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Ok, where to start on this. First the Tags- I have been following Tim Hodland and Randy D.'s work on there special projects for a while now. In December I was looking at what Tim was doing and it inspired me to get into a project that has been sitting on my work bench for a while now. I am not going to go into all the details as that would be an entirely different series of posts, but suffice it to say I have wanted to do this for way the heck to long. I will not post the entire model here as it is an aircraft but the engines that go into it are a pair of Bugatti racing engines, modified(by Bugatti). They are type 50 dual overhead, supercharged straight 8 engines. I have wanted to scratch build them out of metal and their work got me back to the work bench so here is the project. What you see here is what I have done starting on January 2nd. This is going to be a long project and the work I am doing can be tedious and take a while so bare with me. There will be updates as interesting things get done. First off this is all done so far in 7075 aircraft aluminum. I had to start with the blocks from raw bar stock. I then took another piece of bar stock and milled the basic shape of the valves covers. This shows how the three pieces fit up to form the basic blocks. This may look like a "V" type engine but it is actually a straight 8. The "V" section is the overhead cam gear. The next part is a coolant pipe that comes out of the head. This is made by soldering pieces of german silver wire together. There is a taper to the top piece that was made by heating the wire and stretching it. The large block of aluminum is a jig for holding the wire while soldering. I am using a cast resin engine as a basis for a lot of this and you can see the resin part at the bottom. The sheet metal covers on most of the top of the engine and valve train are engine turned. This is the tedious part as each of the "circles' is about .080" with .040" on center. They are turned into the metal one at a time. This shows what I have done to date. The engine turning on one engine is done and the coolant pipe is fitted up. The valve covers are being held in place by wire pins and are not permanent at this point. I still have a lot of work to do on them with parts to add. The next operations for the heads are to drill and fit spark plugs and the fasteners that hold the plates in place.