Friday, February 14, 2014

Steam Engine Restoration Part 2 - Cylinder Sandblasting and Paint

The running gear of this engine, consisting of the crankshaft, connecting rod, crosshead, and piston, are all in poor shape and are particularly difficult to disassemble, so for the time being I sprayed them down with penetrating oil and will come back to them later. The first order of business was to strip the major structural components down and sandblast them, then loosely reassemble them.

I prefer to rebuild the large parts of my projects first and reassemble them, so I have a solid framework to install the smaller components into as I finish them. Its less time consuming then filling boxes with parts before reassembly, and helps me keep everything organized. The first part to clean was the cylinder. This will require homing and further fine machine work, but for now I simply sandblasted the exterior and painted it.





Masked for Sandblasting

Cleaned up. The damaged casting lug was bypassed by placing an extra nut behind it



Cleaned and ready for paint

Progress. Will require final machining later.


The next step was the cylinder head, valve chest, and studs. These were individually sandblasted, masked off, and painted with High-Temp gloss black.











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