Wrangling the angry pixies   This project has an exclusive Patreon video about the internals of the electrical controller. Sign up now to see it!

Wherein we are reminded why dead trees suck. This article has a companion video for Patrons! Sign up now to watch it! On the fence

    Hey Readers! This post includes the first-ever companion video on the private Blondihacks YouTube channel. To see it, pledge any amount on Patreon.

Wherein we get really good at sanding. Exciting times here in the Blondihacks boiler shop. As you may recall from last time, we got our

First three rows will get wet. After a marathon of brazing, it’s finally time for the big moment- hydrostatic testing. A boiler’s raison d’être is to make

The heat is on.   After months of making parts, we’ve finally reached the point where we can start assembling this boiler. Now we have some brazing

Empowering the heads to do their jobs   Last time we roll-formed some copper stock to form the heads, and that was pretty cool. We

Getting around to making it round.   A boiler head is the “end cap” of the pressure vessel. Real steam locomotive boilers are made by

Gathering steam for the coming work.   Last time we made a bunch of straightforward plumbing fittings. We have more fittings to make, however, and

Bushings and ells and plugs, oh my!   I used to think a boiler was a big metal shell that you pressurize. That’s a good

Supporting a big cylinder turns out to be pretty hard.   With the boiler shell basically ready to work on, it was time to finally

Getting our boiler shell ready to work on.   We demonstrated last time that D.E. Johnson’s old design for an automatic electric boiler should indeed work

The pressure builds in this strange new endeavor.   This new project will be a very interesting one indeed. I’ll be way outside my wheelhouse here,