Stuart Beam model steam engine c. 1770s onwards - Rik Thistle - FINISHED - 1:12 (est)

[DocRob]

Thank you for showing this interesting project with all the added explanations. It's great fun to follow and to me a bit like a fountain of youth. When I got my education as an engineer in my very late teens, I had to build a steam engine from scratch, only using existing plans. At the end the machines of all the apprentices where compared in quality for a verdict and for the lowest possible pressure the machine keep running with.
I may will build steam engines again in the future with teasing threads like yours.

 

Cheers Rob

[Rik Thistle]

Rob,

 

These static steam engine model kits are great fun. I'd highly recommend having a(nother) go 😉

 

Richard

 

 

[thibaultron]

If you decide to stick with grub screws (set screws in the USA), you can either punch a small brass disk, and place it in the bottom of the hole. or buy screws with a brass tip. I used the latter on the 12 inch metal lathe, that I was forced to sell a few years back.

[Rik Thistle]

Hi all,

 

Today I'll post some pictures and thoughts on the tapered Column manufacture.

 

The Column supports the Beam itself. I believe that full sized columns were made as hollow castings.

 

As with most of the larger parts for Stuart's model kits the column is supplied as a cast iron casting. It wasn't that rough around the edges regarding casting artefacts so less filing was required.

 

I firstly mounted the column in the lathe to clean up the base's outer face ie the surface the column sits upon. I didn't notice at the time but the tapered part was oval in section and about 1 mm off centre from the square ends, which meant that if I had finished machined the square ends I would have later found there was not enough meat on the column to keep it co-axial with the ends. I did notice this issue in time, as it was being set up on the mill but I needed to do a bit of backtracking since I had already drilled a centre hole on the lathe in one of the square ends - I managed to fudge my way through that.

 

Cleaning up and squaring the ends of the column on the mill.

 

Now to taper the column on the lathe - it is held in the 4 jaw at one end and a live centre at the other.  Again, because the lathe is on the smaller side of things, I needed to do the tapering in two steps since the cutting tool wasn't able to traverse the full length of the taper without clashing with the chuck. This meant the toolpost being reoriented along with the tool.

 

Tapering pretty much finished and with a reasonable finish. Emery cloth brought a nice sheen to it.

 

Profiling the curved lines of the ends of the column. I pecked away at this with the tool and then finished the curves off with a round file and Emery cloth.

 

OK, now to the fun stuff - adding flutes to the column 🙂 The Stuart drawing doesn't ask for this but Beam models I have seen with fluting look that bit better. 

 

It's been decades since I used a Rotary Table (RT) so forgive me if my set up isn't traditional. I needed to get the top surface of the taper to line up horizontal, to match the cutting path of the 3mm round end cutting tool as it passed by. To do this I tilted the RT upwards. Unfortunately the RT Tailstock (although it has height adjustment) couldn't quite get it's nose up that high...so I tilted it upwards. This meant that the conical end of the dead centre in the tailstock was not sitting fully home in the centre drilled hole on the end of the the column - I got away with that, almost. The obvious thing to do would have been to raise the height of the tailstock and then point it downwards ...20:20 hindsight!

 

I had calculated that I could make about 14 flutes at around 30 thou" (0.75mm) deep. It took 3 passes of the cutter to achieve the depth and then I indexed to the next flute position. All was going well until I was about 3/4 of the way around the column and I noticed the gap between the last two flutes was larger than expected. Something had changed....what I believe happened was that the tailstock dead centre had resettled into a different 'happy position' in the end of the column's centre. This was disappointing, but there was nothing I could do so, after a bit of recalculation of the indexing required, I continued on my way. My reasoning was, that from a distance and providing there were no Flute Inspectors around, no one would notice 😉

 

Below, the column sitting happily on the base. I think it looks acceptable.

 

That's it for today, so catch you soon,

 

Richard.

Edited July 31, 2022 by Rik Thistle

[Rik Thistle]

I'll make this post the second to last on the build.

 

Today I'm looking at the Conrod, and the Eccentric Sheave parts.

