After about six weeks of turning metal, silver soldering, and more turning I finally have 8 beautiful wheels for my Shay Locomotive.  In the course of that time I had to learn how to do things use the lathe accurately, silver solder, bore, and ream.

Here is a profile picture.  Kozo’s book was amazing and walks you through it step by step.  Even an amatuer can get good results.  Are they perfect?  No, far from it but I am happy with them for my first effort.

For those that haven’t seen 3/4″ scale live steam before, here is a picture of the wheels next to my friend, “Harvest Moon”.

The steps were something like this:

  1. Turn rims from a big piece of 2.5″ steel rod.
  2. Face hubs to width from 7/8″ steel rod.
  3. Cut 48 little spokes from steel bar.
  4. Drill, tap, and mill 48 little spokes.  (2 broken taps)
  5. Attach rim, spokes, and hub to fixture for silver soldering.
  6. Flux and silver solder.  Fix many problems by cleaning, fluxing, and resoldering.  The worst wheel took about 8 iterations.  The best wheel was done in one.
  7. Face entire wheel to width.
  8. Bore and ream center holes.
  9. Turn tread to 3 degrees.
  10. Turn flange to 10 degrees on each side and file round.
That is the over simplified version but the general steps followed to completion.  I do need still need to obtain the four gears and attach them to the right side wheels.  They will also be blasted and painted in the future as well.