Photos: Craig Libuse
Sherline would like to thank all of you who came by our booth to say hello. We offer a special welcome to those who got their start in model engineering by purchasing a Sherline tool package at the show. We hope to see some of you displaying projects like the ones shown below in future shows. Though we were pretty busy, I took some time to snap photos of a few engine projects that I found particularly appealing. I didn't get the builder's name on all of them, so if you see an engine you recognize and have more information on it, please e-mail me at craig@sherline.com and I will update the description.
Our thanks to the Emerald Valley Model Engineering Society for putting on such a fun and professional show. We're already looking forward to next year's show the last weekend of September, 2003.
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(Click on any photo to enlarge it to 600 x 800 pixel size.) |
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Sherline's booth. Joe and Dee wait for the doors to open on Saturday morning. |
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Retired shop teacher Jim Clark does the demonstrations for the spectators at the Sherline's booth. Here Jim gets the machine ready for another day of demos. This particular machine was purchased after the show by a gentleman who makes fly rods, so it will soon be producing ferrules and other fly rod parts he used to have to purchase from others. |
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One of the many tables of models out on display is viewed by the public. Shows like these make a great afternoon for the whole family. |
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Paul Knapp (partially cut off on the far right) displayed some of his outstanding aircraft radial engines and automobile engines. |
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Paul Knapp's 9-cylinder radial was perfect in every detail. |
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Paul Knapp's display included this cutaway radial engine that shows what is going on inside. The workings of these engines are even more incredible when you can see what goes on under the skin. |
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A group of high school kids called the "Fluid Power Society" put together this large robot. When activated, the lid opened up, the robot rose up, lights flashed and its many joints demonstrated human-like movement. When done, it would retract back into its box and the box's support feet would fold back up. It was quite a dramatic demonstration of hydraulics and electronic programming along with many nicely machined custom aluminum parts. The kids who built this will be designing the products for our future. |
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Rudy Kouhoupt was present at the Village Press booth with some of his engines. He offered some of the many books and plans he has published over the years, and was available with advice and stories from a lifetime of designing and building engines. |
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This Challenger V8 with air cooled aluminum heads by Dick Pretel features a nice display stand that houses the ignition system. Notice the red starter button and controls at the right. A quarter in the front corner of the box gives size reference. |
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Everybody loves the little V8's, but take a look at the supercharger on this one! I bet that wide belt makes a nice whine when it's running. The radiator can be seen at the lower right of the photo. Again, a quarter shows size. |
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A very small Corvette engine based on cast components was at Paul Knapp's table. |
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Chevrolet V8 engine block casting shown without the intake manifold and valve covers. What a beautiful job of casting. |
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Another handsome water-cooled V8, this one by Robert Haagenson. |
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Young Mike Foti first came to our attention at the PRIME show several years ago when he brought in his small pickup truck hotrod model. His hotrod American LaFrance fire truck dragster is shown in Joe Martin's book, Tabletop Machining. This year he took a big step into making a running hit-n-miss engine. Not only did he make it on his Sherline tools, he designed it himself! |
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A closeup of Mike's engine shows nice finishes and the use of a number of different materials. He even made an oak finger-jointed box to house part of the ignition. Mike fired it up for us, and it started with a twist of the flywheel. Mike says that he has worked on many engines and thought he knew a lot about them, but he admits there's a big difference between repairing an engine and building one from scratch! Obviously, Mike has a great future in modeling. |
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Don't ask me to explain how this engine runs, but it does. It also won "Best of Show" for builder Jerry Hale, a retired engine designer from Pickett, Wisconsin. Voting is done by the exhibitors themselves. Jerry calls the engine a "rotary piston four-cylinder, 4-cycle engine with no crank or rods". It uses a cam to convert reciprocating to rotary motion. For someone to come up with a really new and different engine in this day and age is quite an accomplishment. |
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A big crowd collected outside every time Jerry fired up the engine. It ran great, and the builder got a good hand of applause when the engine was shut down. He didn't run it too long as he said some of the components weren't yet hardened and he didn't want to wear it out, but watching it run was a real treat. |
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