Jon The seal offs, that Ron shows, should work as long as the rubber is up to the exhuast temp. Note that these are aluminum. If you're not operating around salt water maybe okay? I had fittings like this in the clearwell of a water treatment plant that disintegrate in about four years, leaving floa...

Jon You may rethink the charter service? A few lines on, " I was sick with dread, but bravely said, I'll just take a peek inside. I guess he's cooked so it's time I looked, and the door I opened wide. And there sat Sam looking cool and calm in the heart of the furnace roar. And he wore a smile you c...

All through this thread the line from The Creamation of Sam Magee "then I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and stuffed in Sam Magee." keeps comming back. Now twice cooked marsh mellows: 1. toast to a golden brown crust 2. cool slightly and remove crust and eat 3. repeat step 1 with what remains ...

In Steamboats and modern steam launches, April-May 1963 page 26, there is a short review of what Fred Semple called a tube retarder. This amounted to a strip of 1/8"x1"x24" steel strip twisted two full turns in that lenght. Semple stated that the redtatders would almost double the output of a FT-40 ...

Yes the soot will go up the stack, and what goes up will come down. On the destroyers we had to get permission from the bridge before blowing tubes. Depending on the wind direction, a coarse change may be needed to put the wind to our beam so the soot would be carried over the side and not land on d...

I agree with Mike on the on the grate spacing. My old wood/coal kitchen stove has 1/2" grate openings, and the gates that I've see for steam donkies had what looked close to 1/2". Mike, I don't recall being provided with a name of any of the engineers, but It was clear that if the fireman did not su...

I had an old friend that used to fire on the SP going south out of Portland, OR. He related the following: On getting ready for a run the engineer would give a 20" warning. The firemans job was to have full pressure up when the engineer opened the throttle without lifting safeties. He said that by p...

I'm kinda with Mike on this one. We(Navy) didn't open the 600psi boilers untill ~2000 steaming hours, and the 1200psi's, with the low phosphate treatment, were almost double that. After this amount of steaming I never saw anything more than a black magnetite film on any of the none heated surfaces, ...

Fred, After looking at Gondolier's photo, I see what you mean. A system like shown would only be able to have a check on the lower valve if the ball was held above the valve bore. It dosen't look like that's the case here. On the Navy boilers that I steamed only the lower valve on the gauge glass ha...

Page 25 is the better image