Can Anyone Identify This Engine?

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CFLBob

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Back in 2015, on my only visit to Cabin Fever, I took a short video of this engine I saw. This is a four cylinder, straight four, that's fun to watch. Lots of moving bits. I'd like to try to run down plans for this but have no idea where to look.

 
Maybe the Holt 75?



You may recognize the name gbritnell as a member here.


lg
no neat sig line
 
Maybe the Holt 75?



You may recognize the name gbritnell as a member here. I didn't see his name in the video anywhere.

lg
no neat sig line


I think that's it. I found a picture I took elsewhere that shows part of the engine better and it looks like the one in your video.
Inline-4.jpg



I recognize gbritnell - I think we've even talked before.


Bob
 
Hey Bob. (et al.)

Yep. That is George Britnell's masterpiece. And what a stunning body of work it is.

I've been hunting for plans, on and off, for this engine for approx. 2 - 3 years. As Coles is now defunct, it is nigh on impossible to get drawings. Not overly interested in castings as bringing them Down Under would be prohibitively expensive. I would maybe upsize the engine 25% or so to suit my requirement for the engine. Would rather do a billet engine, or do patterns and cast them myself.

With all the discussions about copyright infringements etc in the forums lately, I doubt it will be easy to procure now.

However, I recon if someone is selling their copy of the drawings, and have not built one themselves, then it would be legitimate to onsell their original copy of the drawings to someone else. (but how do you verify this for your own piece of mind, but life's a gamble anywho)

I would however be favourable to opening dialogue to any one who has an original, unused set of drawings which they wish to onsell so others may be able to build this engine.


Kind Regards,


Trevor,
GSL.
 
If you are interested, http://www.classic-motors.at/ from Austria has a 30ccm Mercedes 1909 4cylinder engine available as a raw casting kit (but including plans, gears, material for sleeves and pistons), at a reasonable price too, and transport would not be too expensive as most parts are aluminum - I think you could even leave out the heavier iron parts and source them locally...
Peter
castings.png

Mercedes 1909.png
 
Thanks, Trevor.

I have to admit that the copyright laws and how they apply here confuse me.

Say you buy a used book, like a used engineering textbook. That book is copyrighted and the "supply chain" (author, publisher, printer...) that developed that book got paid when the book was sold to the wholesaler. The guy who bought the book now sells it to you (maybe through a used book store) and the copyright holders don't get paid again. The author and publisher were paid long ago. Same thing with buying a used record, also copyrighted. The musician was paid, the record company was paid, everyone was paid long ago, but there are (or used to be) used record stores and used book stores in every town.

So how is it different if someone buys a book, makes the model and then sells the book? That another copy of the model is being made? The only way you could possibly think that you're hurting someone, somewhere is by denying a sale of another copy. I see that, but I don't see the difference between buying a used book of plans and any other used book or a used record.

Today, though, with on-demand publishing, there are ways that a new sale could be directly denying the payment to some author. If someone is selling pdf copies electronically, it's clear you're putting money in the author's account.

I think we all want to do the right thing, it's just that figuring out what that is isn't always clear. In this case, Coles is out of business. Someone may own the drawings and may be planning to sell them, or not. I sure don't know.

In light of that difficulty, I've given up on the Holt 75 for now. I've bought the plans for the Panther Pup from Little Machine Shop. It's a similar looking engine.


Bob
 
The major difference with a 'normal' book or a record, etc. is that the purpose they were sold for is still what they are being used for. As in, only one person owns the book or only one person owns the record. You can see that if you bought a record or book, made a copy so you could still enjoy it, then on-sold the original then you are depriving the copyright owner of another sale (two copies are now being enjoyed but only one is paid for). In our case, the plans are sold (generally) with a license to build one engine from the plans. Once someone has constructed an engine, the fee paid for this right has been consumed and the plans can't be passed to another person. As far as I'm aware, no copyright owner has taken issue with an individual who has purchased a plan set making themselves more than one engine but I'm sure they could demand further payment from the builder for each additional engine if they wished.

As an extreme example (but it illustrates the point well), let's say a group of 20 builders in a makerspace got together and decided they all wanted to build a 'Little Demon' each. If they were doing it individually at their own homes without any collaboration, they'd obviously have to purchase a plan set each, however if they get together and just 'share' a single copy of the plans then they only need one set. Obviously this is depriving the copyright holder of proper reimbursement for their works. On-selling used plans is essentially the same thing.

