1918 Nichols & Sheppard 20-70 Single Cylinder Steam Traction Engine Serial: 13138

heldbrad

Bradly J Held
First off I will ask for forgiveness as I am not “Mr. Steam” and I might not get all the terminology right all the time. I will ask my father for input when ever we can sit down together and put information on this thread so that I can keep most of this thread straight and on the right path. Also, I apologize for any spelling, punctuation, and/or “forum educate” errors. I am new to posting on a forum anything this side of Facebook.
That being said, let me start with some history on this engine. This engine was sold new in 1922 at St. John, ND to Carl & Albert Abrahamson. The engine was bought by Ed Held from Oscar Abrahamson in 1953 or 54. When Ed passed away in 1975 he left a collection of engines, one for each of his children. Harold Held, my uncle, received this engine. Harold was killed in a car accident in 1977 and the engine went to his widow Judy (Jackson) Held. Judy had the engine on display over at Hampton ND. My father, Eldon Held, approached Judy about 3 years ago about selling it to him and a deal was struck. Dad ordered a boiler shortly after that and started disassembly. It took 2 years to get a boiler fabricated. We received the new boiler on Saturday, April 9th 2011. The rest, as they say, is history. Another interesting tid-bit is that while we were waiting for the new boiler to arrive, my father purchased another N&S 20-70, this one being a double. We are currently taking donations to get a new boiler for that one. Haha, just kidding, but it would be kind of cool. We are able to run the double at about 85psi at the shows. Both will be stored and ran at the Hawk museum shows. http://www.hawkmuseum.org/ We are very determined to have the single there and running this year. :thewave:

I will get progressive pictures on here as soon as I figure that out.:scratching:
At present time (04/20/2011) we are approx. 75% complete with assembly.:thumb:
 
Great start to the thread Brad! Looking forward to the rest of the story and the pictures!

If you have any questions, I suspect you know a guy named Clayton (AKA "Sawtooth") who hangs around these parts. I know he can answer any questions related to posting here that you might have.
 
I was pretty sure there was a good reason that you guys didnt make it to Steam Up.

11 days and you guys are already 75% together !!!!!!!!!!!!!! I know Eldon had all the parts ready to go,but holy cow that is kicking some butt.

We need pictures Brad.

Maybe when I get my truck finished I can haul the Russell up to the Hawk show and the two engines can run side by side like they did at the Held farm so many years ago!!!
 
Thanks guys! Jerry, I can't wait to belt up! Clayton, that would be freaking awesome! I defenitely think that should be a plan! Even if you can't haul the Russell up, it would be great if you could make it up for the show. Now, back to the leson on how to get the photos on here. My hope it I can make a thread that rivals the Russell's. haha
 
Ok, I think I have got this figured out.

I will start with some photos from when my dad just got the engine and brought it to the Hawk museum. I am not too sure where the bunkers are, I think dad may have already taken them off and started to work on them in the shop at Hawk.

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You can't see it on the picture, but the main drive gear off of the differential gear is worn pretty bad. That was my first official project on this machine. I built up each gear. I sat in the garage and laid rod after rod on that thing.

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I am waiting on some disassembly pictures that will hopefully be here in a couple days. I was not involved with the disassembly so was not there to take pictures. I regret this now as I am really enjoying the assembly. It has been a good time and I am learning quite a lot from the old man.
 
Old Man (Eldon)

Learning alot, no doubt. That's why we enjoy him coming to WMSTR and helping us with the engine. We are constantly learning and trying to absorb all of the knowledge from him that we possibly can. :not_worthy:

You got the picture posting down, looks great.

Our plan is this year, to absolutely try and make it to the Hawk show. There always has been something that gets in the way,but it has been on the calender for some time now so we are going to try and make it work this year.
 
On Facebook ther is a "like" button, I was trying to find that here... must be nonexistant but I am sure a thing of the near future.
 
Tear-Down

Ok, here we go!

