Falls of Clyde 1878 by GAW - FINISHED - scale 1:96 - iron 40-frame hull center cross-section

[michaelpsutton2]

your metal work is just obscenely good

[GAW]

For those interested in the Falls of Clyde as a subject, my third model of it - the fully detailed Water Line model, may find my web site of interest for October, it being the start of it as my ‘Current Project’ - see also ‘News & Comments’ for more details on the subject < http://www.geraldwingrove.com/Home_Page./Home_Page.html >

[druxey]

Very nice, Gerald!

[GAW]

Thank you folks, pleased to have your interest.

[GAW]

November 2018

Fig-141 The midship House frame work of angle iron - brass - is first tinned then located to the individual positions, one at a time, and heated with he carbon rod to melt the soft solder to attached it in place.  Note that paper wrapped around the carbon rod to insulate it from the side of the deck house.  This was a problem in the early stages, as contact with the rod will cause it to heat up and melt anything close by.  But a small sheet of paper rapped around it and held in place with Cellotape was all that was needed to solve the problem.

[GAW]

Fig-142 The completed Midship house in place with Jock the riveter there to check the scale.

[GAW]

Fig-143 All is now complete excepting for the ships Bilge Pumps. Note the two elongated holes in the deck plating, as an indication of where they will eventually be located.

[GAW]

Fig-144 A photo showing the same holes in the deck plating of the actual full size Falls of Clyde.  The Bilge Pumps were removed in 1912, when she was fitted out with internal tanks, as a sailing oil tanker, but luckily the deck plates were left intact to indicate the type of pumps originally fitted - There are no photographs of what these original pumps looked like, and until I manages to dig up the original data, with the help of the staff of the University of Glasgow Archive department, no one had any ideas about them, other than they must have been quite unusual.  I have visited almost all of the old Windjammers that still sail the seas, and a lot of those tied up as Museum ships, and in all cases, the elongated holes to take the Bilge Pumps have been positioned fore and aft, and not across the deck.  Thus stated a very interesting search - find and reconstruction - but for next month.

[michaelpsutton2]

Your machine work is amazing. I do not think I have seen you equal working in metals on this site. Do you know where there are more complete plans for this vessel. The Historic American Engineering Record one are rather incomplete.

[BANYAN]

Exceptional work, your metal smithing never fails to amaze me.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Valeriy V]

I enjoyed watching your process. Shocked by your skill !! 

Hope to see  next masterpieces.

[GAW]

On 10/30/2018 at 10:14 PM, michaelpsutton2 said:

Your machine work is amazing. I do not think I have seen you equal working in metals on this site. Do you know where there are more complete plans for this vessel. The Historic American Engineering Record one are rather incomplete.

There are no complete plans available that I know of for the Falls of Clyde, just an odd sheet here and there, I did have ideas many years ago to draft a set and write a book on her history and the building of the models - time will tell if I ever get around to it - thanks for your interest - do not forget that the building of the third and final waterline model, is the Current Project here < www.wworkshop.net > Happy modelling.

[Sailor1234567890]

Saw today in the National (Scottish newspaper) that there's a contract to bring Falls of Clyde home to the Clyde to be refurbished and sent to sea as a green cargo carrier, sail training vessel, plastic collection and processing plant..... There's hope for her after all. :)

 

 

[GAW]

There is always hope Sailor1234567890, the latest is that she will be home in March 2019 - If you wish to help save the old lady monetarily or otherwise, drop a line to < savefallsofclyde@gmail.com > they will be pleased to hear from you - Remember she will be 140 years old on the 12th of December -too good to lose at this late hour, she must be saved and brought back to her birth place in Glasgow and not sunk as a divers wreck off Honolulu.

For those interested in my third and final model of her, I have here included a shot of progress todate - this is now being covered as the ‘Current Project’ on my web site, and may be covered here in further detail, if requested after this one finishes - it shows her as originally built from the scant details still with us.

