The Steamboating Forum

This thread stopped all of a sudden in May. It's had an awful lot of viewings since then so I should explain that l've been busy working on another boat and will hopefully finish that and get back to the boiler before too long. The funnel is made, and Calum has re-made a lot of the casing as my sheet metal attempts were not really good enough. John

Patiently waiting...

Two steamboaters have just received plans for three drum 28sq ft boiler from John D King and about to order 160 Meters of 12 mm cunifer tube from Dorset Tubes we have permission and are going to build two boilers identical and share the costs. It will be an interesting exercises it will definitely be good on the boring parts ie drilling the drums. The plans are excellent. The posts here encouraged me to make the move and thats what it's all about. Will post our progress.

Noel, that is excellent news. I hope you will find better ways of doing things, and keep us posted with lots of photos.

I would recommend - and so does John King - that you build and test the pressure vessel first and then put the finished assembly into the casing. As Roger Eske's boiler on page 1 of this thread. I have left myself an awkward job of wangling the watertubes into place inside the casing.

Best regards and good luck. John

John,

Are you planning on rolling the tubes into the mud drums? If so I would like to get some more information on the tooling used and if you have already completed this work, how it went.

Thanks

Ken

Ken – yes the Cunifer watertubes are to be expanded into the drums, but I have not started this yet. I re-reamed the holes from 12mm to 12.1mm which gives a sliding fit - apologies for forgetting to say this in the thread. The expander is a Wicksteed E2 bought direct from them http://www.wicksteed.com/Products.aspx?catid=1 I hope to drive it with a small air wrench. I’ll need a ¼” square male to male adaptor and bought a cheap palm wrench that I hope to use or modify for this purpose. There is plenty room for this set up inside the 6” steam drum, but a trained monkey may be needed when it comes to the 4” mud drums. I hope you may be offering to lead the way?


I have also just about finished the funnel. My garage is not high enough to mount it.


And made a pattern for the firebars.




Good luck, John