 

First the Connecting Rod (Conrod). It started life as a plain length of rectangular section mild steel. It would require turning and milling. As can be seen on the drawing extract below it required fishbelly'ing.

 

Below, held in the 4 jaw at one end, live centre at the other. Being turned down to size before it the fishbelly profile was added. This is basically a double taper that was then 'curved' using files and emery cloth.

 

And off to the mill for the end fixing regions to be shaped.

 

Below, the Crank which is pinned on to the Crankshaft and pivoted on the end of the Conrod. The Crank has a Phosphor Bronze bush that is a press fit in the end of the Conrod.

 

Below a part assembly showing  the Conrod connecting the Beam to Crankshaft.

 

 

 

Now on to the Eccentric Sheave parts. The Eccentric Sheave (Pt 44) is enclosed in the two halves of the Eccentric Strap (Pts 99 & 102). The sheave sits eccentrically on the crankshaft and is connected by a rod (Pt 96) to the valve mechanism. The sheave is held on to the crankshaft by a grubscrew (Pt 45) so can be adjusted to give the optimal valve timing.

 

The sheave is restrained within the strap by a raised ring of metal ...this sits in a corresponding groove in the strap. It was 1/32" x 1/32" in size, which I felt was a bit small but I did get it to work smoothly.

 

Another pic showing the boss that the crankshaft runs through, being machined.

 

Below, the sheave (which arrived as a single piece gun metal casting) being drilled for two clamping bolts. It would then be slpit into two halves.

 

One of the split halves having the inside clamping face cleaned up to size.

 

Now in the lathe, ready to be bored out to size (for the eccentric) and to have the 1/32" x 1/32" groove cut.

 

The finished eccentric assembly. L>R, the sheave inside the strap which is then bolted to the rod, and then the other end of the rod meets the valve mechanism.

 

Well, that's it for the parts manufacture. I've missed out quite a few parts but hopefully included enough to give a flavour of what the build entails and maybe encouraged some other curious folks to have a go at 'steam engines' ;-).

 

The final post will be painting, assembly and test.

 

Richard

 

 

 

Edited August 2, 2022 by Rik Thistle

[Egilman]

Yep eccentric timing is everything with these engines, a two cylinder version of this same engine is what powered the Stanley Steam Car to 150 MPH in 1906? (experimental version) at Daytona... when it was returning on it's certification run, it's flat bottom caught a gust of air off the beach and flipped, disintegrating itself and the driver... It had cleared the gates at over 160 on the return before it flipped.... At the time, it was the fastest mechanical device on the planet... Locos were doing 80, cars were lucky to get up to 30, and airplanes were barely cracking 70 mph....

 

When fine tuned, they were very powerful, and very high revving as well.... (depending on how they were engineered)

[Rik Thistle]

powered the Stanley Steam Car to 150 MPH

 

I hadn't heard of that...time for a read-up 😉

 

Thanks, Richard

[Egilman]

17 minutes ago, Rik Thistle said:

powered the Stanley Steam Car to 150 MPH

 

I hadn't heard of that...time for a read-up 😉

 

Thanks, Richard

My pleasure...

 

His record setting run of 127 mph was set a few days before the attempt which killed the driver, they knew it would go faster and they were trying... the 150 MPH wasn't recorded as a record cause of the failed second run, so according to the land speed record rules the 2nd attempt speed couldn't be certified... After that The Stanley company quit doing speed runs....

 

A damned shame if you ask me...

[mtaylor]

4 hours ago, Egilman said:

A damned shame if you ask me...

At that time, aerodynamics in motor vehicles was still in it's infancy, much as it was for aircraft.   Stanley may have gone onto greater things if the crash hadn't happened and if there were better safety mechanisms for the engine and boiler.  It didn't help that having a few boiler explosions in customer vehicles occurred also.

 

Getting a good head of steam up took awhile also which the IC engines didn't have.

[Egilman]

4 hours ago, mtaylor said:

At that time, aerodynamics in motor vehicles was still in it's infancy, much as it was for aircraft.

