Hi Simon,

Thanks for your comment. I'll probably give it a try. That actually
was my first thought as I have some 2" wide by 1/8" thick brass strip
which I could use. The only thing that put me off was that I wasn't
sure how brass would stand up to wear compared to bronze. Probably
brass would be perfectly satisfactory. It's a pity that phosphor
bronze only seems to be available in round bar.

As you suggest, soft soldering should be adequate and certainly a lot
easier!. It would certainly be much easier to be able to cut out the
ports in the flat sheet before soldering to the casting. I think end
milling them in the lathe in situ is always going to be a recipe for
disaster unless the whole assembly is extremely rigid.

Another advantage would be that you could easily machine the steam
passages from the ports to the ends of the cylinder instead of having
to drill several small holes at an angle through the block. The top of
the passages would be sealed with the separate port face. I think for
future projects I will be using built up cylinders anyway due to the
very high price of castings, most of which end up as swarf!

John



--- In halfinchlivesteamforum@..., "Simon Thomas"
<spt001@f...> wrote:
> John,
> You might consider machining off a significant slice from the port
face of
> the castings and replacing this with a similar thickness of brass
sheet.
> This way, you can mark out and make the ports in the sheet, a great
deal
> easier than a casting. I would recommend sweating this on with soft
solder
> or using gasket paper. A couple of my engines have this, and it
seems an
> easy way to get it right when someone else has already got it badly
wrong.
> Getting the cylinder up to red heat for brazing seems overkill, and
would
> soften the metal and need a lot of heat.
>
> Simon.
>