Mystic IHC Mogul Engine – Part 2

I decided to draw up some plans so that a start could be made. Although time-consuming, the measurements made it a little easier.

Wheels

The wheels would be the most difficult items, as they would be fabricated from numerous small pieces. The rims were not a problem as it was possible to get some 10-inch diameter steel pipe with a 0.25-inch wall thickness, and the pipe arrived already cut into two 3-inch pieces.

To keep everything in alignment when welding, I drew a full-size outline of the wheel on the computer and printed it out. I pinned this paper on a wooden board with a steel disc in the middle that the hub would fit over. I then placed the steel ring over the outline and marked the position of the six spokes on both the rim and the hub. I had already marked the center line for the spokes on both the hub and the rim using the height gauge.

I made the hub by boring some 2.1875-inch steel with a 1.125-inch hole for the axle. The six spokes were a little more difficult as they are cross-sectioned. I set the hub and the rim true on the template and then cut the first six pieces of 1-inch wide by 0.25-inch thick iron as spokes. I next cut 12 pieces of 0.375-inch by 0.25-inch iron, then brazed two of them to the wide sides of each trimmed spoke before I rounded all edges using the bench grinder.

Next, I trimmed the spokes to length to be a tight fit between the rim and the hub using the bench grinder before I ground the ends to a knife-edge so that the weld would fill in.

One by one I put the spokes in position. I used a piece of scrap steel to hold each one at the correct height before tack-welding it. After the first one the opposite was then fitted and this continued, working around the wheel.

Once I tacked all the spokes in position, more weld was added, building up the amount around the hub and between each spoke, as well as creating a curve at the rim. A tidier way to have fit these spokes would have been to create a spigot at the rim end of the spoke and then fit this in a hole drilled in the rim before filling the remains of the hole with weld, then grinding flush.

Once I finished the welding, I cleaned up and partially shaped the weld using rotary files and small grinding wheels.

The end result was not as trim as the original, but would still look the part from the other side of the safety rope.

Axle ties

I would use two “U” bolts and channeled blocks to hold the axle in position, using the holes for the original fitting through the wood of the skid.

To make the support blocks, I machined some scrap cast iron into 3.5-inch long blocks, 1.5 inches wide by 0.75 inches thick. I then drilled these with the 0.375-inch holes for the bolts to match the holes in the skid. To create the groove for the axle, I bolted these blocks together using some threaded rod and eight nuts, leaving a fixed 1.3-inch gap in the middle. I set this up using the four-jaw chuck so that the boring bar could cut through the center leaving a 1.25-inch radius curve, a little bigger than the 1.125-inch diameter of the axle pipe.