Heroine 1838 by ggrieco - FINISHED - Scale 1:24 - Western River Steamboat as she appeared before hitting a snag in the Red River

[mtaylor]

<silently says "wow" and shakes my head>  

[Landlocked123]

Glenn,

 

The level of both your metal work and wood work is exemplary!!!!!!!! You have truly elevated yourself to level that only a handful of the craftsmen on MSW have risen to (you all know who they are!).

It's work such as yours which pushes all of us to strive harder. After all, "a man's reach should exceed his grasp".

Thank you.

 

Best,

John

Edited February 6, 2016 by Landlocked123

[ggrieco]

Thanks everybody,

 

Looking around this website and seeing all the incredible craftsmanship and beautiful models has pushed me to strive a little harder.  I feel like I have a lot of catching up to do with so many of the skills you have.  Every time I see your work I am awed and inspired!

 

Glenn

[druxey]

We could say the same of you, Glenn!

[captainbob]

Thanks everybody,

 

Looking around this website and seeing all the incredible craftsmanship and beautiful models has pushed me to strive a little harder.  I feel like I have a lot of catching up to do with so many of the skills you have.  Every time I see your work I am awed and inspired!

 

Glenn

 

Glenn, you can count yourself right in there with the best of them. Your work inspires us.

 

Bob

Edited February 7, 2016 by Cap'n'Bob

[dvm27]

We all feel incredibly lucky that you decided to display your work here.  I assume you do your own drafting for your CNC parts. Could you give us a sense of how long it takes to design the fly wheel in CAD and how long it takes to CNC produce them?

Edited February 7, 2016 by dvm27

[ggrieco]

Hello Greg,

 

It has been a while since I did the AutoCAD drawings of the flywheel and I don't remember exactly but, it probably took about a week to take the measurements and reconstruct the flywheel flange,shaft,spokes and rim assembly. Once I have the 3D part drawing I can usually draw the tool path for the part in less than an hour. I used a 1/16 inch end mill to machine the rim segments. These small bits break easily so I had to take my time with the cut. I machined the rims three at a time which took exactly 58 minutes per three with about 1 minute to jog and re-zero the mill between batches. I got a good deal on 3/32 inch end mills some time ago and I try to use them with most of my milling. i can run them considerably faster. The cam frame halves took about 5 minutes each to mill. The spokes were milled 2 at a time in about 5 minutes.

[ggrieco]

Continuing with the flywheels..

 

probably one of the most frustrating soldering jobs I've had to do.  All sixteen pieces of the flywheel rim had to be positioned to ensure the final shape.  To add to the problem, since the segments were only machined on one face, the internal stresses in the brass cause each piece to bend slightly out of flat. I had to use lots of alligator clips to hold everything together but there was still some movement when it was heated.

Wheel 1 of 4.

 

 

I've been looking forward to building the boilers.  The machining is going to take a while so I decided to jump ahead and let the mill get started while i struggle with the remaining three flywheels.

 

 

Rectangular pieces are backing for the recessed panels in the legs and sides of the boiler front.

 

 

Backing pieces in place.

[Mirabell61]

wonderful machining work Glenn,

 

love those metal parts and how the come together

 

Nils

[wyz]

Outstanding metal work Glenn!

 

Tom

[captainbob]

The boiler support frame looks great.

 

Bob

[druxey]

I wonder if the builders of the original flywheels had the same issues with the castings. You certainly had a challenge keeping 16 pieces under control! However, the end result looks terrific. I hope the other three wheels are less hassle for you.

[Cathead]

Question:

 

I notice on the flywheel plans that the spokes are mirror-image; there are eight spokes that line up perfectly as if there were just four that magically went all the way through. 

 

Whereas on numerous actual paddle wheels I've seen, there are odd numbers of spokes (13 on Bertrand if I recall correctly). Any idea, from an engineering perspective, how or why designers settled on the number and orientation of spokes for flywheels or paddlewheels?

 

Also, at the level of accuracy you're achieving, I'm now expecting those boilers to work by the time you're done!

[mtaylor]

Great looking flywheel.  I'm assuming those are bolt holes...or..?   Would putting small bolts and nuts through before the solder work make things easier?  Still, that appears to be one tough soldering project.

[Jim Lad]

Yet more delightful work, Glenn!

 

John

[ggrieco]

Thanks everybody,

 

I really appreciate your comments and likes.

 

 

Druxey, when we reassembled the original, we didn't have much trouble with distortion but we did realize the the Huge differences in thicknesses between the rim segments. Some of the segments definitely stood proud of adjacent segments. I wonder if there was a lot of difference in the shrinkage of different casts.

 

Cathead, that is a good question! Heroine had 12 spokes per flange but I recall seeing paddle wheels with more. I would love to know the motivation as well. I've seen some smaller flywheels on stationary engines with six or five. I'm sure. In those situations it was just dependent on size. If you find any good reasoning, I'd love to hear it.

 

Mark, yes, they are bolt holes and your idea would work well. The through holes are only 1/32 of an inch (the original bolts were 3/4inch). I looked into purchasing a smaller size from microfasteners.com but after seeing the price for 400 of them I decided to try to rivet the holes instead. I actually made one attempt to rivet inside the pockets and gave up opting for lots of alligator clamps instead. I think this is a good time to point out they unusual but ingenious way the rims were actually bolted together. There were actually two different castings for the rims. They were exactly the same but the inner rims had square pockets and the outer had round pockets. The bolts had long hexagonal heads that went in from the outside round pockets and were fastened on the inside with square nuts that fit fairly snugly into the square pockets. It is interesting because the tool used to tighten the bolts was an early socket wrench. I hope this description makes sense.

