If you know how many lbs/hour of wood your plant consumes, you can easily calculate estimated oil consumption. https://mha-net.org/docs/v8n2/docs/WDBASICS.pdf Assuming about 7000 btu/lb of air dried wood and 140k btu/gallon of diesel and 7 lbs of diesel/gallon, Estimated burn of 40 lbs of wood/hour ...

The exhaust steam temperature is going to be determined by the number of expansions of the steam. If your engine was running at 100% cut-off, the exhaust steam would be at a temperature determined by the constant-heat expansion (same as a throttling valve) of the input steam. 150 psi saturated steam...

Hi Captain Mack - I've never seen anyone do this on our small steamboat boilers, but you've got one larger than most and it's used more than most. I'd probably go with an meter, but there are regents as well that one can use to do a visual color comparison, as well as a traditional titration procedu...

Mike is absolutely right - the most durable finish for a stripped carvel/lapstrake boat is paint - something not too hard. Polyurethanes are subject to cracking due to moisture changes in the wood. If you want clear and you are building a epoxy sealed hull (inside & out), then varnish over epoxy is ...

Varnish over bare wood is pretty high maintenance. Epoxy will of course need varnish or polyurethane over it to protect against UV. You may wish to consider Cetol Marine. My brother uses this product on the trim on his 42' ketch with excellent results. https://www.sailmagazine.com/diy/cetolan-altern...

I used an old copy of John Perry's Chemical Engineering Handbook (4th edition) I got for free while I was doing a lot of design stuff; they had pressure vessel details, piping design, joint design details, etc from ASME standards, and the price was right - free. They're available on Ebay for $30 or ...

That is a really nice engine... If I made one of those rods, I think I'd start with a piece of flat, center drill the ends, rough turn down the center, and then heat and twist it so I didn't have to whittle a great big piece down....

- Bart

Our Airstream trailer is held together w/ aluminum rivets - the sort with the rounded heads that need access from both sides. Learning to drive those was fun. I remember going over age-hardening rivets for aircraft in mechanical design courses at the university - you keep the rivets in a refrigerato...

Here's another photo of her, I think:

http://www.maximan.nl/ouddelfzijl/diver ... 0Eems.html

But with a shorter stack - converted to oil?

There was another diesel tug w/ the same name built in 1938, so it's all a bit confusing.

- Bart

Thanks Fred, I completely forgot to mention the isolation valve.... I have one on all boiler connections (save the safety, of course!) on both boats. If my economizer fails (e.g. leaks) , I'll bypass it and leave it open - it's not going to get any more damaged :). I used a copper economizer for yea...