Santos Dumont No. 18 Hydroplane 1907 by Greg Davis - Scale 1:16

[Jim Lad]

Excellent! Now you're really cooking with gas!

 

John

[Wawona59]

Fantastic Greg!  I learned a lot following your techniques for making the different sized hoops.  Looks like you've got a Alberto Santos-Dumond theme going.  You might enjoy the book "Wings of Madness" about Dumont and some of his projects and eccentricities, like his 8ft tall dining table so guests could dine in the sky.  I'll be following your project with great interest.

 

John  

[AON]

"Got up the nerve"

I know the feeling well.... and also the satisfaction and surprise when it actually works  .

[Greg Davis]

19 hours ago, Wawona59 said:

Fantastic Greg!  I learned a lot following your techniques for making the different sized hoops.  Looks like you've got a Alberto Santos-Dumond theme going.  You might enjoy the book "Wings of Madness" about Dumont and some of his projects and eccentricities, like his 8ft tall dining table so guests could dine in the sky.  I'll be following your project with great interest.

 

John  

John -

I'm glad that you are interested in the project and I really appreciate your support.

 

Noting your list of builds (and location) I have a Slo-Mo-Shun kit waiting in the wings - last year I was out to Seattle to visit my son and we went to the Hydroplane Museum in Kent to see some of the classic hydroplanes and then saw Slo-Mo-Shun IV in the museum near Lake Union in Seattle. Such a cool boat!

 

I have obtained and read the book "Wings of Madness" as part of the background research for this project. It is certainly an entertaining book and I learned a good deal from it; however, I was really disappointed when noting that the author did not seam to understand that the No 18 Hydroplane was actually a watercraft / boat as opposed to an aircraft that could take off / land on water.

 

Greg

[Greg Davis]

I now have one nacelle nearly done - it still needs the cross bracing wires to be added.

Constructing the nacelle has been more work than expected. The main pontoon was quite a bit easier for me, probably due to the larger size of the hoops. Nevertheless, progress is being made; hopefully the second nacelle will be easier given the experience of making the first one. After I had added the hoops I didn't like the envelope of the nacelle. The middle hoop was a little too small in diameter to present a nice outline. I made a set of middle hoops, increasing the diameter by 1.5mm, and now the shape looks good to me. 

 

When making the new set of hoops today, I tried out an alternate method for making a hoop. This time, on a lathe,  I turned the hoop out of a solid piece of wood. First the exterior diameter was turned and then the interior was cut out before parting off the hoops. This method doesn't take much time at all to make very well dimensioned hoops that seem quite strong. The resulting hoops don't look bad at all, but I think that the laid up ones look better due to the grain direction and are probably closer to the way Santos-Dumont had manufactured the ones for his boat.

[Greg Davis]

The second nacelle has been going together quite well. Waiting for tip filler blocks to dry so that I can form the two ends of the second nacelle. After that the cross-bracing will go in both.

Got a new shop addition also - a larger stand alone router table. Still need to add a safety switch before using. Looking forward to using it for case fabrication among other projects!

[Greg Davis]

Here are the nacelles by the pontoon.

Presently deciding if I should build the engine support / pylon next or if I should work on the nacelle / pontoon attachments.

[Greg Davis]

Decided to give a go on the hydrofoils today. I cut a piece of boxwood 1/4" thick, a bit wider than the chord (~ 2cm), and about 2 feet long. The main hydrofoil is about 15" long the rear one about 4". After marking the foil shape on one end of the slat, I repeatedly ran it across my table saw to 'mill' the basic shape. The extra width of the slat allows the slat to sit flat on the table saw for this operation. Now I will sand the final foil shape, except for the leading and trailing edges - they will be shaped after parting the mostly formed hydrofoil from the extra material. I hope this works!

[Greg Davis]

A couple of Dremel flap sanders later and some finish sanding has resulted in some good looking hydrofoils. Here is a mock up with the pontoon and nacelles. Now I really need to do some metal work!

[KeithAug]

All looking very good Greg. I remember some years ago viewing an early hydrofoil developed by Alexander Graham Bell in Baddeck Nova Scotia. Its wasn't quite as elegant as your replica but would make an interesting model. I particularly liked the Venetian Blinds foils. 

