¼ inch bore which is pretty big for an engine of this capacity and I just happened to have an old 1¼ bore front pipe in the squirrel store which when I retrieved it had a nice tight 90 degree bend in it, half the problem was sorted.  The bend was cut of from the rest of the pipe and offered up to the engine, with a bit of filing and gentle persuasion it looked like it would do the job, now the only bit that was missing wasthe tiny flange that fitted on the end of the pipe and inside the large exhaust nut on the engine.This was manufactured by cutting a ¼ inch ring from a piece of 1½ inch pipe, removing a small piece so that it closed down enough to be a snug fit on the end of the new front pipe, and then welding up the join, it was then put on the end of the pipe, drilled and riveted in place with three small rivets made from panel pins, and when it fitted the nut and the engine the ring was brazed around its join with the rest of the pipe. (pic’ 3/2)

Now what I need is a 8 inch length of 4 inch diameter pipe for the silencer and I think I know a chap, who knows a chap who works for a contractor who is at this moment installing some 100mm stainless steel pipe in a food processing plant, I am sure there has got to be the odd 8 inch off cut going cheap if I ask nicely.

Click here for a useful list of firms, people, products and odds and ends that I have used during this restoration that might just help solve the odd problem you come across (pdf).

To Part 4 of "A Royal Restoration"