A wood burning live steamer. Gotta hand it to you for innovation. Do you suppose there's enough thermal energy locked up in the wood pellets to make it work? i.e. can you make a hot enough fire that lasts long enough per pellet, in such a small firebox? The physics of wood-burning (or coal-burning) doesnt "scale" down to our size very well.

I just found this: http://www.raghavlpg.com/auto%20lpg.html , from which I learn that wood has about one third the energy content of butane (15 vs 45), but it compares favorably to coal (15 BTU/gm for wood, 22 cal/gm for coal).

You would need to think about volume of fuel as well, given the small size of our fireboxes. It's not BTU/gm that counts, as much as it is BTU/cc of space in the firebox. If coal is denser than wood, then you can stuff more BTUs into the firebox. I have no idea about the pellets; maybe that information is printed on the bag, or available from the mfgr. 

Very cool idea.
Jim C aka Dr. J

Eric,
Look at my solution on this thread. My dome is fixed, and I have a silicone tube leading to my goodall valve underneath the tank. The fill nipple is going to be hid by the filler cap on the front of the tank.

Looks like you have a good shape coming along!

I have used a green Scotch Bright pad to scuff off the residual gunk when soldering my boiler it works great, just don't bring it back to the kitchen when you are done. steel wool works too.

I think that falls into the category of "OOPS!" :-)

Amber at the time,,, I placed it in a little more profain category than OOPs;)

Lookin good Richard! possibly you may want to try solder rather than putty? might stick better? or just file it flat if you have enough metal.

Good looking light!

Amber, Thanks, its not perfect, but it is good enough for a first attempt;)

If you really dislike it, you can send it to me. :-)

Well, I'd show you some pics of todays work, but it seems I lost my first class status. I worked on the reflector today. I'd had trouble with it fracturing aound the predrilled holes, and thought maybe I was making the holes too big. I can tell you now, that this is not the case. I drilled 1/64" holes today and they still fracture, in fact, they fractured faster than they did when they were large. I don't know if I was going faster and that was why or if it is something to day with the brass itself. Anyway, I decided to just drill the holes after I hammered out the reflector and guess what! Before I could get half way to the depth I wanted, a small fracture started to appear. I decided to just go ahead and stop at that point and leverage the crack to see if I could still drill it out enough to make the holes for the chimney. If I could show you a picture, you could see that I was able to pass a 3/16 dowel through the two holes and mount it in the light case as a test. Unfortunately the reflector is not deep enough. For one the chimney of the lamp ends up too far forward and because it isn't deep enough I am limited to 3/16" for the chimney. I was hoping to form a bulb with at least a 5/16" bulb for the combustion chamber. It also reduce the amount of reflective surface being so shollow.
I've come to the conclusion that my skills and the metal are ok, the method I am using, is not. While this method works fine on 1:20 scale and lower reflectors, it does not for the larger reflectors. I'm going to need to make a form that I can drape the brass over and hammer on instead of the block I'm currently using with concaved circles in it. I am theorizing that the brass is just getting caught up on the edges and restricting the material so much it just stresses and cracks. I'll make a maple form tomorrow and try it in reverse.
On a good note though, I discovered that drilling and aligning the holes after fabrication isn't nearly as hard as I originally thought it would be, so I'm going to skip doing that using the new method.
Amber,,, I think I'll hang on to it, thanks ;)

Yep, always annealing as I go.
Henner, I know about the spining in a lathe, I just prefer forming it this way. One other thing about the lathe spining is I think you have to start out with a hole in the center and I don't want a hole in the center.
Ray, you have any personal pics of Olomana? Henner and I are working on a scale model of her.

Rick, if you make a male form, you might try making it of steel so you can use it like an anvil.

I have had only limited success doing deep shaping of brass even when annealed. if all else fails copper can be shaped more easily, I guess it would need to be plated to give it the right shine. I think if you plated it with nickel it would be shiny but not crazy bright like chrome would be...I haven't tried plating so I cannot speak to what is possible, how hard it is to do and how expensive.

I have made reflectors by machining them from a solid bar of Aluminum then polishing them a bit with fine sand paper or steel wool. they come out pretty shiny though, which may not be the look you want.

on another subject what did you use for your number plate? I have a Trackside Details Baldwin plate (#3) but wonder if it is too small by a couple of scales. were all the Baldwin number plates the same size? it should look huge on a ickle-bitty engine like these.

I don't think I have any good detail shots, just some long views of Ward's backyard that tried to fit everything in. I was about 13 at the time, and was too amped up to think about taking decent pictures. They're on old slides too. I have to transfer them to digital someday, need to find someone to do it.

Eric, the top is made from a maple male form. I think maple will be hard enough. The trick I find is do not hit it too hard. Work it slowly and evenly. I make all my reflectors with brass sheet using the femail steel form I have and made the body of the headlamp using a maple male form same as the top but easier because I only needed to form the corners and no curves. The top took several annealings and slow steady work. I don't like milling away at brass stock unless I have to. It seems like a waste to not form sheets instead, even then I resent the bits of scrap that are left over after forming.

I don't think you have to have a hole to spin a sheet on the lathe. If you can clamp the work between a male form and a backing pad (one in the headstock, one in the tailstock) with enough pressure to hold it securely (rubber might be helpful) I suspect you could spin it without difficulty.

Just curious, have you thought about making the reflector from sheet nickle silver? A long time ago I made several things from sheet nickle silver and found that it was fairly easy to work. As I remember, it had to be annealed for forming, but it's pretty nice stuff to work with.