Yesterday, I took a trip to one of my favourite stores that stocks every manner of bearings, sprockets, fittings, motors, gear reducers and the like. Everything is displayed on shelves. I spent better than an hour wandering the isles seeing what was available. As I looked at the hardware I developed a plan to make my entry move convincingly. I bought a whole bunch of pieces of hardware, and brought it all back to the shop. Then I started designing the next stage of the 'MARVELOUS MACHINE' build. I designed the files for dozens of brackets and other bits and pieces which I then cut on our MultiCam plasma cutter. As the pieces came off the machine I fit and welded up a storm. As I fabricated the parts I often went back to the drawing board to tweak the design and then recut the part. By the time I was done for the day, the electric motor and gear reducer were securely mounted inside the firebox. A camshaft and vertical steam cylinder were also mounted to the steam dome on top of the boiler as well.
This is of course only the basic design. Think of this (so far) as the first layer of a cake without any fancy icing. A whole lot of eye candy is yet to be added.
