Filler

It is difficult to comprehend what a piston powered steam engine is capable of doing. It is a different sort of beast than the internal combustion engine.

For those that are old, you might have grown up with a manual transmission. There is a considerable skill in learning how to balance the clutch and engine speed to get smooth motion.

This is hidden in a value we call “horse power”. Horse power is also expressed in Watts. There are 745 watts to a HP, depending on sources. Close counts in this calculation. HP and watts are a measure of work.

Consider picking up a barbell. By measuring the force required to lift it, the time it takes to lift it, and the distance moved, we can measure the power used.

Now consider that same barbell, but it is too heavy to lift even a fraction of an inch. You strain trying to lift it. You have expended energy but have no performed any work. Hence the HP and watts are zero.

Regardless, an internal combustion engine needs some type of clutch to allow the engine to run at a comfortable speed while slowly bringing a different part of the powertrain up to speed.

With a steam engine, you have full torque at every speed. They are spectacular engines at slow speeds.

This takes us to present times.

I’m using FreeCAD to create the 3D model of the engines. A side advantage of this is that I also get assemblies that allow me to check how all the parts fit together. All very nice. This has helped me identify errors in my reading of the drawings.

A simple little thing: The cylinder has a built in bracket system. This is a face used to mount the cylinder to the base and the face used to attach the steam chest. These faces are slightly offset from the bore.

Which leads to my error, times 3. The cylinder mounting holes are not on the center line of the cylinder. They are instead on the center line of the bore. The bore is offset away from the steam chest and away from the mounting holes.

My error? I’ve put those damn mounting holes in the wrong place multiple times.

In the end, I added a spreadsheet to the model. For every shared measurement between parts, I’ve put that value in the spreadsheet. This means that I can do things like change the stroke by changing one value. Sort of.

My understanding of this mechanical marvel is much improved from being able to see the parts work together.

Another thing I noticed was that all the engine plans have an assumption you will be working with castings. They expect you to hire a pattern maker to create the patterns and then have your local foundry cast them.

While I would love to make my castings from iron, I will start with making them from aluminum. And the new tools I have and new skills I have in woodworking allow me to make real patterns.

My final goal is to have master patterns and molding boards for patterns for a couple of different engines. If I can accomplish that and make a few of them, I’ll be very happy.

Next stop, learning how to be a safe boilermaker. And not the happy drink type.

Why Steam Engines

I’ve had a fascination in steam engines since my childhood. There are pictures of my brother in the museum in D.C. standing next to the drive wheels of a steam locomotive. The wheels were taller than my father.

What I didn’t realize as a child was that the actual engines were small compared to the size of the locomotive.

The engines of steam locomotives are the expansion cylinders that drive the wheels. Most of the rest of the locomotive is the boiler generates the steam for the engine.

As a child I was able to ride a steam locomotive a few times and always found them interesting.

Later I found out that steam engines are used for more than just locomotives. They were used to power tractors, steam shovels, boats, mills, and workshops. They were everywhere. It wasn’t until electric motors became cheap and plentiful that we saw the end of the steam engine.

Off Grid Use

An electric motor is used to convert power into rotational force. That power has to come from somewhere.

The most common “somewhere” is the power grid. If you are going off grid, that is not an option. It is also not an option when the grid is down.

Grid down is a common thing in these parts, it happens two or three times every year. It is so common that we do not depend on electricity for heat.

Yes, we have an oil fired furnace; no, it can’t be used without electricity. The burner unit requires power to inject the fuel and then it requires electricity to power the fans moving air through the system to warm the house.

Suck, Squeeze, Bang, Blow

This is used to describe a standard four-stroke engine. Each word indicates the purpose of a stroke of the piston. First the piston moves down, sucking in fuel and air; then it squeezes that fuel-air mixture; next a spark happens and the fuel-air mixture goes bang, pushing the piston down (this is the power stroke); finally the piston moves up, blowing the exhaust out of the cylinder.

There is one power stroke out of every four or one power stroke for every two revolutions of the crank.

To make this all happen, we have the camshaft. The camshaft consists of multiple lobes that push a rod upward to open a valve.

There is one lobe for each valve in an engine. For a single-cylinder engine, there are two valves.

That camshaft holds the magic timing for the valve train. It is synchronized to the crankshaft. The camshaft opens the intake valve and closes the exhaust valve at the start of the suck stroke. It closes both valves during the squeeze stroke and keeps them closed during the bag stroke. Finally, it opens the exhaust valve to allow the hot gases to escape during the push stroke.

Those camshafts are a engineering marvel.

Push, Push, Push, Push

A double acting steam engine generates power on every stroke of the piston. This is accomplished by being able to pressurize both sides of the piston, alternating between strokes.

Whereas the four stroke engine gets one power stroke in four, the double acting steam engine gets four power strokes in four.

Most steam engines use a slide valve; some use piston valves.

An internal combustion engine has the valves in the cylinder; slide and piston valve engines have an externally located valve.

There is a single passage for the steam to flow into and out of for each end of the cylinder. The slide valve moves in such a way that sometimes it is venting high-pressure steam into the cylinder, and then it vents that same passage to the exhaust port.

This single valve controls the ingress and egress of live and dead steam from the cylinder. It is very magical.

And just like that camshaft is an engineering marvel, so are these slide and piston valves.

The Rabbit Hole

A slide valve consists of three slots parallel to each other. The two outer slots lead to either end of the cylinder; the center slot leads to exhaust. The valve is shaped like an upside down square cake pan with large lips.

In the far end of the motion, the edge of the pan is between the steam passage and the exhaust passage. This allows the high pressure steam that fills the steam chest to push down on the cake pan/slide valve and flow into the exposed steam passage to one end of the cylinder.

