Yer Killin' Me!

Here is the missing picture from the previous post.  The black paint kind of hides some of the detail but at least keeps things from rusting.  The front and rear plates are now permanently welded onto the block.  The saddle and support (painted black) are not yet welded to the block and are still removable so that we can access the plumbing that is underneath it.  The steam passages between the valve chamber and cylinder are complete and the rear cylinder heads have been welded onto the cylinders.  In the next few weeks we are going to plug everything up and pressure test the whole assembly to check for leaks.

While Ed was busy welding all the pieces and parts together on the block, I thought that I would busy myself by preparing to make the side rods.  What an understatement that has turned out to be! 

Ed mentioned somewhere along the line that his cab forward had stainless steel rods.  Well, if they were good enough for Ed, then they are good enough for me!  So, stainless steel it is.  Unfortunately, in my quest to save a buck by not going out a buying an appropriately sized piece of bar stock, I really bit off almost more than I could chew (and I can chew an awful lot!). 

The only material in the shop that was large enough from which to fabricate the rods was a 3' piece of 5 1/2" round 303 stainless steel.  After chopping off an 18" piece (the longest rod length) it was then time to cut the round bar into flat slabs.  Having never before worked with stainless steel I was in for a rude awakening.  I set up a fence on the bandsaw and proceeded to cut the bar lengthwise down its 18" dimension.  That minor task only took 90 minutes to complete.  Huh?  "Hold up on that carwash there, genamen" as the great Sheriff Beaufort T. Justice would say.  The feed rate worked out to about 5 minutes per 1" of cut.  The cogs and gears started whirring in my head as the mental slide rule started grinding out out the answer - lets see, 18" of cutting at 5 minutes per inch makes 90 minutes per cut; 7 cuts at 90 minutes a cut makes 630 minutes of sawing which in turn is about 10 1/2 hours.  10 1/2 HOURS?  ARE YOU KIDDING ME??!!  What a gigantic pain in the butt this has turned out to be.  If only I had known!  (Geez, how many times have I said those words before?!)

So, kind of having already passed beyond the point of no return (cutting a piece of material to length and then cutting it lengthwise in half), there was nothing left to do but plod ahead.  Boy, did I ever "busy myself" preparing to make the side rods.  Ed mused that maybe we could have made the rods out of aluminum which would have been a ton easier.  Aluminum?  What?  Haven't you heard that we are building the biggest and baddest 2900 class engine here?  Aluminum, huh! Santa Fe wouldnt be caught dead using aluminum.  That's like keeping the Blackbird out of afterburner, giving Dirty Harry a BB gun or having John Force run his funny car on gasoline!  Aluminum rods?  No sireeeee!

I started using the counterweight on the bandsaw in conjunction with Ed's soon-to-be-patented belly-pusher to feed the material and got the time down to 75 minutes per cut.  My chest and stomach are killing me from all the shoving, and I still have 2 more cuts to go.  That will have to wait till next time.  Maybe aluminum wouldn't have been so bad after all....  At least the good news is that Dave said we can rough cut out the rods on the plasma cutter.