 

Glenn

Edited February 14, 2016 by ggrieco

[mtaylor]

Number of spokes would seem, from where I sit, to be a designer's choice.  If they were offset (not evenly spaced) then that would be significant.  Some of the early IC engines had flywheels that were not balanced in order to counterbalance the piston(s). On the rail engines, the wheels often had a balancer attached to the drive wheels.  I wonder, were the spokes on these all the same size (diameter)?

[ggrieco]

Unfortunately we have very few examples to go on. We know Heroine's flywheels were at least symmetrical with the only possibility of being out of balance might have been from inconsistent casting of the individual segments. I think they were intended to be fairly balanced. It doesn't appear that the flywheel was used for long on western river boats and there is only the mention of them with no design descriptions. I have a feeling there is much to learn from stationary engines of the early 19th century but I haven't had a chance to do the research.

[ggrieco]

Hello everybody,

 

I usually post my progress on Saturday morning but tomorrow we have a big family get-together for my mother's birthday tomorrow which will probably keep me away from the computer for most of the day so I decided post these photos today instead.

The flywheels are going together.  Unfortunately I wasn't able to complete the port wheel before the weekend.  I've also made a little more progress with the boiler front.

 

Firebox doors.  Except for two pieces of the firebox opening that suggest an arched door, we have little to go on for the design of the doors so I have kept them fairly simple.

 

 

 

 

Too many pieces to solder at once.  I decided to leave the panel inserts off until after blackening and will epoxy them from behind.

 

 

Test fit of the starboard flywheel spokes.

 

Completed starboard flywheel.

 

Starting on the port flywheel.

 

Starboard view of starboard flywheel.

 

View from port side.

[Jim Lad]

I think I've run out of superlatives!

 

John

[Canute]

That is some wonderful looking work.

[GLakie]

I agree with every other adjective that the other guys have been using Glenn. Just ran across this build and found your craftsmanship and attention to detail, just outstanding.  If you don't mind, I'll park a barrel up in the bleachers here and keep on admiring your work. 

 

Cheers 

[druxey]

Beautiful work, as ever. Thanks for the early treat on Friday instead of Saturday! Enjoy your family weekend.

 

Still working on the assumption of quadruple boilers?

Edited February 20, 2016 by druxey

[ggrieco]

Thanks John, Ken, George and druxey,

 

 

Yes druxey, I'm more confident now that we have four boilers. I've seen so many references to Western river steamboats having two or three boilers but then we found sources pointing to early riverboats having four or five boilers. We've recently discovered that on the earlier vessels, single flue boilers were common but not very efficient. By the end of the 1830s, two flue boilers were becoming the norm. The increased efficiency allowed fewer boilers. I think most references to boilers are from the 1840s and later and don't consider the single flue boilers. Adam Kane's thesis on steamboat machinery includes an interesting table in the appendix that gives the engine and boiler specifications for several early steamers. It is interesting because instead of referring to number of boilers, it refers to number of flues. Although there is some difference in the size of the flues, four boilers with one flue each produces about the same volume of steam as two boilers with two flues each. Kevin has put together a list of several early riverboats that he has researched in government documents and it appears that most of the early boats had four boilers or more. Finally, the most convincing piece of evidence is the contract for the Yellowstone. A single centerline engine identical in size to Heroine's, similar sized flywheel and stroke and from the same period. The contract calls for four boilers 36 inches in diameter and 16 feet long. We know heroine's boilers were 34 inches in diameter and the sixteen foot length fits perfectly between two sets of doubled deck beams. I was really at a loss before but I feel pretty sure that we have it right now.

 

Glenn

[druxey]

That sounds very convincing, Glenn. The discussion and process of arriving at this conclusion I found most interesting.

[albert]

Fantastic work.

[Cathead]

Great explanation, Glenn. I'm quite happy to be refuted so convincingly! It certainly makes Heroine an even more special "transitional form" in the evolution of river boats.

[michael mott]

Stunning workmanship on the flywheels, I am curious about the difference with the fabrication of the boiler wall and the doors, I see that you build the doors as solid integral pieces, is this because of a definitive lack of actual evidence for their design or to just act as representative elements?

 

Michael

[ggrieco]

Thanks druxey, albert, Cathead and Michael,

 

 

 

Yes Michael, I am simplifying the doors a little.  In the beginning, I had high hopes to make hinged doors with a working latch and one door was going to be open showing the fire grates inside the firebox.  I wish I had more to go on but on these early boilers the doors would have been fairly simple.  Either plate with a riveted hinge or cast with integral hinge.  I went with a representation of the second.  On later boilers you see more substantial doors with draft holes and internal baffles but they too late for Heroine.   Other than these considerations,  It is pretty much as you said, a representative element.  I'm hoping that once they are blackened and partially obscured by the boiler breechings and other structures, the lack of details will be forgiven and they will provide a believable appearance.

[ggrieco]

I've spent most of the week finishing the deck planking on the second m0del and trying to catch up on it's machinery.  I was able to assemble the flywheel pair for the first.

 

Unfortunately, I had to cut off the bottom of the flywheels to fit in the waterline model. 

 

Fixture to hold wheel in place while the lower support is glued in place.

 

 

Wheel glued to support.  I used wood glue on the spokes and epoxy on the rim.

 

Lining up the two wheels.

 

Completed wheels in place.