At 11:30 PM 2/15/05 -0500, you wrote:
>my opinion on using copper as bushings is based on the following:
>#1 LBSC in his book about building TICH (page 156) recommends as bushing
material copper with "The next best thing is bronze".
Henner,
That was written ca. 1951 and things have changed in 50+ years. I
have a boiler from one of the most popular LBSC locos, designed ca. 1946,
which uses no bushings for fittings and today of course this would never fly.
>#2 The Tich boiler kit we are currently building for my friend David's
>garratt was supplied by Reeves with material for copper bushings.
Having been one of the worlds principle suppliers for all these
years and one assumes up to date, I would be very surprised if Reeves
supplied copper but they may very well have. In either case some phos
bronze appears pinkish-red and very similar to copper but certainly doesn't
machine like copper. You'll be able to tell the difference when you begin
machining, the phos-bronze is very hard and tends to heat up quickly.
Regards,
Harry