[GAW]

Fig-145 The Bilge Pumps shown here are those of the Star of India, and are typical of all that I have ever seen and photographed, note that the elongated shape of the two pumps is fore and aft, which again is typical of those fitted to the Windjammers of the late 1800s.  Note also that there are just two pistons or rather pumps on a single crankshaft and that probably forged in the blacksmiths shop.  If so made, it would have been very difficult to forge it to take 4 pumps in the restrictive space between the Fife Rails and between the mast and the deck house that is the usual location of the Bilge Pumps.  In later times, the pumps were made as double acting, but at this date I do not think that it was so.

 

The Falls of Clyde was the first of the Falls Line fleet of iron four masted ships and barques built on the Clyde, and this just three years after the very first of the new breed, this being the County of Peebles, so we are in a period of innovation , a new concept of ship design to compete with the ever advancing Steam Ship. So we can expect the pumps to be of advanced design, and indeed they were.  Now began the search, luckily the original costs book for Hull-17 (Falls of Clyde) is still with us, and this lists the Bilge Pumps as manufactured and supplied by R.C. Wallace & Co with an address as Glasgow.  Further research in the Post-Office Annual Glasgow Directory for 1878/79 identified the company with an actual address, yet further research revealed two more companies associated with the pumps R.C.Wallace & Sons, and Wallace and Crawford, in fact the Wallace and the Crawford families were closely involved with each other way back in history, and that his initials R. C. stands for Robert Crawford Wallace. 

[GAW]

Fig-146  In 1869 Wallace & Crawford were issued with Patent 2763 for the invention of “improvements is pumps and mechanism ……….”, further research turned up a copy of the original drawings part of which is shown here.  Basically this consisted of four pumps side by side, and operated by cams in place of a crankshaft.  One needs to understand the problems associated with pumps in general.  What in a petrol engine is the piston, in the pump is a cup with a valve in the centre and has to remain vertical in the cylinder in it’s movement.  In a piston engine with a crank shaft, there is a pivot in the piston so that the connecting rod can move side to side as the crank shafts turns.  This is not possible in a pump as the valve takes the place of the pivot pin in the piston, and several ways were devised in the pumps of the period to maintain the vertical moment of the cup, while allowing the connecting rod to pivot according to the crankshaft. It would appear that there were two aims with the new pump design, the first was to have four pumps in the same space as the two, and find a better way of maintaining the vertical movement of the cup and valve.

In the main draft we have a series of pivoted arms and small cams to lift the cup and valve, but on close examination, they would only work to lift the cup, and I cannot see how it could force the cup back down.

[Landrotten Highlander]

Hi GAW,

I have been quielty following this blog and have learned a great deal - and not just with regards to ships.

I think a blog on your third version on here could be a good way of keeping this information alive and spread to as many people as possible, so please, if you feel up to it create a log for your third copy?

Slainte ghu mhath

[GAW]

Fig-147  However this draft was also included, almost as an afterthought, as this was the only view shown, while there were three views shown of the extended arm arrangement.  The original notes with the draft does not appear to have survived so it was a case of working things out for ones self and why the inverted heart shape?

[GAW]

Fig-148 After some experimentation with the cardboard cut out and drawing pins as pivot points, I eventually got the gist of what it was all about, and actually made a card board model of the mechanism that would move the connecting rod vertically up and down, with no sideways movement at all.  The next question was how to make it in metal, as this was precision engineering to a very high order, in fact so high that I needed a CNC machine to solve the problems - which begs the question how did they make this in 1878 - I still do not have the answer to that one.  Perhaps when we see the complete mechanism working, some one will come up with an answer to that one as well.

[druxey]

Well solved, Gerald! Victorian engineering was impressive; the railway engines and items such as Babbage's test portion of his Difference Engine. Then the Holtzapfel engraving machines as well.