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Sitting on top of the world! Thinking about how much work this is going to be. The Old Man (Mr. Steam)

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I just received these disassembly pictures in the mail today. While going through them, things are starting to make sense, the sequence of putting it back together I mean. Again I wish I would have helped with tear-down.
 
Hey Brad, great idea for a thread!!! Eldon looks like a kid with both hands stuck in a cookie jar sitting on top of that engine! For those of us that know him, that smile is refreshing, and familiar. Good luck on your guys' project. As Clayton said, we missed Eldon at steam up.......it's rare for him to miss.

Keep us posted, that Nichols will be a fine engine.

Ray
 
Thanks Ray! He is pretty excited about it, and he told me that he very pleased with the progress and how nice everything is coming together. I'll have to admit, not doing this before, I thought that it would take us a lot longer to get to the point we are at now. I know that dad had everything figured out in his head he did the assembly a million times so I guess that is why it is going so smoothly. We also have a great crew! D My uncle Roger and his son Adam have helped immensely! We wouldn’t be half as far as we are without them. I wish I could take more time off from work to be able to be there every day.

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Removing the wheels here. Carly, Rogers daughter asked us a couple days ago if we were going to put the tires on tommorrow.

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Here's that gear I was talking about, pretty worn out. Looks pretty good now though, if I do say so myself. Ouch, my arm!

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The gears on the wheels look pretty good, not sure why that drive gear wore and not the rest, even the one on the opisit side looks good.
 
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The old man gettin his hands dirty.

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I was gonna try and keep these photos as close to cronilogical order, but transfering them to Photobucket seems to have jumbled them up a bit. Sorry.

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Assembly

Ok, I have had about enough of the disassembly, lets get on with the assembly!

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This is where it's all goin down. This is the farm that my dad grew up on, and the first place he and my grandfather ran the N&S after he bought it.

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Dad and Man's Best Freind chillin, waiting for the boiler to show up.

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Adam (Roger's boy) haning out, waiting for go time!

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Here it comes!

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It's here!!

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Adam "backing" it into the shop.

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On the floor and ready to go.
 
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Dad and Jeff Lund.

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Dad getting right after it. the first thing we did was to mark out one of the ash pan bolt whole and drilled one in each side of the boiler. We then attached chains and rolled the boiler over onto its side.

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With the boiler on its side it was a lot easier to work on wht would have been virticle work.

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We started working on this corner bracket but our ADD shortly took over and we ended up doing a bunch of other stuff first.

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I couldn't wait to get my hands on a tourch and cut out the draft door and the ash clean-out door.

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Dad made some centering tools and once we got a casting in place we marked the holes and the used a mag drill to make easy work of drilling the holes.

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Unfortunatly, the mag drill works best on flat surfaces. A lot of the time stay bolts are in the way and you cant get the magnet to stick, so, you have to do it the old fashioned way.

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Laying out more holes. There are something like 120 holes we had to drill and tap.

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Once we have the holes drilled and tapped, we insert a taper stud to hold the casting on.

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We rolled it on to it's back and put the front pedistal on, then rolled it to the other side to do the work on that side.

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Bothe corner backets on. These are the brackets for the wheel drive gearing and drive shaft.
 
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The castings were poured to fit the original boiler configuration and the stay bolts were not in the same place, so we had to mark the castings and take some material out in places.

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Ryan (My son, Eldon's grandson) marking the holes on the axle casting.

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Roger melting the bearing material out of the pillow block so we can repour the bearings.

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Ryan putting in the studs in for the axle casting.

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A little BS time.

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First half of bearing poured.
 
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We then set the bottom half of the pillow block in and got it lined up where we wanted it and damned it up in preperation to pour the bottom bearing.

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The bottom half of the pillow block from the other side after we melted the babbitt out and cleaned it up. The holes or divits in the casting act as keyways to keep the babbitt in place.

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This is just after we poured the babbitt in the bearing; the excess will be chiseled away.

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The bottom pillow block was being a little stubborn, so it needed some persuading to come out of the holder.

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"Is it out?"

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The finnished product.
 
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