After this I made the cylinder into an editable poly and entered vertex mode. Here I used the move tool to space out the rows of vertexes and attempt to make them proportion to the sections in the photograph I was working from. When I felt I had achieved the correct size I used the scale tool to make the radius of the cylinder in this section wider than the rest. I was careful to make sure the vertexes remained in a circular shape and so scaled them out in the top viewport.
Next I selected every third vertex of the area I had just enlarged using the paint selection marquee. Then, once again with the scale tool, I placed these vertexes further out than the rest, creating a bolt-like shape.
I then repeated the above processes several times to create a pipe which I felt looked quite realistic and to scale. When I reached the top I realised I had segmented the cylinder into too many segments and so moved all the unnecessary vertexes closer together and opened the weld window. I set the threshold value to 0.356cm as this was the first amount which welded them all.
Following this I checked to see how this part would look when rendered and was quite disappointed with the outcome. The shape had become smoothed and as a result looked quite unrealistic.
I attempted to resolve this, my first thought being to collapse some of the edges in the shape. To do this I went into edge mode, selected one edge in each column which I wanted to remove and clicked the loop button to select all the others in that line. I then selected collapse from the edge rollout menu, but this just created a peculiar shape which was far from what I was looking for.
I undid the last few steps and tried to think of a solution. I soon realised that I had edited vertexes which were already part of the cylinder, where as before I had created new ones by dragging out the edges. So, I created another cylinder with the same radius as the previous one but this time with a height of 3.29cm. I also set the segment values for the height and cap to 1.Next I made the shape into an editable poly. To start to create the pipe I went into polygon mode, selected the top cap and deleted it. I then went into edge mode before selecting the top rim of edges and dragging out new segments by holding down the shift key whilst using the move tool. I did this a couple of times until I had enough polygons to work with.
Afterwards I went into vertex mode and selected two rows of vertexes which needed to be a different size to the ones below it. Then with the scale tool I reduced the radius of this part to create the smaller part of the pipe. On the bottom part of this shape I then selected every third vertex and scale these parts larger to get a bolt shape.
Once again, I repeated these methods to produce the remainder of the pipe. When I check this in the render window I was much happier with the end result.
The second pipe is much closer to what I wanted than the original; however I was still not satisfied with the bottom part. To improve this I decided to delete the polygons which made up the bottom section and recreated them by going into edge mode, selecting the bottom ring of edges and by incorporating the shift key and move tool I dragged out new ones. Afterwards I went into vertex mode and with the bottom two rows of vertexes selected used the scale tool to make them wider than the area above. I then used the paint selection tool to highlight every third vertex in these rings and with the scale tool moved these vertexes outwards to make a hexagonal shape to represent a bolt. When I looked at this in the render window again I was much happier with the result.
Out of the two pipes I created for this section I felt the second was most accurate and therefore deleted the original and moved the second into the correct position. At this point I realised that I had not completed the pressure gauge fully as I had forgotten to make the glass cover for the front. I decided to do this next and so created a sphere with a radius of 9.465cm and containing 32 segments before converting it to an editable poly. I selected this radius so that the sphere fitted into the dial correctly without any gaps or overlapping parts. Also, I rotated it by 90 degrees so that the areas where there were a large number of edges joining were at the side.
When in editable poly mode I chose the polygon icon and highlighted the back half of the sphere. I then deleted these segments.
Once I had half of the sphere I left editable poly mode and worked with the scale tool to lessen the domed shape and the move tool to position it exactly in the centre of the dial. I did find I needed to move back and forwards between the two tools to get the exact shape I wanted, but eventually I achieved what I was aiming for.
I now felt the dial was complete and so decided to go on to a different part of the model.Next I created the in-line lever which joins the two sections of pipe. For this I drew out a sphere. I set its radius to 1.803cm so that it was the same proportion to the pipes as in the picture and used the rotate tool to position the areas where many vertexes met at the sides as these bits would become hidden when the rest of the section was created.
I then made the sphere into an editable poly and entered polygon mode. Here I used the paint selection marquee to highlight a couple of the rings of polygons at the side of the sphere and opened the extrude window where I chose the extrude value of 1.076cm as I felt this gave a realistic representation of the shape I was trying to create.
When I was happy with this side I repeated the extrude process on the opposite side. Once again I used the paint selection tool to select the same circles of polygons to be extruded, but this time in the extrude window I selected a greater extrusion height of 1.711cm as this is how it appeared to be in the photo I was working from.
