Q&A for How to Make a Steam Engine

This is fine. You mostly want the wiring to be thin so that it's more pliable for making the coils so as long as you're still able to do that it's okay if the diameter is slightly larger than the one used here.

You can find the vast majority of these materials at a hardware or home improvement store. Others, like the soda can, aluminum foil, and tea light candles are available in grocery stores.

By making a special type of shaft as present in car or motorcycle engines.

The materials needed for both projects are listed at the bottom of the article.

Yes. You do need a hollow copper tube so water can go through the tube to condense into steam.

This is very low powered and thermodynamically inefficient. Pounds to power you'd be lucky to move an RC car with it.

Absolutely. Just be sure to have your main components of a proportional size.

Yes. The copper isn't the important part; all you need is some type of metal pipe that can be coiled around to absorb the heat.

It can be iron, but copper is easier to operate. Copper is soft and you can easily bend it to the coil.

There is already a piston, so I think you mean a connecting rod, crankshaft, and flywheel. A connecting rod would need to be made from a piece of aluminum (round and flattened a fair amount at both ends with a hole drilled into the flattened parts). Another hole would need to be bored partway into the piston with a nail driven through the side of the piston in the connecting rod hole. The other end would be connected to the crankshaft. Google "crankshaft" and look at pictures to see how they work. The flywheel would be mounted on the crankshaft.

I'm sure that would work with a small turbine. It really depends on how much heat your engine can generate, as well as how much of that heat it can use.

The main parts are a cylinder, piston, conrod, crankshaft, flywheel, valves, cams, and fuel injectors. You will find far more information with a quick Google search, however.

You can mount the piston off to the side, and instead of exhaust holes around the top of the fire tin, use a copper pipe and run it through the top of the fire tin and the entirety of the piston tin. Make sure to seal every hole the exhaust stack goes through. The exhaust stack will take the heat of the fire to the stack, and will help heat the water more.