Hydro progress

Well, ive changed my mind about blue. For a variety of reasons, mostly to do with psychedelic progressive rock music, shes now going to be painted black, with yellow daisies, and called 'miss Swift'. If you can work out why, ill buy you a drink.

Current weight is 12 pounds, so 4 pounds left for propshaft, boiler casing/ insulation, burners and tanks.

Flash steam tethered hydroplane

This is my flash steam hydro that im building.

Shes an A class boat, with a maximum permitted weight of 16 pounds and no other limitations. The hull uses 2 of those pounds, the engine another 3, the prop and driveshaft another 1, and pumps etc about another pound. So i have about 9 pounds of weight to play with, which should hopefully equate to about 25 feet of 1/4 inch stainless tube, and a triple jet venturi boiler to provide the heat, and some ceramic insulation to contain it. The current record for these boats is over 130 Mph. From a steam boat. Hehehehehehh.....

Shes going to be sprayed blue, natch....

Stuart high speed engines part 1

This is a pile of stuart enclosed crank high speed engines. Made either just before or just after the 1st war. To the right of the three MTB1b engines is a sadly chopped up Star, which was the replacement for the aluminium MTB1a. It came out in the mid thirties and disappeared around WW2.

This big green meanie is the MTB3, its over 8 inches long and 4 wide. Weighs about 5.5 pounds and will drive a 150 watt dynamo. Replaced by the stuart Sirius, i think this one may well be one of the most attractive stuart engines.

1 inch 'square' engine

I call this engine my Square engine because its 1 inch bore and stroke and because its.... Square. Its dated 1952 on one side.

Its a flash steam hydroplane engine, with a piston valve for inlet and again a uniflow exhaust. Its also ballraced, and has a fully adjustable eccentric driving the inlet valve. I intend to have this engine in a boat and racing in the A/S class for the 2015 season.

Bassett Lowke Uniflow poppet valve engine

It is beautifully made, and relies on a crankshaft driven cam to actuate the inlet poppet valve. Its another uniflow design. The cam has slipped on the shaft so it currently doesnt run. I need to work out how to adjust the timing, the cam is hidden between two ballraces in the main casting.

It dates from around the early fifties. Heres an ad i found in a 1952 edition of ME–

Be seeing you
Sp.

3 cylinder valveless engine

This is my favourite engine. Its big, and wierd, and sounds like a spitfire when its running. I have no idea who made it, it is unsigned.

It has three cylinders of 1 inch bore and stroke and a grand total of 12 moving parts, and roughly two dozen parts to the engine as a whole. It works by covering and uncovering ports in the spigots at the tops of the cylinder heads. Its also a uniflow design. It is brutally powerful, and did i mention it sounds like a spitfire?

First post. Hello...

This is my steam engine collection-

In this blog i intend to document some of the rarer, stranger and cooler ones, and my experiments in making and running miniature steam boilers, mostly being flash steam monotube types.

Be seeing you-
Sp