Greg Davis

Getting some rigging in place now:

I need to keep reminding myself that his contraptions were almost always in flux and that he seemed to like having pictures taken with his work no matter the stage of construction. Combine this with him taking parts from one project to put on another and then possibly modifing after in place makes using the photographic evidence so much fun!

What is the conical structure behind the pilot seat on the No20? Could that be fuel and the double cone on top just coolant? I like the radiator piping along the wing panels!

Here's a picture that came from an October 19, 1907 Scientific American article where the intake spider is not in place, but you can see the carburetors. I guess one would need to be reversed to accept fuel from the tank funnel that is between the two carburetors on Santos-Dumont's No 18 set-up.

You are right - space is tight, but I did include use couple of pieces of aluminum under the spiders to represent the carburetors!

Here's what the model looks like with the propeller unit in place: Return piping for the coolant to make it back from the radiators was also added today. I'm waiting on some resin spark plug boots to see if they will make the ignition harness wiring look better than what I could do on my 14bis model. Then some rigging...

Thanks for sharing - this looks like a later model than was used by Santos-Dumont on the 14bis. Those copper water jackets must have been a joy to produce! Also, quite a different air intake than the 'spider' version!

More engine work today - added the coolant intake manifolds and the lower coolant pump together with the connections between the two. I'm using one of the castings from the Model Airways engine kit for the magneto and associated gearing. I've drilled 16 holes into the magneto to accept the ignition wires. I also added the lower half-round connection between the radiators. Besides installing the ignition harness and adding some piping from the lower radiator connection going back and up to the engine, I think this will be the end of the propulsion system (short of installing the propeller). I think I'm now at the limit of what I can reasonably do on this part of the model. Some rigging will be coming soon to wrap the project up for now - at least until additional relevant information on the Santos-Dumont No18 Hydroplane surfaces! P.S. Yesterday's requested side project:

All the exhaust pipes are in place. The next big project will be getting coolant intake piping / etc. in place. As a small diversion I have started building a case for the model. I've cut this trapezoidal piece of wood to serve as a base board / raise the model up a bit. For the final presentation, I am looking for something remininsent of the picture of the No 18 that was taken in Santos-Dumont's workshop:

Thanks for the encouragement! Definitely going to see this through - the finish is in sight. Half of the remaining exhaust pipes formed and in place:

Now the coolant can make it into the radiators! The front half of exhaust pipes are made and attached as well. The remaining eight exhaust pipes have a slightly different shape; while the front eight point down, the rear eight have a bend and point aft. They will be a little harder to form. In retrospect, I should have attached the exhaust pipes earlier as now there is a reduced amount of work space and it seems my depth perception has been reduced as well! By the way, I fell back on soldering a short piece of brass tubing to a piece of soft brass wire to form the basis for each exhaust pipe. The wire was bent and cut to shape and black shrink tube was put over the wire to finish.

This is really stretching my skill set, and I am learning a lot - so that is good. At the same time, the project is reinforcing my like of ship models from about 1750 to 1850!

The radiators are now permanently connected to the model as are the copper air / fuel intakes. Next up will be the exhaust pipes. Having them in place will make fitting the front radiator piping easier and is almost necessary before adding the coolant intake manifolds to the exterior of the cylinders.

The engine block is 3.5" long - nearly 4" if you go to the front of the spinner.

Last bit of work for the day - the connections from the coolant pipes to the tank. Glad to have these two pieces in place. I had worried about being able to make and install the returns so that they looked similar to those on the boat. I also was worried about drilling holes into the tank and the upper level of the coolant return since they were already in place. Same fear as cutting through planking for gunports!

Coolant return piping in place: Still need to connect them to the tank above. Not a lot of space left to work fuel lines in below the tank! Trying to make sure there remains some room to have the exhaust pipes pass across the engine block.

Starting to add components to the engine. Added aluminum funnels to the tanks and then permanently connected the tank structure to the engine. Made a small structure to represent the front coolant pump and connected it to the coolant funnel with copper wire that represents tubing. Made and added a pulley to the pump - currently the pulley has the same depth as the big pulley on the propeller shaft. 'If' I can learn what the off-to-the-right front pulley did, then I will add it in and replace the coolant pulley with one half as deep (already made if this happens) and run a pair of belts off the big pulley. If not, then the coolant pump will get a single wider belt.

