# Homemade Creations >  Gerry's Beam Engine

## jjr2001

A work in progress. Just had to have one of these so I thought I would build one.
The frames and some of the linkages were made on my CNC machine. The rest
was made in the shop with the lathe and mill. Still making parts for it and it
has been quite a while ago that I started it. It will be done!

When I do not know......

Here are some pics of the parts so far:

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Seedtick (May 8, 2017)

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## jjr2001

Here is the latest progress on the little engine:

The rod for the steam chest and valve was the most fun.

Cheers, JR

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Seedtick (May 8, 2017)

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## mklotz

With that steam chest arrangement it looks as if there is no way to fine tune the position of the D-valve. At least I can't detect one.

In Elmer Verburg's design, the valve spindle is threaded. A slot in the D-valve restrains a nut through which the threaded spindle passes. The valve is free to float up and down on this nut so the steam pressure can hold it against the cylinder wall.

By turning the spindle through 180 degrees the position of the valve can be adjusted relative to the intake/exhaust ports by an amount equal to half the pitch on the spindle thread.

This fine tuning allows one to take out minor errors in the valve train and thus optimize the engine performance.

If you have problems getting the engine to run well, you might want to think about using an adjustable valving scheme.

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jjr2001 (May 8, 2017),

Seedtick (May 8, 2017)

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## jjr2001

It will be interesting setting it up to run. The only adjustment I see is the length of the eccentric push rod
which I believe would effect the timing a bit.
Thanks for the info.

Cheers, JR

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## mklotz

I checked Dykstra's plans and, yes, what you suggest would affect the positioning of the valve but it would be a lot more difficult than having the adjustment built into the design.

My concern is founded on the fact that beam engines are meant to be run at a slow and stately pace. This means they need accurate valve control and a flywheel with a large moment.

Hopefully, it won't be a problem and the engine will run fine the first time out.

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jjr2001 (May 9, 2017)

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## jjr2001

Here are the rest of the parts all in a row! ( or is that several rows)
The small ones are the challenging part of the build.

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KustomsbyKent (May 30, 2017)

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## jjr2001

Tested and running fine. Still need to make a base and do a little video.




Ok, jumped a head just a bit. Here is a short video of some of the break in process.
Base to follow. Probably made from walnut but I am grouping the base with some
other wood work I need to do.

Cheers, JR

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blkadder (May 31, 2017),

KustomsbyKent (May 30, 2017)

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## blkadder

I have always wanted to put together one of these kits, but since I have no tooling (or talent) I will just have to live vicariously through your project. Thanks very much for posting this.

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jjr2001 (May 31, 2017)

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## mklotz

> I have always wanted to put together one of these kits, but since I have no tooling (or talent) I will just have to live vicariously through your project. Thanks very much for posting this.



Perhaps you would like to satisfy your urge to build with a wooden air engine. This one...

https://woodgears.ca/air_engine/old.html

has all the features of a typical horizontal factory engine including double-acting valving.

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jjr2001 (May 31, 2017)

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## jjr2001

> I have always wanted to put together one of these kits, but since I have no tooling (or talent) I will just have to live vicariously through your project. Thanks very much for posting this.



First of all Thank You For Your Service.

Second, I find Marv's link for the wooden air engine to be quite appealing, and the website it points to very interesting.
Added that link to my mega store of links, most of which are lost forever somewhere on my hard drive!
Even though I have the tools to build with metal I may just build the wooden one for some variety.

Thanks again and 

Cheers, JR

Oh yea, I like the Ar's also. My son and grandson and myself are all in the shooting sports.

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## mklotz

> Second, I find Marv's link for the wooden air engine to be quite appealing, and the website it points to very interesting.
> Added that link to my mega store of links, most of which are lost forever somewhere on my hard drive!
> Even though I have the tools to build with metal I may just build the wooden one for some variety.



I've never read of a wooden engine that could develop enough power to drive anything substantial such as a pump. Perhaps with your metalworking expertise, you can improve the design. Personally, I'd rather thread 0-80 holes in stainless steel all day than try to build a wooden engine.

If you use Firefox as your web browser, it does daily captures of your bookmarks for the last fifteen days as well as providing a facility for backing all your bookmarks to an HTML file from which you can reload them. Plus, with its Adblock add-on, you'll never see most of the annoying advertising on most sites.

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jjr2001 (Jun 1, 2017)

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## Jon

Agreed - regularly export your bookmarks to a file, and save it locally and remotely. Incredibly valuable file. There are even some tricks to retrieve and cache all of your bookmarked urls, in case the originating url goes down. Another strategy: use Archive.is to make an archive of webpages. This is increasingly common now that news websites will "adjust" their articles after publication; people wanting to discuss the articles will often archive them, and then just reference the archived article. Savvy forum users also use this strategy to make complete copies of discussions that may be deleted.

You will rarely hear webmasters endorse ad blockers, because websites are largely dependent on ads for revenue - but I suggest them to all of our regular users. We've actually recently removed ads to everyone who is logged in, so if you don't want to use an adblocker, you can just make sure you're logged in here if you don't want to see ads.

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jjr2001 (Jun 1, 2017),

Seedtick (Jun 1, 2017)

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## jjr2001

Thanks for all the tips guys.
I actually have been saving html files of my favorites for years. I try and try to organize them and have so many versions on my backups I can't count them all.
Better to have too many favorites than not to have enough.

For ad blockers I am using a Firefox addin called uBlock origin. Works pretty well and I also have a YouTube add blocker that removes all of the leadin adds in Youtube.

One of these days I will "reorganize" my favorites by deleting all the "dead" ones and putting all of the catagories into folders but I am having too much fun in the shop right now to take the time to do that.

I have been archiving my favorite articles on the internet by copying the entire article and then pasting it into Microsoft Word. Works quite well. You can change the text size and page layout to suit your needs. Sometimes I will also save all of the full size pictures from the article if the thumb nail shots in the article are too small. This all gets put into a folder for future reference. Gotta love the desktop!

Back to the shop.

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## jjr2001

Gerry's Beam Engine gets a nice walnut base:

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## mklotz

Very nice indeed. It certainly enhances the visual appeal of the model.

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## jjr2001

Thanks Marv, I always thought it looked naked before adding the base plus it was unstable with that brass flywheel off to one side.
Nice and stable now.

Cheers, JR

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