i love these miniature steam tractors and admire the skill and dedication it takes to bring them into being. I'm a retired machinist, trained in the days when the skills were learned over years of practice and always fancied trying to build one myself. only doubts would be i would have to learn the skill of casting metal
On my 4" Foster, my tender outlet used to weep as the there was an elbow coming out of the flange. However, the internal flange threads were totally shot so no amount of PTFE were going to seal it. So rather than breaking the flange seals (I had sealed the inside of the tender) I drilled and tapped the flange to a larger size, with a brass round stock made a short boss that was able to screw into the flange and had a 1/4" tapped hole, essentially a reducer. Fitted standard elbows and has been fine since.
i love these miniature steam tractors and admire the skill and dedication it takes to bring them into being. I'm a retired machinist, trained in the days when the skills were learned over years of practice and always fancied trying to build one myself. only doubts would be i would have to learn the skill of casting metal
On my 4" Foster, my tender outlet used to weep as the there was an elbow coming out of the flange. However, the internal flange threads were totally shot so no amount of PTFE were going to seal it. So rather than breaking the flange seals (I had sealed the inside of the tender) I drilled and tapped the flange to a larger size, with a brass round stock made a short boss that was able to screw into the flange and had a 1/4" tapped hole, essentially a reducer.
Fitted standard elbows and has been fine since.
Excellent!
Glad you liked it!