Today I felt the need to make something and take a break from understanding how Antoinette engines work. The project was the propeller components: blades, shafts, and spinner / big pulley assembly. All of these parts I made from aluminum. The three blades were simultaneously cut using a scroll saw. I had sandwiched 3 sheets of 0.032" aluminum between 2 sheets of 1/8" plywood and cut the together. The shafts are 1/8" aluminum tubing. The spinner / pulley took the most time. I milled it using a rotary table, thinking I would get a better result than turning it on a lathe. Here's what the parts look like in a trial fitting: Time to guess the pitch and then permanently fix the shafts into the spinner.

At first I thought that was part of the coolant system and that the two pipes that feed the coolant inlet manifold were connected to it. However, one of your recent clarified photos made it appear the coolant pipes go below that long tube. Here's a silly(?) guess for you to shoot down: this is a coolant pump and the tube is mostly a reservoir that is filled before the engine is run (how I don't know), there is a pipe that goes down from the tube and connects to the pair of pipes that attach to the coolant intake manifold. As you and others have indicated, with a short run not a lot of coolant is needed. Maybe there could be great reliance on a feeder reservoir and not so much on what coolant that is recirculated through the radiators. Please pick this apart!

The engine that you are examining here looks different to me, in how fuel is delivered. I was under the assumption that there were two carbonators on the No18's engine that were fed by the rear portion of the conical tank. I thought the air/fuel mixture was then delivered through the spider-shaped manifolds. The engine you are showing here appears to have air intakes for each cylinder with fuel being injected separately.

Keith - When I made the fuel tank, I had made this note: I had taken measurements from pictures of the hydroplane and the 5mm (scale) diameter seemed reasonable, but I think I'm going to remake the tank with 6mm rods as this looks a little slim to me. I also did a bit of looking around on the web and found that an Antoinette V8 consumed fuel at 30L/hr. Assuming the V16 consumes twice that, i.e., 60L/hr or 1L/min, the tank I made would hold 10L of fuel or about 10min of run time. While it might be possible to do the two 1K passages at 100Km/hr in 10 minutes, it probably would be cutting things close. Moving to a 6mm tank (same length) the volume increases to a full size tank holding 15L (15min run time). I can see how the boat could be started, run a kilometer, turned and run back in that time frame. So, the current tank is probably just practice! I did end up making 6mm max diameter tank - this is the one I am using now. However, now that the thought is that the conical tank has fuel in the back and coolant in the front, the amount of fuel would be reduced back to approximately 10L; i.e., 10 min run time. I have no reference / knowledge of the actual 'rules' for this competition / prize other than the run is 1K and it needed to be done in two opposing directions. I don't know how long between the back-and-forth trials was permissible. I also don't know how great of a distance / time was allowed to accelerate the boat before entering the timed kilometer. Perhaps, there was an opportunity to refuel between runs. If so 10 min of run time should be quite sufficient! But again - all conjectural! Greg

That would seem plausible - I didn't see how the top pulley could operate if there was a gear attached to the camshaft, nor how the coolant pipes would make their way through. But if this is the case, do you think it is possible that the big pully ?, has two groves that allow separate belts for the two small pulleys; i.e., one belt goes to the upper small pulley that could be associated with the coolant system and a separate belt going to the pulley that is off center and perhaps driving another system?

Craig - Are you suggesting that the smaller pinion gear is still behind ? in the picture below and the larger gear is still attached to the camshaft above; i.e., the gearing is exactly the same as when it was first installed on the hydro, except that a large belt drive pulley has been added between the pinion and the prop? Greg

I don't understand the gearing by the propeller. I believe the engine was a 2-stroke, so the gearing between the drive shaft and the cam shaft should be 1:1. Is the camshaft driven in the rear with a gear between the magneto and the engine? The gearing in the front of the No17 setup looks closer to 3:1 and then maybe reversed to 1:3 later.

The 'I don't know' and "Pipe end should go to bottom of radiator' are exhaust pipes! Craig - thanks again for helping me understand this machine Greg