Yep and from time to time the same phenomenon occurred with various fast cars characterized by the nose of the car lifting off the track and the car doing the cartwheel fore and aft down the track.... in the '80s it happened in one spectacular crash during a Nascar race at 220+ MPH and a study was commissioned by Nasa with the aid of MIT to find out why...

The Reason?

The cars that were rising and flipping all had hard surface underbody pans, the idea was to reduce drag by having a smooth surface underneath, what they failed to realize was as they started slipstreaming the upper car bodies to reduce drag, they were beginning to take the shape of airfoils... The curved upper surface was serving to create lift like an airplane wing rather than push the car tighter to the surface... The cars wanted to fly....

 

CAN-AM realized this effect way back in the '50's and solved the problem by redesigning the car bodies into wedge shapes and adding downforce wings to the rear of the cars, Formula 1 followed suit soon after with wings fore and aft, upside down airfoils using the lifting properties of airfoils to keep the car glued to the track... They can actually drive on the roof upside down when at speed... (wind tunnel proven) The downforce created actually slows the car by about 20% from it's absolute top speed....

 

Why did it take till the '80's for the genuises of Nascar to follow suit? They drove wedge shaped cars through out the '70's...

 

Engineering can take some strange turns and sometimes basic principles get lost in the transition....

 

The Stanley Steam land speed racer had a flat plywood floor that closed up all the spaces, the shape of the body was like an upside down canoe, the flat under floor acted like a sail in the wind...

 

A deadly lesson missed back in the day....

Edited August 2, 2022 by Egilman

[Rik Thistle]

Mark, Egilman,

 

Interesting stuff, thanks.

 

downforce created actually slows the car by about 20%

I always wondered what the actual effect of downforce was on all-out speed. From the little I know about F1 design I believe that downforce pays dividends in cornering ability though.

 

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Motor_Carriage_Company  it would seem that the Stanley brothers eventually had an unbeatable competitor at 25% of the price and with instant start.

 

Richard

 

 

[Rik Thistle]

Final assembly, test and painting.

 

The engine was piece-meal assembled as finished parts became available. Once enough were available I connected a cordless drill to the end of the crankshaft and powered it up to get a general feel for how well it would (or wouldn't) function - all seemed OK.

 

Before painting I did a full assembly, had an initial attempt at setting the timing and then applied compressed air to the Steam-In port on the front of the Cylinder. There was little or no movement, so I tweaked the timing...now it moved hesitantly but required about 40 psi - far too much! After a day or more of further tweaking I could get the engine to run very smoothly at 1 psi, according to the pressure gauge. These gauges are not accurate on the first 15-20 % of their scales so I'll call it 5psi and a very satisfactory result.

 

Whilst I had been building the Beam engine I had been researching other's build and the paint schemes they chose.

 

Traditionally the full sized engines were painted mainly green with red highlights. I wasn't too keen on that scheme since, although accurate, I felt something a bit 'different' but still industrial looking was required. So I ended up choosing  PlastiKote Satin Black and Satin Warm Grey - results below.

 

The current wooden base is only temporary. I may add a Stuart models Engineering lathe (https://www.stuartmodels.com/product/stuart-engineering-lathe-unmachined/ )  so a larger piece of wood will be required. (Edit: On 2nd thoughts a lathe would be inappropriate for a Beam engine - it would be more suited for the 10V).

 

Close-up.

 

View from the other side.

 

Finally, my 6" high Stuart 10V with a 3" diameter flywheel next to the Beam engine with it's 7" flywheel.

 

It was a fun build with a good bit of puzzle solving helping keep the grey matter in shape. I started it in April and finished towards the end of July, doing a little bit most days.

 

I'm currently building the Governor for the Beam engine so will add a picture of that on the Beam when the time comes.

 

Thanks for all the Likes etc and the interesting side-discussions on related topics 😉

 

All for now,

 

Richard

Edited August 3, 2022 by Rik Thistle

[Ian_Grant]

I really enjoyed your build log, Richard.  Producing such a fine machine from rough castings is an accomplishment to be proud of!

