# Hello, new member from Toronto



## Mcgyver (Apr 1, 2021)

Hi Everyone,

Happy to have just found this forum.  I'm in Toronto and have been an avid home shop machinist for 30 years.  Lots of tool making, machine tool recondition, model engines as well as clock and watch work keep the todo lists in the hundreds of items.   

Mcgyver is a bit of cheesy handle I know, but its nickname applied years ago from a certain group of friends (civilians, not machinists) and it stuck

Thanks for having me

Mike


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## Dusty (Apr 1, 2021)

Welcome aboard Mike, great bunch of members here, have fun.


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## David_R8 (Apr 1, 2021)

Welcome to the forum from Vancouver Island!


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## Chip Maker (Apr 1, 2021)

Hello and welcome from Peterborough Ont.


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## Canadium (Apr 1, 2021)

Hello and welcome from Hamilton ON.


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## trlvn (Apr 1, 2021)

Welcome from Oakville!

Craig


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## DPittman (Apr 1, 2021)

Welcome, the forum was good when it started and had a just a small number of members but lots of people/experience has greatly added to it.  Thanks for joining and making the forum even better!


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## gerritv (Apr 1, 2021)

Welcome from St Catharines. Your cut knurler is nearing the top of my 'tools to make' list.

Gerrit


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## Mcgyver (Apr 2, 2021)

Thanks for the warm welcome guys.  Gerrit, It'd be great see some photos when you get into it.


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## 6.5 Fan (Apr 2, 2021)

Welcome from SK.


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## Swharfin' (Apr 9, 2021)

Welcome from AB


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## TOBARApprentice (Apr 9, 2021)

Welcome from Ancaster!! Watch out for that guy from St. Catherines..... Gerrit. He’s all trouble, lol.... I hung out with him for merely 3 hours and next thing I knew I had an Optical Comparator on a truck coming to me from Regina! 

This bunch is a pretty great group! 

Cheers. 

Derek


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## Hruul (Apr 9, 2021)

Welcome to the forum.


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## YotaBota (Apr 9, 2021)

From one Mike to another, welcome.
What model engines are you working on?


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## Mcgyver (Apr 9, 2021)

Hi Mike,  trying to finish up a Stuart triple expansion engine.  I've built a Ryder Ericson engine, Perkins hit miss, Stuart 7a and few barstock engines.   On deck are a few traction engines, a couple of locomotives, Stuart Major Beam and Domestic vertical hit and miss.  The majority of my shop life has been building tooling, reconditioning machines etc to make model engineering easy/faster/better.  Easy to lose one's way, i.e. I confess the hobby the last decade has been building the shop far more than building engines.

Example.  Getting the tight pipe bends for the triple's steam pipes (1/4" bend in 1/4 tubing).  After trying everything else, I concluded a mandrel bender was required (these pipes are prominent so have to look great).  4 months of work.  Somewhere along the way I busted a 10 24 tap (10 24 has since been fired from my shop) making the bender.  months to build a tap burner.  Most of year later, a part or two more is competed for the engine


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## Proxule (Aug 22, 2021)

Mcgyver said:


> Hi Mike,  trying to finish up a Stuart triple expansion engine.  I've built a Ryder Ericson engine, Perkins hit miss, Stuart 7a and few barstock engines.   On deck are a few traction engines, a couple of locomotives, Stuart Major Beam and Domestic vertical hit and miss.  The majority of my shop life has been building tooling, reconditioning machines etc to make model engineering easy/faster/better.  Easy to lose one's way, i.e. I confess the hobby the last decade has been building the shop far more than building engines.
> 
> Example.  Getting the tight pipe bends for the triple's steam pipes (1/4" bend in 1/4 tubing).  After trying everything else, I concluded a mandrel bender was required (these pipes are prominent so have to look great).  4 months of work.  Somewhere along the way I busted a 10 24 tap (10 24 has since been fired from my shop) making the bender.  months to build a tap burner.  Most of year later, a part or two more is competed for the engine



Any thing from the jan ridders collection?


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## PeterT (Aug 22, 2021)

Mcgyver said:


> Example.  Getting the tight pipe bends for the triple's steam pipes (1/4" bend in 1/4 tubing).  After trying everything else, I concluded a mandrel bender was required (these pipes are prominent so have to look great).  4 months of work.  Somewhere along the way I busted a 10 24 tap (10 24 has since been fired from my shop) making the bender.



You mean 1/4" radius in 1/4" OD tube? If so, Wow. I was dreading the 15/16" radius bends bends on my radial engine (5/16" OD) pipes, but managed to dodge the bullet....for now. I bought a Ridgid hand bender which works pretty good. Well, I also cheated a bit. The exhaust tubes are simple ~90-deg bends made from brake line. The induction tubes were more involved shape but I ended up using aluminum Versatube from AS&S. That may not be the look or material you are after but it saved me from the usual complexities of filling tubes with Cerrobend. Because the Ridgid tool is a fixed radius I had to use that radius as the starting point & therefore redesign the entire intake manifold to suite because the plans called for a different (metric based) radius.

So through this process, I was on a quest to gather ideas of model engineering bending tools that would allow me to make a mandrel to any radius my application required & ideally everything else in the bender mechanism stayed the same. The designs I saw vary quite a bit. Some are on a rolling wheel principle. Some a sliding block kind of similar to the Ridgid. Some showed their actual bend results on tough materials like stainless (also involving annealing). Others just showed the tool so I wasn't able to see how the story ended if it actually worked. Some tools could make bends but the mechanism didn't allow for (in my case) making the trumpet flare on the end without the mechanism conflicting. The CAD drawing is one of my latest ideas. The challenge is to make the slider block to corresponding radius of die & fix it in that position. The Ridgid is kind of a cam like swing arm that self compensates. Anyways, we should compare notes one day. Or maybe you already figured it out & I'll just copy yours haha. I'll be posting my radial update soon, that what the last weeks work was about, getting that behind me.


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## Mcgyver (Aug 22, 2021)

PeterT said:


> You mean 1/4" radius in 1/4" OD tube?



thats a great looking engine!

yes 1/4 radius bend (centre line) in 1/4 tube and 5/16 in 5/16.  It was a real challenge - only way imo is with a mandrel bender (it has a bullet shaped support inside the tube) which was a significant build in its own right.  They're so visible you really want a neat smooth bend.   I had put a lot of time into non mandrel bender but ended biting the bullet (catch the pun - the mandrel is sometimes call a bullet, groan) Here's some shots - you can see the bullets in the last photo


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## Mcgyver (Aug 22, 2021)

Here was the first bender, my design...worked well, but not as well as a mandrel bender.   The madrel bender above is from Ian Hunt and appaered in Model Engineers Workshop.  So much bender crap I may have to go on one!


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## PeterT (Aug 22, 2021)

WOW Mcgyver. Now THAT is a bending tool! I'll have to look for the Ian Hunt design. Not that I think I'm capable of building but useful to absorb the thinking. Do you happen to know the issues it was featured in?

In your  own ^above^ design, are the wrenches tightening an eccentric that is then snugging up on the slider shoe?


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## Mcgyver (Aug 22, 2021)

1) issue#, maybe...will try
2) yes.  the eccentric pushes the straight "shoe" against the round former.  This supports the tube OD at the bend, but obviously doesn't on the ID


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