Owned by Wally Mounster
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Hull |
The dinghy was built in Hobart in 1968, its clinker planking is King Billy Pine and the ribs are Huon pine. It was pretty shabby when I bought it and I have spent the last month repainting it inside and out. I have registered it for display at the Wooden Boat Festival which will be held in Hobart next February. |
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Engine & Boiler |
This project is based on an 8 h.p. two
stroke outboard leg and gearbox. The engine is a single cylinder, double
acting type with a bore of 1¾” and stroke of 2”. It has poppet valves for
the inlet and exhaust which are operated by two cams, one for each valve.
Supplementary hand operated cams are used to hold the valves open for
warming through. The crankshaft is mounted vertically with a spline
machined on the end to match that on the drive shaft of the leg. By using
the forward/reverse gears in the gearbox, there is no need for reversing
gear on the engine. The valve chests and valves are from stainless steel
with most of the rest of the engine being aluminium. The boiler is a
monotube comprising 30 metres of stainless steel tubing, half of which is
3/16” and the rest is ¼” OD. A jig was made to facilitate the bending of
the tube into grids, which were then assembled by TIG welding with all the
joints on the outer edges of the assembly. The boiler fits into a
stainless steel casing 10” square x 20” tall, lined with Kaowool
refractory. There is a grate for wood firing and a fan for forced draft.
The boiler sits on a frame in front of the engine which doubles as the
steering tiller. The assembly weighs around 45 kg. A damper is fitted to
the fan inlet to control the pressure. The boiler operates at 500 p.s.i.
and 400 degrees C and the damper is fully closed when these conditions are
met. There are two feed pumps driven by a toothed belt at 1/5th engine
speed and using a disc crank scotch yolk. This has four positions for the
crank pin allowing adjustment to give the correct amount of water to
replace the steam used by the engine. Cylinder lubrication is by a model
loco type ratchet pump, and it is planned to use colloidal graphite
instead of oil to avoid contamination of the condensate with oil. A
condenser is fitted, and an air pump is driven from the scotch yolk. The
condenser is a length of copper pipe passing down the leg into the water
next to the propeller Update 21 June 2004: The graphite lubrication was not a success, the reason being that as soon as the aqueous suspension of graphite got close to the superheated steam it dried up, leaving the graphite to block the feed pipe. It also had a tendency to dry in the pump when the engine was not being used.
Update 19 September
2006
The last two photos are of the new outboard and the dinghy which were taken during trials. The chap in the bow is Brian Forster who owns the steamboat "Lady Lyn" and I am at the helm.
The other photos shows the unit out of the
water and one can see the boiler mounted above the engine. The engine
is a 90 degree vee twin, double acting, with poppet valves so as to
use the superheated steam from the monotube boiler. The crankshaft of
the engine is vertical and it has a splined socket in its end to mesh
with the splined shaft of the leg which was taken from a Mariner two
stroke outboard. The two copper pipes which extend down from the
cylinders down to near the propeller are the condenser. Feed water is
carried in a tank inside the boat from which the feed pump draws to
feed the boiler and the condensate is returned to this tank. Fuel is
wood, I use broken garden stakes cut into 100mm lengths. Light up is
done with newspaper and a few twigs, once the engine is running air
for combustion is forced into the boiler furnace by an engine driven
fan. This fan has a choke in its inlet which closes when the steam
pressure reaches 400 psi, this controls the steam pressure to a max of
about 1000 psi. Since the boiler is all 1/4 inch OD stainless tube and
contains a minimal amount of water it is very safe. The feed pump is
driven at 1 fifth of the engine speed, it is a reciprocating pump
operated by a scotch yoke and its stroke can be adjusted to give the
optimum amount of water to control the steam temperature, the ideal
steam temp. is 400 degrees C and this is monitored by a thermocouple
pyrometer. There is also a reciprocating condensate pump. An oil pump
for cylinder lubrication is driven by a worm gear at 1/200 th of the
engine speed.
This is the second steam outboard which I have built and my motivation for building the second one was to reduce the weight of the unit. The new one weighs 33 kg, 12 kg lighter than the first one. Weight reduction was achieved by re-designing the boiler so as to use a lighter casing and less refractory, the two cylinder engine is lighter than the original since it needs no flywheel. It also has the advantage that it can be balanced much better and will run faster without vibration. I have made the boiler easily detachable so that it can be taken off when the boat is being trailered, this reduces the shocks on the transom from driving on rough surfaces. |
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Other |
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Click on these thumbnails for a larger view
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