 

My grandfather was a machinist in the Clyde shipyards and my dad did his toolmaking apprenticeship at Rolls Royce. I was fortunate in going to a high school with extensive shops all of which I loved but particularly machine shop. In grade 11 I announced that I too wanted to go into the field, but dad discouraged it, saying he wanted something "cleaner" for me. I ended up doing something else, with better pay, and ended up with wood as a hobby. When dad passed I kept all his old tools, like his 1-2-3 blocks, V-blocks, and other doodads he made but the only things I have occasion to use are the micrometers and calipers. My son has no interest or experience so I guess when I go they may end up in an antique shop. 😢

[Rik Thistle]

Hi Ian,

 

Thank you.

 

Yes the Clyde was at one time a hot bed of ship building and other industries. Yarrow still does work there, I believe ... I've been on a number of their frigates around the world, but not as a service person.

 

And a toolmaking apprenticeship at RR would be a feather in one's cap...still is.

 

cleaner

Back in the day 'engineering' may have been seen as a less promising career by those who didn't know it, but in my book it is the prosperous foundation on which most of a country is built. These days engineering, like most prefessions, relies heavily on computers etc .... but there is absolutely no substitute for hands-on experience to complement the 'higher-tech' skills. 

 

Richard

Edited August 2, 2022 by Rik Thistle

[Roger Pellett]

The old Stanley Steamers were “cool” but they were an engineering dead end.  Steam plants require skilled operators.  Control of feedwater is a particular problem.  For automobiles and trucks to appeal to the mass market they needed to be simple enough to be operated by those lacking an understanding of mechanical engineering. The internal combustion engine proved to be something that could be operated by almost anyone.

 

IMHO, much of the “high tech” stuff is not real engineering. Building bridges, ships, airplanes, power station, etc requires a broad balance of theoretical and hands on experience.  Sitting in a cubicle coding a computer does not compare with this.

 

Roger

Edited August 2, 2022 by Roger Pellett

[Jack12477]

2 hours ago, Roger Pellett said:

Sitting in a cubicle coding a computer does not compare with this.

 

I would respectfully disagree !

 

Try designing and coding software that allows software written for one architecture to execute correctly on a machine designed for a radically different architecture (Emulator) where proficiency in Binary (base 2), Octal (base 8) , Hexadecimal (base 16) and Decimal numbering systems was not only required but used interchangeably, or writing architecture verification software to check that every machine being built on the manufacturing floor executes every machine instruction in accordance with the architecture, or error recovery software that isolates a machine hardware failure so the mainframe continues operating (and your 24 hour banking app can access your account and your credit card transaction goes thru), or designing and coding the telecommunications software that runs the Internet and allows us to connect to MSW from anywhere in the world. 

 

Just a few of the things I did as a programmer over a 40 year career. That's why the US Dept of Labor changed our job titles from System Programmer to Software Engineer. And btw when I started programming there were no Computer Science or Computer Engineering degrees. My generation of programmers taught Academia how to create the academic curriculums for those degrees. And my "Smart phone" has more memory, more external storage and more computing power than the Mainframes systems I started programming.   

 

Historical Factoid : When Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, NASA had 5 specially designed IBM System/360 model 75 mainframes coupled in parallel with each other. A copy of the mission control software was loaded into each mainframe; mainframe A was primary, mainframe B was backup but was executing all calculations in parallel and in synch with A. If A failed, B took over as Primary and "shoulder tapped" C to do a "hot start" and take over as secondary, D and E were on standby to do the same. When Neil arrived back on earth, mainframe E was now primary and A was backup.

 

Which is more challenging, designing a bridge/airplane/ship/power station or designing and programming a computer system that would put a human on the moon and bring them safely home?

 

And No! I did not work for NASA. 

 

 

Edited August 2, 2022 by Jack12477

[Egilman]

1 hour ago, Jack12477 said:

Historical Factoid : When Neil Armstrong landed on the moon,

And the onboard computer systems of the Apollo Command Module and LEM combined were less powerful than a TI-80 hand held calculator...

 

I'm a member of several fora that go into detail on the software engineering that went into the Apollo missions... And, there is an actual simulator that is running the command software to this day....

 

The mechanical and structural engineering was a wonder, but without the software engineering they never would have got off the ground much less walked on the moon...

