Taking good pictures

I am out of the shop today. Over the Christmas holidays I was showing some pictures of my work to a young man who knows something about photography. He recommended that I make a soft box for lighting. For example, here is a picture of the windmill I made and it doesn't really do the subject justice. So I am going start making a soft box.

I added the cow catcher today. It was a bit of a challenge soldering each piece in place without disturbing the other pieces.

side view of cow catcher

front view. It is starting to look like a locomotive now

Today I made drive cylinders and mounted them on the front wheel assembly

Drive cylinder in place. After doing this I realized that locomotive body is too small.

I had a larger piece of pipe so I tried it an I like it

Front view with larger tube

working on front wheel assembly

I worked more on the front wheel assembly today. I added the mount to the body and I am starting to work on the drive cylinders.

Front wheels in place. I will add the drive cylinders before connecting the wheel assembly to the body.

Added drive cylinder mount and starting work on the cylinders.

Making the front wheels

I made the front wheel mount and front wheels today

A rough view of the front wheels in position

Rear wheel mount

I made the rear wheel mount bracket today

Cut out of a copper sheet and formed to shape

New bracket mounted to locomotive body. I also added axles and spacers

Here is how it looks with the wheels in place

Adding counterweight

Now I have four finished rear wheels. Now it's time to add the counterweights to the wheel.

Carefully cut the counterweight piece out of copper.

Here is what the wheels look like after adding counterweight pieces and trimming the edges.

Making rear wheels

I am making rear wheels today. I will show all the steps below

Finished wheel next locomotive body

Cut out flange disks and make hubs out of tubing with a cap soldered on

Solder hubs to flanges

Cut out wheel strip

Form into circle after annealing

Solder strip into a circle

Solder strip onto flange

Make spokes by folding over copper strip

Today I finished the front of the locomotive. Using a punch worked pretty good to make  it look like bolts around the edge.

The front piece

This is where it will be soldered on and trimmed to the size of the body

I started on a rear wheel. This shows one spoke. There will be 8 spokes

Starting Out on the Locomotive

I am starting to build the locomotive.

First I made a pattern out of cardboard for the locomotive body. Once I got the size right I made one out of copper, rolled it up and soldered it.

Using a compass and awl I marked what is going to be the front of the body. I am going to try using a center punch on each of those marks to make it look like rivets or bolts.

My next project is going to be a model of a steam locomotive. This will be a very detailed project. I am going take progress photos through the entire build. Here are a couple pictures of the locomotive that I am going to model. This locomotive is the Union Pacific No. 119. It was one of the two locomotives to meet at Promontory Summit for the golden spike ceremony.

I feel pretty good about working with copper now so I want to try something more complex and detailed. I saw a tractor someone had done in copper and I was intrigued so I looked into antique tractors and decided to model the 1917 Fordson because there are so many pictures and YouTube videos you can see every angle.

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For my next project I bought a plastic model of a Fokker Dr.I Triplane 1:32 scale. I used each part of the model as a pattern for forming the copper. 

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After finishing the lighthouse, I thought of another subject that sits near water, a Dutch windmill. Many Dutch wind mills were used to continually pump water out fields below sea level.

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The next project was a copper lighthouse model. This involved fabricating a copper tube with a taper, a new experience for me. I used brass for the windows to give more definition.

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My next copper work was a small hammered copper hummingbird with flame coloring and a copper dragonfly yard art piece.

Hi, I have been building recumbent trikes and velomobiles the last couple years but now my interests have changed to working with copper.

Here is my first work in copper. A large hammered copper hummingbird.