steam engines

[mad murdock]

ok, maybe steam is not happening. but i'm not giving up on having another option for elec.
 once the senate passes cap and trade hold on to your lug nuts! cost of elect. will go up faster than a ladies dress on a windy day..
 thanks for the help everyone

[mad murdock]

ok, maybe steam is not happening. but i'm not giving up on having another option for elec.
 once the senate passes cap and trade hold on to your lug nuts! cost of elect. will go up faster than a ladies dress on a windy day..
 thanks for the help everyone

Red Oaks, I grew up ner Eagle River, Wisc. there used to be a mill outside of town ran by the Swanson Brothers that ran on steam.  I haven't been back in the N. Woods for years, don't know if there is anything left of it.
Used to be a lot of old guys in Forest Co. that had old mill equipment out in the back '40 just rusting away, maybe there is still some of that old stuff left, that is worth restoring?

[mad murdock]

Any pics of anyone on the forum or otherwise who have powered up with steam? 

[Paul_H]

The town of Westwold BC, 40 minutes from us hosts a steam show in October.I had never heard of it until yesterday at the shop when a customer told me about it.
The show is hosted by the Pringle family and I wish I had more info on this family because the show is 1st class.

Here are some pics of the event.The first two pics aren't steam power but the rest are with the exception(I think) of the Pumpkin cannon

Belt driven planer-
 






This boiler is fired up and running the sawmill that had a full crew milling up lumber.There was a steam fired sash saw as well but the camera ran out of memory.

 



 





Steam fired shingle mill





Driven by this






And there was a Steam donkey...





The smells were wonderfull with gunpowder from the black powder guys,the creosote smell of the woodfred boilers along with sawdust from pine and cedar freshly milled,and food cooking and the crisp autumn air.
The sounds of the steam engines,mills and gunfire were enjoyable too.

I'll post more later.

[Okrafarmer]

steam power may not be cost-efficient today, but if there ever were a serious time of trouble in your area with total grid failure and no transportation of goods (or at least not affordable), and you had to live 19th century style for a long period of time, you would be very glad to have your steam engine up and running. Your neighbors would also become either your best friends or your deadly enemies over night.

[Paul_H]

Your neighbors would also become either your best friends or your deadly enemies over night.

got that part covered  

[Paul_H]

 
I thought this was a cool little setup too.Grinding apples for cider with steam.





This engine was running a little sawmill,I can't remember if it was was the circle saw or the gang/sash sawmill.I like the motto 

 



 A fine looking Case





 

[Paul_H]

This little beauty was probably my favourite because my dad had a 1958 Marion shovel with a diesel and was converted to a log loader which he used for almost 20 years.

This little steam shovel has an interesting history which you can read about on their website.I'll post a link further down.

What a sweet little shovel!

 


 





If you have a slow connection but like working steam shovels,this video is worth the wait



And finally,a link to the website where you can see pics of recovering this old gem from the mud up in northern BC

LINK

[mad murdock]

Thanks Paul for posting the pic's and the link to the Westwold site.  Awesome, simply awesome.  Must have been a great time there last weekend!

[Norm]

Cool toys Paul!

That scenery is pretty nice too.

[Stan snider]

Paul; in the first picture with the little shovel and the next one is that a steam powered truck?

[Al_Smith]

Trivia .At one time there were two giants of the power shovel industry,Marion power shovel and Baldwin -Lima- Hamilton .The later made the "Lima " cranes and shovels .I was once employed there as welder .Both companies which are no longer in business were in Ohio about 50 miles apart . The demise of the strip mining industry brought the final curtain down on both of these companies .

Another tid bit concerning steam power is it takes 34,500 btu's of heat per hour to produce one steam horse power .Translate that to 150 KW and it becomes clear it would require a rather large boiler not to mention a large engine .It would be a full time job just cutting wood and stoking one that large .Besides all that steam is not a subject to taken up by the unknowledgable .More than one well meaning person has managed to cook themselves to the hue of a lobster .Not good .

[36 coupe]

A steam boiler consumse large amount of  wood,10 hp for 1 hour 1 cord of wood check it out.

[fishpharmer]

Hey Paul,
I read thru your posts and pics about steam equipment already.  I didn't appreciate it as much before spending a few days around the steam equipment at the local Soule event this weekend.  I would love to see a steam powered sawmill.  And steam shovel.  All the engines at Soule's were essentially stationary.  One local fella had a stationary engine that produced 18 hp.  I mentioned the Lucas mill had 18 hp too.  He said his engine made all that hp at 180 rpm. Yes one hundred and eighty, 3 digits.
I learned a lot. 

