Mm, I have a 10H I bought a couple years ago, as a pre-machined kit, which runs reasonably well. But I'm kinda bored of watching it chuff away on one of those crummy 12v airbrush compressors, so I kinda want to make it do something useful.
But it's not an engine suitable for powering a mobile thing, what with being single cylinder, incredibly tiny, and such. One thing did come to mind, though:
A desktop generator. I also quite enjoy N scale model railroading and the idea of belting this thing to a DC generator and use it to power a small oval with an 0-4-0 or 0-6-0 steamer pulling 4-6 cars around seems appealing.
Some concerns I have regarding putting it to work:
* What sort of boiler would be good for potentially having the thing chuff away for 6-7 hours continuously without needing much tending? Preferably something fired off lighter fuel, or better still, something that can plug into a 120v AC outlet, and would be able to shut itself off if the water level got low.
* How would you go about setting a governor on the engine where the steam valve, not any electronic knob, controls the speed of the train?
* Know of any good sources of proper steam oil that ship stateside? I can get away with lubricating it using some gear oil in the cylinder and 3'n'1 on the external oil points when the only load it has is itself, but making it do actual work will necessitate better lubrication.
* I've entertained the idea of a first project when I get a desktop lathe be turning it a new crankshaft that has actual counterweights on it. Would you reckon it would run better if it was balanced? Would certainly look better, if nothing else, engines look weird when they don't have a counterweighted crankshaft.
For Steam Oil contact any of the Petroleum Companies, they all produce it. The challenge is getting it in less than drum size.
I've built vertical and horizontal '10' sized engines, (as well as a 10V), and I made the brass crankshaft webs 'pie' shaped on my bar stock engines. I think they might be better.