Finally, as far as the Coles issue goes, it is very unfortunate when copyright holders are no longer offering their plans for sale but the copyrights still have value and must be respected. Recently there was some discussion about Ron Colonna's Offenhauser plans being no longer available/out of print and some members may have been considering copying the plan sets for distribution, figuring it can't hurt if the originals are no longer being produced. As it turned out, Ron was in the process of re-issuing these plans as electronic versions on thumb-drives and illegal sharing of his plans would have significantly affected his ability to sell any more plan sets. We simply cannot know what is going to happen with the copyrights Coles holds in the future - they may be offered digitally, sold to another entity, donated to the public domain or even lost entirely (hopefully only until the copyright eventually expires). Even when it directly inconveniences us we have to respect the copyrights as we surely want designers to continue to put so much effort into producing these plans for us to enjoy. If we don't then new plans will simply cease being produced.
 
What is and isn't law is what people don't understand. It is infact the actual document/software/image that is protected. You seeing an image and remembering it doesn't render you liable for a royalty fee to the copyright owner. If you wanted a duplicate of said image to hang on your wall, then you would responsible. Nowhere does copyright mention a license to build one article from a set of plans (this is the function of patents). Casting sets may pass the "separability" test, but you'd have to have deep pockets to bother in court, but then again, nobody publishes plans for castings.

https://www.law.berkeley.edu/files/Wendy_Gordon.pdf

This will ruffle feathers and I'm sorry. In the model airplane world this has been hashed out countless times for building plans for aircraft.

If you are in the business of making plans your best protection might come from trademarking the name of your design. This is very common. If you decide to make a model of a Boeing Dreamliner, you won't be able to sell it as a "dreamliner" without Boeing giving you the go ahead. And, yes they do actually bother chasing down people who do. My understanding is they want their 'Dreamliner" to be an accurate representation more than making money on the fees. Auto makers do it as well.

Much simpler design patents also protect the shape/appearance of a product to prevent forgeries.

Not an attorney, but have actually looked into this stuff. proceed at your own risk.
 
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Nowhere does copyright mention a license to build one article from a set of plans (this is the function of patents).

That is correct but it does say that on page two of plans I have sold and on the pages of many other plan sets. When the plans are purchased the buyer is agreeing to the terms below in the case of the demon V8. I'm not a lawyer either but after reading the terms its clear.

Now when Doc built two engines I could have hit him up for the money for the second set of plans. As he was building them for his own personal use I didn't, wouldn't do that because of his intent. I had fun following the build and was quite happy for him when both were finished and running. Thought it was awesome! Now if he purchased a set of plans to build 5 to sell on ebay that would be another issue and some kind of agreement would need to be hashed out.

If someone purchased the drawings and wanted to resell them I could shut that down also according to the agreement. Again common sense would prevail if someone bought a set and decided to sell because they decided not to work on the project. Also some people seem to think that if they take another's drawings and model all the parts, they can give away or sell the models as there own work. Sorry but that would also violate the "intent of a one time, one engine, one end-user (the original Buyer's) license". Bottom line is if you don't agree with the terms, don't purchase the drawings. Also ask for a copy of the terms before you purchase to make an informed decision.

As we all know the law can be argued until the end of time. The thing we should not argue is, we all know what was intended by the original authors of the plans from the beginning of time until now. If you want to build an engine, purchase the plans. If you want to sell plans, models, or gcode for an engine, design one, build the prototype, and generate the drawing set and have fun. It all comes down to having respect for someone else's work and not what some lawyer's opinion on weather or not you can use that work without permission. I believe it would be hard to find 5 people on this forum that believe that if the below paragraph didn't exist in a drawing set they would be ok to sell them on ebay because "nobody said not to". We all know better than that and we all do better than that because it's the right thing to do.

I believe everyone on this forum has great respect for others work. It's the people looking for the quick buck that made putting paragraph's like the one below into the plan sets. Back in the 40's, 50's, and 60's this paragraph was probably not needed back then. Lets not worry about what's legal and focus on what is the right thing to do. We all know what that is no matter what the law says. I'm sure legally everything I have written can be picked apart, but ask yourself, does that make it right". It all comes down to common sense and respect. If you are not sure, call the author of the plans or his remaining family for permission, not your lawyer. I'm not a lawyer nor do I know the law but I do know right from wrong and what my heart say's about doing what is right.

Again, i'm not telling anyone what to do, I'm just telling you how i feel about the subject. This is not a rant but a heart felt opinion on how i believe we should treat each other.


Personal Use License: The Seller grants the Buyer a single, personal, non-exclusive, perpetual license to
use these prints to construct one (1) set of components identified herein for use in constructing one (1)
completed model engine for the Buyer's personal use. All commercial uses or commercial development
are strictly prohibited. These prints and the single license to use them may not be used for serial production
of more than one (1) set of components for one (1) model engine, nor may the prints be copied, resold,
redistributed, re-licensed, sub-licensed, assigned, sold, transferred, shared or used in any manner which is
inconsistent with the intent of a one time, one engine, one end-user (the original Buyer's) license to use the
prints. All forms of title to and ownership of the prints and license to use them remain with the Seller.
 