Thanks for sharing your pictures.

36 coupe, what do you think about a solar powered boiler, not without limitations, but cheap?

[Stan snider]

Hope we haven't lost Paul!  Stan

[Meadows Miller]

Gday

I love steam and everything to do with it but there is an art to it and as a power source for equipment day in day out  it takes alot of dedication so if you like being up 2 hrs before eveyone else to refire and do your boiler check and all the other requirements along with running and maint every day go for it 

I think personally that Wood Gas generation will become a big industry and you can buy modular turnkey plants already from china from small 5kva to 1000kva setts ant pretty reasonable prices the beauty of wood gas in an industrial setting is that the new systems have cutoffs and can alternate between running on diesel and wood fuel without any break in energy generation  so if you had bridging in your fuel hopper which was a regular problem when i was running one of two 1000hp output steam boilers generating heat for kilns at a mill i was at that you can only have one person fixing the problem while everybody else can continue to work  Plus if you get sick of trying to master wood gas you can just whack the std head back on the motor  and go full time diesel 

Regards Chris

[Tim]

The trouble with traditional steam plants is the shear dimension of them. They are huge. I bought a sawmill and planer a few years back. They threw in the 60hp Galt boiler as well. It was 5' in diameter and a good 16 feet long. You could stuff all of a cord into the dutch oven burner. The flue pipes were rusted through so I wound up scrapping it.

Back in 1985 or so, I heard of a fellow in Manitoba that had built a propane powered steam engine that was installed on his airplane. Needless to say, this raised an eyebrow for me. As it turns out, it was a closed circuit steam engine. This style was also reported on in a 1972 Popular Mechanics issue and mounted on a minibike.

The differences between the traditional steam plants and these closed circuit systems are many. The real difference is the rate of heat transfer from the burning fuel to the water. The old systems didn't have alot of surface area to facilitate  heat transfer, proportionally. These closed circuit systems use a very small amount of water in comparison to the traditional. They might only use 5 gallons or so to do the same amount of work as the 2300 gallon boiler I scrapped.

The thing about gasification Meddows Miller is that you still need an efficient means of burning that gas. 1kg of wood has a potential of 17,000w. Thermal efficiency allows only 70% or so, reducing it to 11,900w. An internal combustion engine works at 28% efficiency, reducing potential to 3,330w. The generator works at 80% efficiency so that potential is further reduced to 2,660w. Even though this seems discouraging, I'm working out to build a plant from what I have here. Gasoline and electricity is too dang expensive now and only set to get worse. I'll build and play with it and hope to get those efficiency numbers up.

As it is, I'm getting about $4/tonne for my sawdust now. If I can save a $100 a week on the gasoline I'm burning in the mill now. It'll help nicely.

[mad murdock]

Tim, your ideas sound very interesting.  I will stay tuned to your porgress, as I feel that closed circuit steam has much more potential than internal combustion.  If you check out the Besler Brothers Steam powered plane design of the early 1930's, the heart of their system was a 150 HP 2 cyl. engine and a boiler setup that was developed by the Doble Bros. of California, (Doble steam car).  Though it was not a 100% closed circuit, with the condenser it reclaimed about 90% of the water, and the aircraft could fly 400 miles on 10 gallons of water, which was quite a feat for the early 1930's.  The US Navy did a study on the Besler engine and boiler design, built 2 of the same setups that Beslers' had put in their plane, but they had funding cut when they were about to get to the aerial trial phase, so they opted to mount the engine/boiler setup in a boat and do the comparative tests on the water.  They proved out the claims made by the Besler s and in their report they determined that it was feasible to power an aircraft in the 150- up to 40 or so HP range with steam effectively.  http://www.forestryforum.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=random&cat=18691&pos=-92135
http://www.forestryforum.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=2139&pos=1
http://www.forestryforum.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=2139&pos=6
http://www.forestryforum.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=2139&pos=7
I posted more diagrams and drawings of this from the US navy test report I found on the internet ove a year ago.  this is a real viable setup from what I have been able to determine.  It flew in the 1930's and in my view like a ton of good ideas that were brought to light in the late 20's and early 30's fell prey to the depression and massive efforts by big players in the emerging energy marketplace to buy up and control anything that would upset the powerstructure of the few blessed entities that controlled politics and business of the day, (anyone remember the Tucker Motor car?). IMO.  Keep on tinkering, you will come up with a workable system.