Recent content by rolphill

Another quick steam up this morning. This coal is very nice, it lights almost instantly when placed on a hot fire. Carryover was significantly reduced with deionized water, but all the impurities still have to work their way through the blowdown and such. I might have to upgrade from fiberglass...

Yep. I made a non-pop relief valve yesterday. The poppet is made out of teflon as I didn't have any ball bearings laying around. It took a few different attempts to get a poppet shape that worked well, although it still weeps a bit sometimes. My hunch is that steam temps will soften the teflon...

Well, the new coal sure does work! It works very well. It lights easily, and makes a ton of fire and steam. Burns a little bit faster than I expected, but that's fine. I don't think I'm going to really need the blower much except for initial raising of steam. The stack has plenty of natural...

Yes, I will be exhausting up the stack, no condenser. I'm not dealing with all that complexity at this scale. Plus, I'm kind of intending for this to be a modular steam plant that I can also try and put on my kart frame and putt around. I'll try reworking the blower so it blows up from below...

Yes the above picture was when it was just lit. The stack is 3in x ~24in. The blower nozzle is about a third of the way up the pipe, 1/4od tube with the end flattened into a slot. I'll probably be revisiting it at some point, especially since I haven't added the engine exhaust pipe to it yet...

Another disappointing attempt. I got it going nicely with wood, turned on the steam blower and it seemed to increase the flames well, but the anthracite didn't really work. The anthracite was burning, it was nice and orange inside the pile, but it just doesn't put out serious heat without A LOT...

Interesting info, I'll have to reread it later when I'm at work and have a big screen and the mental mood to parse it. Good news! It's "finished!", well it's the kind of project that'll never be finished, but it's ready for testing. I was too excited to wait until Monday to post my progress, so...

I'm about to plumb up my steam blower and I was wondering if anyone does anything fancy, like make nozzles? On the last one I just kinda flattened the end of the tube a little which was an improvement over just an open tube. It seems like it's popular on locos to just have a tube ring with some...

In any case, 160psi hydro went well. A few fittings weeped until tightened. The brass blower valve weeps a bit above 100psi or so, so I had to give it a little bit of pump during the test. Before the test I left it pressurized to 100psi and went shopping and came back to around 40 psi a couple...

I vaguely remember that popular opinion on copper boilers was shifting to a lower pressure for the annual hydro versus steel boilers, to reduce the work hardening(embrittlement) of the copper. I would say the main barrel determines what a boiler would be "classified" as. There are plenty of...

I agree, the Clishay book has been very helpful. The engine and boiler are simple, easy to build, and universally applicable to whatever you want to power. There's nothing locomotive specific about them. I've made a CAD model of the engine with almost everything converted to metric. The text is...

Redesigning the valves seems to have worked wonders. I only have round silicone o-rings in them at the moment, but I ran the engine on air for a few hours with no issues. I made a little background with lines on it and attached a little indicator wire to the oil cylinder. I went to go refill the...

I hadn't thought about that scenario with locos. Won't a displacement lubricator act the same way though? Locos also had to have extra equipment like snifter valves to deal with extended coasting anyways. If the engine is just rotating without steam, the scouring of the oil from the walls by...

Good news! I got my engine working better than ever. I figured out where I went wrong with the piston valve. If you look closely at the previous post you can see it. There was WAY too much clearance between the bore and the piston, so the rings just bent and tore super easily. I made a new one...

Good news and bad news. Good news, the firebox is done, straightforward and easy. Bad-ish news. I finally got around to taking apart the steam engine I built a couple years ago. On the outside, it was filthy from sitting in the barn for two years. On the inside, it was nice and clean, no...