Another mention Mal-When you wash up that hot,dirty part ,do it in a bucket inside the boat!! I was cleaning my burner over the side one time and no I didn't drop it [I was lucky!] And that was the last time I tried a stunt like that! And carry spare nuts and bolts-especially the brass stuff,cause ...

Building a 25 ft seagoing boat would be a huge undertaking that would take several years - I would suggest hunting down a suitable vintage hull while you build the plant. John ah, but you are talking to a man who just finished building a small (ride on) steam loco from scratch and that took 24 year...

Hi Mal, Re. small sail; the rig of a mirror dinghy is in the region of 60-65sq.ft.- this would give a lightweight 10ft dinghy a fair bit to think about, but a 25ft SL with boiler and engine on the centreline should cope with nothing but a little bit of an attractive lean to leeward. You could alway...

I think I have decided to build the A A Leak compound 3"&5"x3" 11 IHP as the first step in building a steam boat. Before I write Camden some large cheques for the castings, I have two questions: 1 - there do not seem to be a lot of these around (about 5 in the SteamBoat Association's register), what...

sorry for slow response - crafted an answer then forgot to post it... old age creeping up fast! I am certainly a died-in-the-wool "take every part you can think of " man, in the style of Farmerden... and having been nursing aging motorcycles and cars home now for just short of 40 years, I am a dab-h...

that HAS to count as sound advice - thanks Greg...

I will certainly take your advice, while polishing up my seamanship - I am off to spend a week with Sourthern Sailing School to this end (rereshing what I learnt many years ago with them doing competent crew and day skipper courses in the 80s)!

Mal

I am in the process of deciding what to build (hull, engine, boiler) and another thought just occurred to me, which will influence the decision.... My objective is to build something I can use in tidal/coastal waters, and so the question is what do you do when the power plant quits - (lack of coal/w...

Yes, I think this is a major project, although I am rather hoping that it will take less than the 25 years the steam loco took - I am counting on the fact that I effectivly served my apprentiship on that, and am faster now, and have built/aquired most of the tooling needed!

Malxolm

Hello Steamboating forum... This is just the requested "initial post to say hello"! I have joined as having run into the Steamboat association at a couple of events, and being a model engineer and generally mechanically obsessed, I suddenly found myself reading every thing I could on steamboats and ...