I received a number of enquiries for plans for that engine, but the design for that air engine

wasn't really one that lent itself to building from plans. So I came up with a better design for my
air engine 2.

My original air engine was made mostly from solid maple. Over the course of many years, some
of the pieces in the valve assembly and cylinder warped just slightly, and I had to sand them
down a bit to get the engine to run freely again. For this engine, I made the cylinder and valve
assembly out of baltic birch plywood - the kind of plywood that is made of layers of birch
throughout.

One of the trickiest bits of the

engine is making the crankshaft.
The main crank for the engine is
actually directly off the flywheel,
but a secondary crank is needed to
actuate the sliding valve assembly.
This secondary crank only has a 6
mm throw to it, so I could make it
by gluing another piece of dowel
to the main shaft. The second
piece of dowel is carved to a
crescent shaped cross section to
allow it to fit neatly against the
shaft. After that, I cut away part of
the main shaft.

The initial cut away was made with a band saw, but the rest I carefully carved out by hand.
 I made a guide to check how much
to cut away. The guide is made by

drilling a hole on the edge of a

piece of plywood, then cutting away half of the hole. I used this to check how much I still needed
to cut away as I was whittling the main part of the shaft down.

By pressing my guide firmly

against the carved away section,
and turning back and forth, I could
always see the glossy sections
where my guide had rubbed
against the shaft, and used that as
a guide for where to remove
material.
 Once I was satisfied that the
middle part of my crankshaft was
sufficiently round, I made two
reinforcing plates to glue on either
side of it. I made these by drilling
two 5/8" holes with centers 6 mm
apart. After drilling the holes, I cut
out a small rectangle around the
holes, and glued it on to the crank.
Gluing the pieces on was a simple
matter of sliding it on from the
ends of the crank.

The finished crankshaft (after

varnishing)

The crankshaft bearings blocks are made of two pieces. To make sure the holes were all lined up
perfectly, I clamped the two halves of the bearing together, and then drilled the screw holes
through them.
 After screwing the top part of the
bearing block on, I drilled the
shaft hole through both parts. I
used my biggest 5/8" drill. That is,
the one of my 5/8" drills that
seems to drill 5/8" holes that fits
5/8" dowels the loosest, so it's a
tiny bit over 5/8". After drilling
the holes, I finally cut out the
whole bearing block with a band
saw, and rounded the corners on it.

I used the same approach for making the holes in the connecting rod for the valve slider. First
screw the pieces together, then
drill a hole in the assembled
connecting rod.

I did end up tweaking the bearings

just a little bit, by carving out a
very thin layer from the insides
with a carving knife. I had to do this again after I varnished all the parts, as the varnish added a
little bit of thickness everywhere. But I wanted to varnish even the bearing surfaces, so that when
I'd put a few drops of oil on them, hopefully the oil would not soak into the wood too much.

The "cylinder" and piston are

simply made square. To make
them round would perhaps look
more realistic, but I doubt I would
have been able to make it very
accurately. Also, I would have had
to use a piece of solid wood to cut
it out of, which would then be
subject to slight warping over the
years.

There are no piston rings or seals

around the piston, so there is quite
a bit of "blow by". But this engine
is not designed to be very
powerful or efficient, so it's OK.
In fact, ideally, there would be a
slight gap around the piston to
reduce friction, on the order of
about 0.1 mm. I cut the piston to have no clearance at all, and then sanded it to fit. This was an
iterative process.

There are no gaskets in the assembly. Just screwing the pieces together closes the gap
sufficiently to reduce leakage to acceptable levels - certainly, there is much less leakage around
the cover than there is around the piston.

In the previous photo, you can see

holes in the back of the cylinder,
which are for the air inlets. The air
inlets for the piston need to be
towards the ends of the piston, but
the valve assembly needs the
inlets together, so an internal
channel is formed between two
plywood parts, by carving a cavity
out of the plywood. I just roughed
these out with a big forstner bit - the cavities are not visible with the engine assembled, so it's not
critical.

This photos shows all the pieces of

the piston and valve assembly.
The two holes in the front-most
piece of plywood are the air inlet
and exhaust. By changing which
inlet one blows (or sucks) on, the
engine will run in the opposite
direction.

All the pieces of the valve

assembly are varnished. To keep
the varnish smooth and level, I
scraped the varnish between coats.
A bit of light sanding was required
after all was done as well to get
the valves sliding easily again.

The whole assembly is put

together with 3/4" #4 wood
screws, 38 screws in all.

For the
bearing on
the crank, I
used a 1.5"
long screw
with a
shank with
no thread
on it. I had
to cut the
end of the
screw off
so it would not stick out of the other side of the flywheel by too far. I actual found an old style
wood screw with a thicker shank in my collection (screw on the bottom). Newer screws have a
shank that is just thinner than the thread, which would mean that the connecting rod would have
a little bit of play on the shank.

The piston end of the connecting

rod is joined to the piston shaft
with a simple steel pin, which is
just a cut off nail. The hole in the
piston shaft is drilled slightly
undersize so that the pin sits
firmly in the piston shaft. The
holes to the connecting rod are
slightly oversized, allowing the
connecting rod to pivot freely on
the pin.

The whole engine mounts on a

piece of plywood.

I made the flywheel as large as I

could for this engine, which
required cutting a slot out of the
mounting plate for it to protrude
into. I was about to start chiseling
the slot for the flywheel in the
base plate, when I realized that my
flywheel was just a little smaller
than a skillsaw blade, so I just
made multiple cuts with a skillsaw
blade in the plywood to carve out
the cavity. I made these cuts by
clamping a block to the fence to
keep the plywood from sliding
backwards, and just cranking the spinning blade up into the plywood.
 I built the whole
engine, and made
sure it ran
smoothly before
varnishing all the
pieces. The photo
at left shows the
pieces drying after
I brushed on the
final coat.

Varnishing the
engine necessitated
further tweaking to
get the engine to
run smoothly
again. But with
this engine
essentially being a
toy, there is an
expectation that it
would get handled a fair bit, and so if it's varnished, it's much easier to get it clean again. Also,
the varnish I used is fairly slippery, so it should make the engine run more easily.

The varnish itself however was

not quite slippery enough, and I
ended up oiling the crankshaft a
little bit, to keep it from
squeaking. In my previous air
engine, I used axle grease on the
bearings and no varnish. This
made them run really smoothly,
but the whole thing is a bit messy.
The 3 in one household oil is
much cleaner.
I have drawn up
some very detailed
plans for this
engine, which
should make it
much easier to
build such an
engine if you wish
to do so.