Original oil painting by: Grandfather’s wife
Not all of Grandfather’s escapades were a great success.
Grandfather set out to build a miniature steam engine, which he did alright, but just look at it!
The boiler proved to be “marginal” (as the engineers say) meaning: “about to explode” — look at its bulging top:
But it was (to Grandfather, at least) an interesting minimalistic project. The piston cylinder, push-pull valve cylinder, wheel spokes, boiler-to-cylinder pipe and the machine’s legs were fashioned from brass tubing excised from an old rabbit-ears TV antenna. (Grandfather says most of you young whippersnappers will have to look up “rabbit ears antenna” in Wikpedia, or someplace). The boiler was an old can of neatsfoot oil.
It never did run on steam — its components expanded at different rates and seized when it was fired up, but Grandfather demonstrated the soundness of the concept to those who cared (not many) by attaching the boiler neck to a garden hose and the machine then chugged along just fine on water pressure, spraying water all over the bathroom.
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About the Author: RD Blakeslee is an octogenarian in West Virginia who built his net worth by only investing in that which can be enjoyed during acquisition and throughout life, as opposed to papers in a drawer, like stocks and bonds. You can read more about him here.
Photos: Courtesy of the Blakeslee Family
Dave, if there are any metal shops left in middle and/or high schools, this would be a fun project for the students. My high school had wood shop, metal shop, drafting/architecture, electrical shop, and auto shop. Sadly, there seem to be very few schools that teach those vocational skills anymore.
Right on, Len. Those skills are self-taught by the unusual, interested youngster or by parents, these days. Aside:
Response to this episode – Grandfather strikes out.
Steam engine (obsolete) – Strike one.
A model (useless) – Strike two.
Doesn’t work (useless doubled) – Strike three.
Written by a living fossil (highly unfashionable) – Strike FOUR.
Ejected through the back gate in the city wall, tunic confiscated.
Undaunted.
Well … I wouldn’t be so hard on yourself, Dave. This was one of my favorite stories. Maybe it’s because I’m an engineer, but I thought the project was fantastic. Just because the model didn’t work, doesn’t mean you didn’t learn something; I am certain you gained something out of the project. In fact, we usually learn more from “failure” than from doing something right the first time.
Besides, failure comes with the territory in engineering research & development!
Gee, Len, I didn’t make it clear: I was making fun of myself. I don’t feel bad about it. But I am grateful for the support you give me (and all your correspondent’s, for that matter).
There are many “lurkers” here – I know that. But to me it’s an irony: Yours is one of the few good-natured sites on the web and it doesn’t exploit it’s visitor’s personal information, while Facebook (for example) attracts billions of postings and exploits the folks who post!
My next door neighbor used to build scale steam locomotives, from scratch. He welded the boiler out of rolled plate, drilled the tube sheet, even molded and cast the levers & cams that drove the wheels. He could work with metal like most hobbyists do with plywood. He would sell the finished models at model train expo’s for around $10,000. I’m a licensed professional engineer but I stood in awe of his talent. Great post!
I’m also in awe of folks who do what your friend did, Steveark.
You mention his cams; There’s one on my engine. It’s sort of buried in the machinery, but you can see a disc eccentric of the wheel axis and soldered to it, ninety degrees out of phase with the wheel drive piston’s stroke. It’s made of a three discs, a pair of sheet tin discs and a smaller diameter ordinary steel washer concentric between them. A brass torus surrounds the washer perimeter, fastened to the valve cylinder’s piston pushrod. The valve cylinder ports the working fluid, pressurized water (damn it) in push-pull mode to the drive cylinder.
That’s very cool! My friend would cut out cardboard pieces to get the dimensions correct. He would connect them and have a working model before he got the pieces poured with cast iron.
That’s meticulous! My de-minimus construction wasn’t that thoroughly planned, but it was fun and didn’t take long to complete.
Re planning: Tatjana asked me once what I would do if I was commanded to build an ark.
I told her I’d climb a mountain and wait to see what happened.
Well played, Dave. 😉
Looking forward to Black Coffee tomorrow!