Climax Imperial Rock Drill rebuild

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Tamarmole
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8 years ago

Climax project part 1

Many years ago I acquired a seized and rusted Climax Imperial Rock drill of 1890s vintage, the intention being to restore it to working order. This I started to do in about 2007. The drill was stripped to its component parts, cleaned and painted prior to reassembly. Unfortunately at this point I lost my workshop facilities, the myriad parts of the drill were packaged up and stored under the bed in the spare room.

There it sat until the end of last year when building work meant that it had to be moved, the only problem was to where? Mrs Tamarmole certainly didn't want it back in the house once the work was done. I was bemoaning my dilemma to J25GTi who kindly offered me the use of his shed. He also suggested that we should resume the stalled rebuild.

Hopefully this thread will follow the rebuild of the drill to working condition (or not).

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AR
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8 years ago

My sympathies about your SWMBO not letting you have good stuff in the house. I briefly had a collection of Doug Nash's papers in the house en-route from the BCA library to the PDMHS recorder (and probably thence to the DRO) that were full of fascinating stuff, but 'er indoors insisted they be transferred sooner rather than later...;(

Follow the horses, Johnny my laddie, follow the horses canny lad-oh!

Tamarmole
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8 years ago

Climax project Part 2.

20.2.17

After a false start work started in earnest on the Imperial.

This first session was largely spent assessing the condition of the component parts. Fortunately the drill parts had not suffered too much after a decade under the spare bed, the main issue being surface rust.

By the end of the first evening we had cleaned up the bore of the cylinder and the valve chest mating face.

Tamarmole
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8 years ago

Climax project part 3.

9.3.2017

J25GTi and I had a very productive evening.

A couple of castings got a second coat of red oxide.

The main event was the cleaning and reassembly of the valve chest assembly. This was something of a trial and error exercise; when I stripped the drill in 2007 it was going to go back together almost immediately so I didn't bother taking any notes or photos....... Fortunately it is a fairly simple assembly with only two moving parts, the air inlet valve and the main valve which is a piston valve. The whole thing was fairly intuitive.

We also started to clean up and reassemble the drill's slide carriage assembly (none of this modern airleg nonsense).

J25GTi took a couple of photos showing the current state of play:

🔗110619[linkphoto]110619[/linkphoto][/link]

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RAMPAGE
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8 years ago

Looks lovely, good luck with it!

I've several Climax drills here, in working order but I've no means of powering them. Not as old as yours though, I'd put them as 1930's.

Beneath my steely exterior beats the heart of a dashing hero

Morlock
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8 years ago

Nice bit of kit. What would be the pressure and CFM required to operate it?

J25GTi
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8 years ago

"Morlock" wrote:
Nice bit of kit. What would be the pressure and CFM required to operate it?

Who knows! Alot is my guess....

We will be hooking it up to a road compressor and see what happens! Luckily the air fitting although over a hundred years old is still good old 1" bsp!

Morlock
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8 years ago

Not much about regarding specs on that model but I suppose a ball park figure would be 80-100 PSI & around 100CFM.

I would expect a much lower figures for an off-load test.

Tamarmole
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8 years ago

Another one of J25GTi's photos from last night's session. The bore of the cylinder (not measured) is around 3 1/2"- 3 3/4"; its a bit of a beast. The bore is in very good condition, no scoring or pitting.

🔗110624[linkphoto]110624[/linkphoto][/link]

Boy Engineer
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8 years ago

#10

Looking forward to the er, end of the project. Can't think of a suitable word. Will have to look in my Schoolboy Humour Thesaurus.

On a more serious note, when I was at Derby Tech in 1976, at the start of becoming a Boy Engineer, there was a old book full of cross-sectional drawings of most of the famous makes of rockdrill, from the original Ingersoll Rand, Holman and Gardner type through to some 1930s and 1940s 'bar and arm' drifters. I imagine they may still have it (although they've since rebranded several times and now sport 'University' in the name). When you see the Burrows pictures of scrawny Cornishmen you wonder how they lugged the drills around. Certainly hard work.

Tamarmole
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8 years ago

#11

"Boy Engineer" wrote:
Looking forward to the er, end of the project. Can't think of a suitable word. Will have to look in my Schoolboy Humour Thesaurus.

On a more serious note, when I was at Derby Tech in 1976, at the start of becoming a Boy Engineer, there was a old book full of cross-sectional drawings of most of the famous makes of rockdrill, from the original Ingersoll Rand, Holman and Gardner type through to some 1930s and 1940s 'bar and arm' drifters. I imagine they may still have it (although they've since rebranded several times and now sport 'University' in the name). When you see the Burrows pictures of scrawny Cornishmen you wonder how they lugged the drills around. Certainly hard work.

It is ridiculously heavy. One person can just lift the cylinder/valve chest/ slide carriage assembly, likewise one person can just about lift the piston. It would certainly take at least two people to rig it on a bar.

Margot
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8 years ago

#12

That's a very cool project Rick! :thumbup:

somersetminer
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8 years ago

#13

Survived the ravages of time well, if the bolts are all original (as they appear to be) I would say this has been a museum/display piece at some point or other.
The compressor we have at the mine will run rock drills happily (with a receiver) at around 8 bar (120psi), 300cfm

J25GTi
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8 years ago

#14

:lol:

"Tamarmole" wrote:
Climax project Part 2.

20.2.17

After a false start work started in earnest on the Imperial.

This first session was largely spent drinking beer, assessing the condition of the component parts. Fortunately the drill parts had not suffered too much after a decade under the spare bed, the main issue being surface rust.

By the end of the first evening we had cleaned up the bore of the cylinder and the valve chest mating face and drank some more beer....:)

I have added more detail as applicable...

J25GTi
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8 years ago

#15

🔗110680[linkphoto]110680[/linkphoto][/link]

Tamarmole
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8 years ago

#16

Finding myself in the Camborne area today I decided to visit Carn Marth Quarry near Redruth. The quarry was used by Stephens / Climax for testing drills so it is highly likely that my drill was tested there. The quarry used for testing lies on the north eastern side of Carn Marth. The eastern wall of the quarry appears to have been the main testing site and is pock marked with a remarkable number of drill holes.

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Roy Morton
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8 years ago

#17

You can find toads and other wildlife inhabiting those holes. I can remember seeing plenty of drill rigs up there in the early 70's and some pretty beefy compressors too.
The quarry I seem to remember was known locally as Martin's or Martyn's quarry. I think Sharon (Schwartz) mentions it in her book on Lanner.
We used to use it for abseil practice and SRT training until some Peregrine Falcons set up home there.
Nice job on the Drill by the way :thumbup:

"You Chinese think of everything!"
"But I''m not Chinese!"
"Then you must have forgotten something!"

spitfire
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8 years ago

#18

Just a few more comments on the quarry.
This closed in about 1960/61 when it was worked by one of the councils, either Camborne/Redruth UDC or Cornwall County Council as a source of road-stone.
Roy is right in saying that it was used as a test site for drilling rigs and those are the holes we see to-day.
The drilling rigs were made by Holmans.
When the quarry was working there was a small internal tramway with manually operated trucks taking rocks to the crusher. The tramway split in two roughly at the center of the quarry to enable the working of two faces.

spitfire

Roy Morton
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8 years ago

#19

This may be of interest

🔗111151[linkphoto]111151[/linkphoto][/link]

🔗111150[linkphoto]111150[/linkphoto][/link]

"You Chinese think of everything!"
"But I''m not Chinese!"
"Then you must have forgotten something!"

Tamarmole
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8 years ago

#20

Phenomenal stuff - thanks for posting Roy.