I agree with your feelings about the topic, except "we all know what was intended by the original authors of the plans from the beginning of time until now". The law is what you have to work with.

I think most people are happy to pay for things they see value in, unless they can get it for less. And, that is where the problems start.
 
I agree that the underlying license agreement is key to this discussion.

An example was when I was building strip planked kayaks for resale. Even though I did not buy a set of plans for each boat I built, the plans did state that they included a license to build only a single kayak.

So I contacted the owner of the design about my intent we agreed that I would pay a royalty of about 1/2 the price of a set of plans for each one I built.

That one half was approximately his profit after the cost of printing and mailing full scale blueprints of an eighteen foot sea kayak.

I’m no attorney and not sure of the validity of shrink wrapped license agreements. However morally I knew it was the correct way to go.
 
I was talking by email with a friend and he offered an interesting suggestion: create an escrow account for the copyright holder.

My first reaction is "how would they know?" If they could learn there's some amount of money in escrow it might encourage them to do something about publishing the prints.

I mean any one of us could write a note and stick it on our checkbook saying, "$50 is for the publisher of the Holt 75 plans", putting the money on hold for the plans, but they'd never know. If they could see that 10 or 20 people (to pull numbers out of thin air) put $50 into an escrow account, it might motivate them to publish the prints again.

That turns into a question of how to set up and administer an account for some number of people who own copyrights. I'm going to assume that most of these designs get lost because the current owner passes on and someone else gets the copyright. The new holders either don't know or don't care about selling a few copies of the prints.

Interesting idea, but I don't know how it could be done.
 
That really is an issue with plans, especially in our field.

The author of a particular set of plans passed away and their survivors are either not aware or simply do not care about them.

The sad thing is some really stellar work gets lost to time.

I imagine with some research and a little luck the current owners of copyrights can be located. A good start may be writing to the address of record at Companies House , that is if they registered their company to begin with, which is another discussion.

My next project is a three cylinder Anzani radial engine. The plans were drafted by the late John Chenery. Fortunately his son continues to sell the plans and another gentleman still had a set of crankcase. And carburettor patterns. So I was able to obtain drawings and some of the castings. Unfortunately the cylinder patterns have been lost so I will have to make them from scratch.
 
That really is an issue with plans, especially in our field.

The author of a particular set of plans passed away and their survivors are either not aware or simply do not care about them.

The sad thing is some really stellar work gets lost to time.

I imagine with some research and a little luck the current owners of copyrights can be located. A good start may be writing to the address of record at Companies House , that is if they registered their company to begin with, which is another discussion.

My next project is a three cylinder Anzani radial engine. The plans were drafted by the late John Chenery. Fortunately his son continues to sell the plans and another gentleman still had a set of crankcase. And carburettor patterns. So I was able to obtain drawings and some of the castings. Unfortunately the cylinder patterns have been lost so I will have to make them from scratch.

We have to admit we're a small hobby and don't have much buying power. Plus, we tend to never build two copies of anything, so we're a market for a given design once in our life. When I started looking for my first IC engine, I liked the look of the Holt 75 but after being unable to find a way to buy plans for it, bought the plans for the Panther Pup. Whomever has/had the plans for the Holt lost that sale.

My path is doubly weird because my milling machines are CNC with no manual hand wheels. That means I have to convert anything that will get milled to GCode files. I bought the book "Shop Wisdom of Philip Duclos" for my flame eater, and many of those drawings got turned into solid models on my computer so that I could make tool paths. The same will happen with parts of the Panther Pup. I'd prefer solid models to blueprints, but I'll work with what I can get.
 
I actually tracked down an individual about a set of plans in an effort to acquire rights. Basically, there was no interest in doing anything. This was as much as 10 years ago and I haven't done anything with the set I have. I was considering redrawing to a different dislpacement, but it would be just as easy to design something new. So chances are, even though I would like to get these back into circulation, I'll just let them die.
 
Talking of Copyright. If you put conditions on the transfer of a copyrightable object - i.e. book - then copyright does not apply. If I sell you a book and put the condition on the sale that you cannot transfer, then you have voided any copyright protection. Copyright also comes with certain obligations for the one holding the copyright as well ans the one recieving the good. Copyright entitles the copyright holder royalties on all NEW copies of the work. After the work has been sold/transferred once the copyright holder recieves no more royalties because those royalties were paid on the first sale. The person buying the work can either hold the work or transfer/sell teh work to another, but is not allowed to keep any copy of that work after the transfer. Thus under a reasonable application of copyright - you can make necessary copies of a plan for use in the shop, under fair use, but if you transfer the original work to someone else you must transfer all copies or destroy them.
 

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