George Whitney boiler

[DetroiTug]

Here is an interesting story about a piece of steamboating history.

I have steam folks that stop by occasionally and they have been a great resource and help for my steam projects.

One told me about a boiler he purchased back in the 90's and the strange way he found it. Somewhere in Steamboats and modern steam launches there is a private ad for a Whitney compound steam engine and boiler for sale. The ad has a local phone number, so for the heck of it 30 years after the ad was ran, he called the number, surprisingly someone answered and a bigger surprise the man was aware of the ad and had just sold the engine two weeks before, but he still had the boiler. So, they went out there and found a Robert's style WT boiler of interesting construction and bought it from the man. I told him I'd like to see it, so he brought it by and I took some pictures of it. Interesting that all of the tubes are right and left hand threaded construction. And the ends are domed, although they appeared to be recessed in the shell.

It was reportedly built by George Whitney.

The engine went out east somewhere (to Webster? of aluminum launch fame possibly)







-Ron

[Lopez Mike]

I've seen a lot of things in my 71 years but running in to a left handed pipe tap (or die) would startle me.

[Jack Innes]

Mike,

Many years ago I acquired a great pile of pipe dies, all of them very old. A year ago I re-plumbed a very large (15,000 lb.) oil field engine which required up to 2 1/2" pipe pieces. After cursing what looked like a sharp 3/4"npt die for its refusal to start it came to me that it was indeed left hand thread. On inspection, what I thought were duplicates turned out to be left hand dies. From patent dates these were in use in the late 1800s. I would assume the use of unions could be eliminated with two opposite threads & the ability to judge when both are tight.

Jack

[barts]

Left hand pipe taps are readily available; dies are a little harder to find but are available for a price.

- Bart

[Mike Rometer]

There are a couple of suppliers this side of the pond as well. All very pricey.

[steamdon-jr]

We sold a boiler about 2 years ago, it had approx 40-50 sq ft of heating surface, all 1" seamless steel pipe with forward and reverse threads, large unions near the steam drum that were all stamped "NAVY". the mud drums were I believe 3" and the steam drum was 8". The neat part of it though was that is had a 8" deep cast iron base with shaker bar grates. We opted to sell it and put the money towards our VFT. The gentleman that bought it lives pretty close to us and hopefully will eventually change out his underpowered boiler he has for it.

[Lopez Mike]

I'm dazzled. (And horrified.)

Can't imagine a situation where I wouldn't figure out some way to get around such a thing. If for no other reason than to save the sanity of the next poor bastard that has to work on the thing.

[Jack Innes]

Mike,

In searching for a little more information on these fittings I found a quote on plumbingsupplies.com describing their couplings that actually makes sense. "These have standard right-hand threads on one side & reverse (left-hand) threads on the other. These are generally used for gas piping, when unions are not allowed."

If you become a convert & decide to use these I am sure I have a left handed pipe wrench I can loan you.

Jack

[Lopez Mike]

Ah, yes. To go with the left handed complements I sometimes get.

I once ran into a left handed Crescent wrench. For many years here was such a beast included in Volvo automobile tool kits. One one end was what appeared to be an ordinary adjustable wrench and on the other, a forked end with teeth intended, I suppose, to gnarl up fasteners such that nothing else would ever work on them.

The reason I refer to this awful thing as left handed is this. On every adjustable (Crescent) wrench in the civilized world, if you hold it in your right hand with the jaws angled to the left, pushing the adjuster away from you with your thumb will close down the jaws to a smaller size. Anyone who has used one of these useful tools for some length of time gets used to this and can reliably adjust the thing without looking at it.

This other instrument of the devil, created in some dark cave in Sweden to frustrate and enrage all who encounter it, had the adjustment thread the other way.

I had this beast for a few months. Time and again I would get red faced and plot terrible ends for it as I blundered away. Finally one day as I was working on my boat, I reached a climax of rage and threw the damned thing far out into the harbor.

The end.

[cyberbadger]

I reached a climax of rage and threw the damned thing far out into the harbor.

The end.

Not the end. The wrench will be found in 2214 after civilization has collapsed and used as proof that devils and evil spirits inhabit the area. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE MIKE!

-CB