[modeleng] Re: Steam engine RPM?

  • From: "Tony Wells" <oaksfield@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <modeleng@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 8 Sep 2005 11:35:33 +0100

This message of yours prompts me to ask another novice type question Shep. 
Apart from those members who run steam railways, of whatever guage, does 
anyone actually build their own steam boilers or merely use compressed air 
from such as a electric tyre pump? Whilst I have now got several very 
interesting sets of plans for the actual engines, running from suitably 
simplistic to absolutely fabulous, I cannot seem to find any boiler plans 
for some reason. I should imagine such things as pressure regulators are 
essential and so this puzzles me.

As I have a nice brand new piece of drawn, seemless, copper tubing some 75mm 
in diameter, plus plenty of silver solder, I do have hopes of making my own 
boilers by the way. Is such as microbore central heating plubing fixtures OK 
to use however? I have seen both solder and compression fittings in a 
variety of sizes, including 6, 8 and 10mm diameter, which will be OK if I 
stick with metric scale models.

Tony Wells.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "shep" <shep.28@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <modeleng@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, September 08, 2005 10:40 AM
Subject: [modeleng] Re: Steam engine RPM?


> Dear Al
>
> Our hearts go out to you all at this time of a great national calamity. 
> We
> particularly think of you, whilst your eldest son is doing search and
> rescue, and trying to control looting, in these foul and dangerous
> conditions.
>
> To talk of more happy things - Pierre's engine sounds interesting indeed!
> I spend most of my time making tools.     Presently, rather crazily at my
> age, I am making a small, but heavy and hopefully precision, screw-cutting
> lathe.    This is being machined from large lumps of solid cast iron -
> producing masses of swarf and dirty carbon dust!    When visitors see my
> workshop, they ask 'What do you make?'   I answer, 'tools'.   They then 
> ask,
> 'what do you make then?' and I answer 'more tools'.   In order to divert
> these questions, I made a few stationary steam engines, including one
> oscillator from scrap with a 1/16" piston.
> I was making a Stuart 10V engine from castings, when I had the crazy idea 
> of
> making one half that size, about 3 inches high.   It was easy to reduce 
> the
> plans to about 48%, but from there on everything had to be made out of the
> solid (mainly brass).   The making the body of the engine, the flywheel, 
> and
> the minute slide valve, created interesting problems.   To my amazement 
> the
> engine runs beautifully on compressed air, making a noise like a 
> bumble-bee!
> Looks quite pretty, too!
>
> Cheers!
>
> Hubert


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