After I created another sphere and positioned it alongside the shape I had just edited. I set its radius to 1.385cm so it was to scale and then made it into an editable poly. Within editable poly mode I selected the polygon icon and highlighted the bottom few rows of polygons on the sphere. 
I then opened the extrude window and tried an extrude value of 5.592cm. Although I was happy with the height I felt the column out of the sphere was too wide, so I went back and selected one less ring of polygons before opening the extrude window again. Again, I set the extrude amount to 5.592cm.
My second attempt led to a more accurate shape and so I went on to edit this part further. To do this I changed into vertex mode and selected all the vertexes at the end of the section I had just extruded. Then, with the scale tool I made the radius of this section slightly larger. I scaled the vertexes in the top viewport for two reasons; firstly so that the vertex rings remain circular and that the rounded surface at the base of the shape would become flatter as the object would only be scaled along two of the axes.
I was now happy with this shape and so went on to create the bolt on the opposite side. For this I created a cylinder with the cap and height segment value set to 1. I set the radius to 1.098cm so that the visible area of the bolt was to a similar amount to that of the bolt in the photo and the height to 0.788cm so it was slightly smaller than the extruded area. I then made the cylinder into an editable poly and went into vertex mode where I selected every third vertex around the edge of the shape. Then with the scale tool I moved these vertexes outwards, creating a hexagonal shape.
Now that the whole of the pipe had been built I decided to put the dial in place. To start I selected all of the elements which made up the pressure gauge and with the move tool positioned them above the pipe. When doing this I paid close attention to the photographs so that I could assure it was positioned correctly.
The dial was now in the correct position; however the pipe was unfortunately visible in front of the dial face. To resolve this I entered edge mode and with the top rim of edges selected I used the move tool to lower them beneath the dial casing. With this minor alteration I felt the pressure gauge was now suitably aligned.
At this point I looked at the model overall to see how it was progressing. I was quite happy with it, but did notice that I had missed a section at the base of the pipe. So, I selected the part where this element should be and in editable poly mode selected the polygon icon. I then selected the polygons where I felt this part should be and opened the extrude window. I selected the extrude height of 6.237cm as I felt this was roughly the length I wanted these polygons to extrude out of the shape, but I could not be quite sure due to the angle of which the extrusion occurred.
With these polygons still selected I used the move tool to make the protrusion occur at the correct angle. I then went into vertex mode so I could make some finer alterations to extruded area; in particular I straightened the line of vertexes at the end of the protruded area.
This had gone well so far, but I did feel this section still needed some work as the area was box shaped and in the image it was more curved. So, I went into edge mode and selected the vertical edges in the centre of the extruded area. I then selected the ring button so that all the parallel edges in that line were also highlighted. With all these selected I then opened the connect edges window and increased the segment value to 2 as this would create 4 extra rings of edges in this area.
Next I went into vertex mode and selected all the vertexes of the extruded area apart from the top and bottom rows. I then used the scale tool to widen this area and create the curved shape of this part of the engine. Once I was happy with the shape of this part I then deselected the top and bottom row of the highlighted area and scaled the vertexes out further. I continued this process until I had just the central row of vertexes selected and scaled these out.
I felt this had gone reasonably well, however there was an indent to the left of the extruded area as when I changed the position of the vertexes I affected the roundness of the cylinder. I wanted these vertexes to follow the curvature of the protruding shape as well as cylindrical shape I started with and so with the move tool I repositioned them further forward towards the top of the extrusion to regain the circular shape, using the edges of the rest of the cylinder as a guide.
Afterwards I used the move tool to position the box and cylinder either side of the pipe, all the time referring to the photographs for accuracy. When positioning the cylinder I realised that there was a smaller cylinder between this and the post. To create this I went into editable poly mode and chose the polygon icon. I then used the paint selection tool to highlight the central circle of polygons before opening the extrude window and setting the height of extrusion to 5.346cm. I selected this value as this was the size of the gap between the cylinder and the pipe.
I did find I needed to make some final alterations to the position of the cylindrical shape, but these were just to assure the join between the two shapes was not visible.
Below is how my part of the steam engine looks so far.
I am quite pleased with how this has gone so far. Next week I will continue with the modelling stage and hopefully finish it so the different parts can be put together and the animation can begin the following week.
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