Help, how on earth do I build the boiler for my Fire King?

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Bob Wild

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Jan 12, 2019
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Here is an assembly drawing for my boiler:

boiler assembly.jpg

There are many features which frighten me:

  1. All the various rings are supposed to be rivetted. Surely I must solder all the parts to make them steam tight?
  2. The rings are supposed to be copper, but I can't find any supplier of solid material that size (approx 4in dia). But I have found a foundry that can cast them in brass. Would that material be OK, if the price is right?
  3. What is the best way to make the conical inner part. Should I start with a piece of tube with the same diameter as the smaller section and bash it up a former. Or should I start with a tube the same as the larger diameter and try to spin it down? Or should I even prefabricate it from sheet wrapped round a former and soldered at the seam?
  4. There is a pipe in the centre called the "Steam Supply Pipe" (is this a superheater pipe?) which has a 180 deg bend. This pipe is 6mm OD with a 4mm inside radius. How on earth can you bend this?
  5. Finally, and this is the scary bit, how am I going to solder it all together? Do I need different melting point silver solder, and in what order should I try to assemble it?
  6. I've just read a biography of Cherry Hill in which it explains that all her beautiful models were built to run on air only. If that was good enough for her, then it could be for me as well. In which case I could leave out most of the internal parts and simplify things enormously, let alone worry about making it steam tight.
Any advice from those more experienced than me would be most appreciated.

Bob
 

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