[Jack12477]

8 minutes ago, Egilman said:

And the onboard computer systems of the Apollo Command Module and LEM

And only accepted 2 character codes, command / operand

 

And the meantime to mainframe component mechanical/electrical failure was measured in hundreds of hours. Those mainframes had to run 24 hrs a day everyday till mission end, so they had to design a "fail-soft" mechanism to keep going. 

[Egilman]

12 minutes ago, Jack12477 said:

And the meantime to mainframe component mechanical/electrical failure was measured in hundreds of hours.

Yep they estimated it would take six mainframes to keep the system running through the entire mission, but they only had room for five.... So they kept a crew working on and monitoring them 24/7 My understanding was #5 had been running for almost 8 hours all by itself before they finally got #1 restarted as backup... They didn't have self testing routines back in those days, mechanical faults had to be tracked down one by one and from what I read, #2 was dead/kaput, #3 was going to take another 24 hours to get back up and #4 was 12 hours into figuring out what caused it to go down....

 

It was speculated that if the mission had run another two days they would have completely lost the mainframes.... Now that would have been a disaster...

Edited August 2, 2022 by Egilman

[Jack12477]

Yea, today an IBM System/Z mainframe can run 24/7/365 for something like a century, maybe longer - I forget,  without total mainframe failure. If a component does fail, the millecode/microcode and Operating System isolate the component, take it offline, dynamically reconfigure, and dynamically "phone home" with the FRU number of the part the Field Engineer needs to bring to fix the machine.  And all the while the system keeps right on running processing credit card transactions or whatever without skipping a beat. 

 

<ask how I know this> <no, don't ! >

 

Let's not hijack Rik's build log !

Edited August 2, 2022 by Jack12477

[Roger Pellett]

The overall effort to land a man on the moon was of course an engineering effort of the first order as was the Polaris submarine program, high performance jet aircraft, etc. Computers were important tools for the success of of these, and the people who programmed them were important members of the team.

 

I’m sorry but I don’t agree that designing the next cell phone AP measures up as an engineering accomplishment.

 

Roger

 

[Egilman]

42 minutes ago, Jack12477 said:

Let's not hijack Rik's build log !

True that!

Sorry Rik....

[Rik Thistle]

Roger, Egilman,

 

True that! Sorry Rik....

It's OK 🙂  It's the end of the build log anyway, and it's always interesting to read information about all branches of engineering/technology and reports from the coal face.

 

Richard

 

[DocRob]

A very enjoyable log to read, both, because you so well documented your build and the shown craftsmanship is impressive. Congratulations to your beautiful machine and thanks for the detour.

 

Cheers Rob

[wefalck]

I would like to echo this! And I could have done with a longer log

 

Steam-engines were presumably painted in darker colours (typically dark green, brown or red/vermillion, or even black) because one would not see oil-stains on them so easily.

[Rik Thistle]

Thanks Rob,

 

It was a bit of a retrospective build log since I already had all the pictures taken and the build complete. I'm now realising it is simpler posting each stage of a build as it happens, rather than trying to construct a timeline after the build is complete 😉

 

I did keep regular downloads of the pics in dated folders on my computer and written notes, but it's surprising how much I rely on using fresh memories to make sure I don't miss something when doing an actual 'live build' as opposed to this build.

 

regards,

 

Richard

 

Edit: And thanks Wefalck ...I could have easily doubled the length of the build, but at the back of mind always was 'remember, this is a model ship building forum' so didn't want to overdo it.

 

Good point about the darker colours. Also, I think I read somewhere that 'green' was the more easily available colour in those days, for what ever reason.

 

Edited August 3, 2022 by Rik Thistle

[Rik Thistle]

Wefalck got me thinking and then reading about paint colours for machinery.

 

It may be that 19th century Beam engines were originally painted black, and as time went by and new colours became available (as well as the machinery needing a fresh coat due to wear) other colours were painted over the original black.

 

This American forum thread has a number of interesting opinions on the subject ...