[wefalck]

Interesting design and mechanically quite complex for something installed on the deck of a ship. The design seems to be somehow inspired by the steam-pump design for fire-engines, which had to be very compact. The cross-head there slides in frame perpendicular to the piston rod. I wondering whether the elaborate cams drive two-stage pumps: suction pumps become very ineffective say above 7 m or so; by dividing the height over which the water is to be lifted into two stages, you can achieve greater lifting heights. The cams would help timing the movements of the pistons. Just some wild ideas ...

[GAW]

January 2019

Wishing you all a happy, healthy & wealthy 2019, may it exceed your wildest dreams.

------------

Fig-149 - In the original drafts for the pump, large cross arms are shown at the top, and also atop the inverted heart shape cam.  Checking out the draft for a scale, it became obvious that it was in fact not drawn to scale, however the arms if incorporated would not fit the space available for the Bilge Pumps on any scale.  It soon became clear that with the heart shaped cam, the top arm was superfluous and not needed at all, but how come that shape for the cam.  With a CAD package and my trusty Mac, it did not take long to discover the secret, just by plotting the movement of the parts, when rotated at different points, and there it was the heart shaped cam.  I became so fascinated with it, that I decided there and then to make two models of the pump - one at 96th scale for the Falls of Clyde model and one at 1/4” to the foot, as a working mechanism - not I might say as a working pump, but just to show/see how the cams worked in practice.

[GAW]

Fig-150 - I photocopied the drafts and printed them to a reasonable scale size, using the hight of the Fife Rail as the most logical starting point.  This would determine the diameter of the fly wheel, and the hight of the main drive shaft.  This in turn would determine the space between that and the deck, to be divided between the hight of the pump case and the maximum size of the cam.  The size of the cam would then determine the maximum possible movement of the pump piston/cup. With these now determined a few sketches were made with dimensions and diameters noted and the parts turned up for the two pumps. Here can be seen the basic parts directly from the lathe.

[GAW]

Fig-151 - Here are shown most of the parts with the second stage machining, the milling of the flats, and the pump parts are now starting to take form.

[GAW]

Fig-152 - It soon became apparent that with cams of this size that even with my ingenuity I could see no way of making them as accurately as would be required to actually work - Step forward good friend Jeff and his CNC milling machine.  I showed him how I had plotted the shape of the cam, and he soon had this in 3 dimensions in his computer program for the machine to follow - and follow it did to produce a working set of cams in no time at all, such is modern technology - how they would have loved this in in 1878  

 

It is interesting to note that the working dimensions allow for no inaccuracies whatsoever in the shape of the cam - if it is right it will work - if not, it will not work.  Now how they produced such a part in 1878 in quantity - four per pump is still a mystery to me, particularly as it would not have been cast or stamped in iron or steel, because of the sea water corrosion.  Working inside the cam would need to be two free running rollers, any interference to these such as corrosion would  have made the pump inoperable.  My only surmise would be that a master pattern for the cam was hand made in iron and used as a hot stamp in something like bronze to form the cams.  But the Victorian engineers were masters at overcoming supposedly insurmountable problems, this being just one of them.

[wefalck]

Very nice piece of reverse-(or retro- ?)engineering 👍

[GAW]

Thank you wefalck - For those interested, the contact details of Jeff are - jeffnpotter@telefonica.net, we are both located in sunny Spain.

[druxey]

A very happy and healthy New Year to you, Gerald! Neat reconstruction work - and in miniature, yet.

[michael mott]

I always find your thoughts and work to be very inspiring Gerald.

 

A happy and prosperous new year to you and your family.

 

Michael

[BANYAN]

Hi Gerald, a happy New Year to you and your family.

Thanks for the pointer to your website.  As has been commented but much more experienced modellers, I also find your work inspirational.  Whenever I run into a metalsmithing 'roadblock' I always return to your work and see what is achievable - that usually gets me motivated, not that I am anywhere near your skill level.

 

cheers

 

Pat

Edited January 1, 2019 by BANYAN