[Greg Davis]

4 hours ago, KeithAug said:

All looking very good Greg. I remember some years ago viewing an early hydrofoil developed by Alexander Graham Bell in Baddeck Nova Scotia. Its wasn't quite as elegant as your replica but would make an interesting model. I particularly liked the Venetian Blinds foils. 

That is quite an 'interesting' looking machine! I just watched a couple of videos of it on the water - amazing!

 

thanks

 

Greg

[Jim Lad]

Your speedster is coming together very well, mate!

 

John

[Greg Davis]

I know its been a long break, but I have started up again. This time I am working on the V-16 engine. During the break, I spent quite a bit of time trying to learn more about the Antoinette V-16 that powered the No. 18 hydroplane.  Unfortunately, like plans to the hydroplane, it seems that plans / exact dimensions for the engines built by Levasseur no longer exist. There are a number of photographs of their engines and some specimens still exist. It also is the case that the engine designs were in a nearly permanent state of flux, with modifications being done often. Of course, there is a lot of commonality at the same time. So what I end up with will be more of a 'representation' of the power plant as opposed to an accurate scale model of it. I do hope that I capture the prominent elements so there is no question as to what it is a representation of!

 

When I first considered building this model, I planned on taking two of the Model Airways 14-bis Antoinette v8 engine kits and building a V-16 from them. This seemed sensible since the V-16's were basically concatenations of two v-8's. After a while, I thought that I could craft an engine from scratch - milling the block from aluminum, etc. I've now come back to my senses and have committed to working from the two kits I have. Today, I actually made the first step: sections from each need to be removed in-order to get the correct cylinder spacing. In a zig-zag pattern, I  needed to mill 0.1" from the front of one piece and the same amount from the back of the other. 

The two pieces need a little fine tuning, but match up pretty well already:

The lettering will get removed and something should be done about the mounting brackets! Hopefully (more) regular progress will be made now.

[Jim Lad]

Nice to see work progressing, Greg.

 

John

[Greg Davis]

I cleaned up the casting a bit - flattened the bottoms, milled off the lettering and mounting brackets:

The two pieces are epoxied together. Suitable mounting brackets will be added back in - I think I can make them out of square tubing. I'm considering notching the material into these casting before adding the semi-cylindrical bottom castings. Then the top part of the square tubing can be removed, leaving mounting brackets with a triangular profile.

 

 

[Greg Davis]

Today an experiment with the cylinder casing / water jacket. I think the result is promising:

I wondered if I could mill out the water jacket portion of the casting and then replace it with brass to get a look closer to:

The exhaust pipe of the casting was removed on purpose - for the hydroplane the exhaust pipes go down instead of up. The gas intake manifold was removed errantly. Fortunately, I had an extra casting from when I made the Santos-Dumont 14bis airplane. Now I have 16 castings left and no room for mishaps like this! 

 

For the 'keepers', the bolt ring at the bottom will be blackened and the heads will be polished after I remove as much seam flash as I can. All the brass water jackets will be cut at the same time to ensure they are all the same height. (The experimental one was a quick cut off and is clearly to short.) I plan on making the exhaust pipes from brass tubing and the fuel system from copper. I'll also try to add in the springs / value lifter rocker assemblies. That will probably be the limit for me in terms of detail! Then the cooling system will be attended to.

[AON]

Would you consider using brass metallic paint?

Edited 7 hours ago by AON

[Greg Davis]

1 hour ago, AON said:

Would you consider using brass metallic paint?

It would be a safer alternative! This is the set of cylinder assemblies from my 14bis model - where I used brass metallic paint. 

I also used copper paint for the plumbing and black for the exhaust pipes. The final result was like this:

Looking at it again, I don't think it looks to bad! Still don't like the engine mounting brackets, but those have been removed and are being replaced for the V16. I had just been thinking that maybe it could be improved upon. But now that you have me thinking more about it, perhaps a more basic approach will be just fine as there is no way I'm going to be able to model a vast amount of the engine detail:

These incredible pictures were provided to me by the highly regarded Santos-Dumont historian Henrique Lins de Barros.