'Any idea of original factory colors of machines?' - https://www.practicalmachinist.com/forum/threads/any-idea-of-original-factory-colors-of-machines.279746/

 

Extract - The development of paints had some bearing on the colors machine tools were painted. In the late 1800's-early 1900's, a lot of paint was hand mixed by the person doing the painting. Linseed oil, Japan drier, and a pigment, perhaps thinned with turpentine. House paint was pigmented with white lead. Black paint got lamp black for pigment. Not too many color choices, as it were. Colors varied slightly from one batch of paint to the next. Black was predictable, while gray was going to vary from one batch to the next. I think that battleship gray came into use when it became commercially available in consistent color from one batch to the next. Battleship gray probably came into use as it made for a lighter shop in an era when shops were notoriously dark. Relying on natural light filtered through a jungle of belts, with dirty window panes and minimal artificial lighting, and dirt and grunge from the lineshafting (leather particles mixed with oil from the lineshaft hanger boxes got all over the shop), and black machine tools, the shops were dark places. Battleship gray paint had a psychological edge to it, as it was the era of the Dreadnought or the heavy battleships. I am guessing the gray paint took over some time around WWI.

 

Richard

[wefalck]

Well, now you have the link to maritime subjects   In fact, quite a few colours i.e. pigments were available, sometimes since antiquity, but cost variied considerable.

 

Lamp-black was among the cheapest, easy to produce and intensive (meaning the amount of pigment needed to achieve a good coverage) pigments. Earth colours (e.g. the various types of ochres, ranging from pale yellow to a blueish red) were also cheap. White lead is/was also cheap and had a good intensity. Other lead oxides (menninge) were used extensively as rust protection. Chalk or lime is even cheaper, but chemical reasons cannto be worked into oil-paints. However, it was intensively used as white-wash, as lime solutions also have anti-microbial properties (not know as such at the time, but white-washed environments where 'healthier', hence its intensive use on shipboard, hospitals, private houses etc.).

 

I have been researching paints for (German) later 19th century warships quite bit, and it seems that well to the end of that century, paints were delivered as their components to the ships, that is the pigments, the binder (oil), and thinners separately. Paints were mixed up by weight and volume of the ingredients on the spot and would not have had a long shelf-life. Certain paints, however, such as anti-fouling paints, became commercially available from the later 1860s onwards. This means that the actual shades of 'battleship'-grey or yellow for masts and funnels could vary from ship to ship and even across a ship. Grey for warships became gradually the rule from the mid 1890s on, but the greys of the different navies differed a lot.

 

Machine tools were almost always painted black until the end of the 19th century, particularly the bigger ones. Then, indeed, grey became more common to light up dark workshop and to see better what happens. Precision machinery then often became painted dark green or other shades of green. In Germany, for instance, the standard colour became 'Reseda-green' in around the 1930s, almost until today. Some (precision machine tool) manufacturers, e.g. Schaublin, Bergeon etc., choose specific standardised colours, such as blue or pale yellow.

[Rik Thistle]

wefalck,

 

Thank you for the detailed insight. It's an interesting subject in it's own right.

 

I remember the London workshop I did my training in during the 1970s having a 'paint weekend' where all the machines were to be given a fresh coat of paint - volunteers required. There was some debate leading up to this weekend regarding sourcing the paint and colour choice. It had been a number of years since they were last painted so availability and fashions had changed.

 

IIRC, we ended up using a Sky Blue paint with a hint of green in it  ... this may have been similar to the Sea Foam Green referred to in the above link. After thoroughly cleaning the machines down and disassembling some, a (very ) thick coat was applied.

 

Richard

 

[javajohn]

This was a fascinating log, Richard. It brings back fond memories of my youth in the 60's when my dad bought a steam engine kit that we built together.

 

All the talk about engineering in the 60's also brings back memories of when my dad bought a surplus Collins shortwave receiver that was used by the military in the 50's (He worked for Collins Radio). It was a rack about 6 feet high. The crystals for the two oscillators were heated in ovens that kept the temperature to +/- 0.1 degrees C.  The engineering accuracy of the entire system, especially the tuning coils and capacitors allowed for an accurate mechanical digital readout down to, if I remember correctly, 100Hz.

 

John