At the same time, the center section of the pan covers both the exhaust passage and the steam passage to the other end of the cylinder, allowing the dead steam to escape down the exhaust passage.

As the valve slides in the other direction, the lip of the pan starts to cover the steam passage that had accepted the live steam. At the same time, the lip on the other side of the valve is starting to close over the other steam passage.

The size of the passages and ports, the size of the area under the valve, the size of the lips of the valve, the distance between ports all play a part in the efficient running of the engine. These have to be designed and manufactured correctly.

We can time the motion of the slide valve to the crankshaft. We can also adjust the valve so it is centered correctly. We can change the geometry of the valve without remaking it.

Which all takes me down the rabbit hole of learning about slide valves.

There are multiple textbooks, written during the age of steam, describing how the valves work and how to design them correctly.

And I haven’t even figured out what questions to ask to figure out what “wire drawing” in steam passages means and how to design the steam passages.

On the good news front, I will be able to get patterns made for everything that needs to be cast. Now to find a foundry to cast them.

I do not look this cool or this hot. More than a few years ago, I gave up on stick welding. I got tired of cussing all the time. I wish I had spent more time learning how to do it well, but I never did. I “upgraded” from a Lincoln Electric “Tombstone” to a Lincoln Electric 140HD. Got a cart and a tank of gas and went to it.

I suck at this. Today I got three of the 8 hangers welded on. That includes the breaker popping twice, because of the extension cord. I’ll get rid of the extension cord today and finish this up.

You might have heard the term “stacking dimes.” There is nothing that pretty happening here. The only thing I can say with confidence is that the hangers ring when struck with a hammer, and they show no signs of cracking off. I’m now to the point where I can get nearly consistent bacon sizzle.

I’m also going to use a different pair of glasses tomorrow. I’m pretty sure that I’m blind through the visor, and not from arc flash. Just the distance isn’t right for my normal progressives. If I tilt my head to focus, the visor window no longer has the arc in view.

Wish me luck. If this gets done, a rattle can worth of yellow paint goes on this monstrosity, and then up into the loft with it.

I am a failure at welding; the fact that it works at all is a happy accident from reasonable equipment.

Update

“How bad?” you might ask. I just picked up the magnetic right angle to weld the other side of the hanger and the hanger came with it. This is why each hanger is individually tested. Yeah, I ran a very pretty bead about 1/16 in above the root.

Yesterday was supposed to be a simple task: wield the eight hangers I made yesterday. They are simple hangers, 6×2 by 1/8, angled at the top with 2 3/8 inch holes to mount to the rafters.

The task for yesterday: dig the I-Beam out of the snow, put it on sawhorses, do a quick prep on the top surface, and then wield the eight hangers at 16 inches on center.

At the start of the day, it was 1° outside and in the machine shop. It got up to almost 20°. My office started at a toasty 50° and was up to nearly 60° by 1000.

Today it will be in the upper 20s, with snow. I’m going to try and make room for the beam in the shop and get this wielded up. If I can get this done, then I’m 90% of the way to completing the hut for the winter.

The following tasks are to install the window with my son’s help, get the rest of the hut insulated. Thats only a few wall bays and the ceiling.

The big issue is that I need to fix the wick on the KW-24 heater.

Wish me luck and I hope you are having a comfortable day.

Oh, I forgot to mention, the snowblower died. I need to replace the carb. This happened just before the skys dumped 8-12 inches of the white evil on us.

Feast time. We spent the entire day preparing, and then people showed up. Then more people showed up.

I hope you are having a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend.

My brother-in-law is an addict. Drugs and alcohol. There is nothing he wouldn’t sell to get booze or drugs. For a while his scam was to con his sister into believing he was starving; she would order him a pizza. He would then sell slices at $2 a slice.

She bought the pizza for $25 delivered. He ate one of the pieces, sold the other 7 and got something from it.

He sold canned goods. He sold his mattress. He sold everything he was given, then begged for more. Always preying on his mother’s and sister’s sympathy. For his mom, it was cleanliness. He would con her into paying for laundry and clothes. For his sister, it was food. With his daughters, it was something else.

Of course you can sell your EBT card. My BIL sold his, many times.

I’ve been working with Grok from xAI. It seems to be better than most of the others I’ve tried. It has done a good job of helping me debug complex systems.

I wouldn’t trust it to provide instructions to pour piss out of a boot.

I was working with it for the configuration of the Amanda backup system. I’m integrating it with my Ceph cluster. While it did an “ok” job of configuring Ceph, for Amanda it was entirely wrong.

Even though it asked, and I provided version numbers, it gave instructions for a configuration method that hasn’t been used in years.

I still don’t have a working Amanda configuration, but I have ideas on how to get there.

Because I’m not a great writer, I use every tool at my disposal to write better. I asked Grok to analyze my article about Charlie.

It insisted that Charlie was still alive and that I was writing some “wish-fulfillment” fictional scenario. I told it to prove that Charlie had been murdered. It did its thing and told me that Charlie had indeed been killed on the 10th.

In the very next prompt, it again insisted that it was a “fictional fact” and that it was merely “alleged” that Charlie had been killed.

One of the things to know about AIs is that the more they need to analyze, the longer it takes and the more “expensive” it becomes. This means that they have a memory or token limit.

This leads to article truncation when it is asked to retrieve web pages.

It told me my article ended abruptly and that it was willing to help write the ending. When it was instructed to print my original article, it showed me the truncated version. When I told it to fetch the complete article, that it had to be a complete <div>, it said it had fetched the article, then proceeded to write its version of the end of the article.

When asked to provide Obama’s statement on the death of Charlie, it showed me three or for articles that only short quoted Obama, leaving out all the context.

AI is an amazing tool. It is still at the verify then verify again stage.

Story Time

I was working with a client on a Magento site. This client was a “digital agency.” They specialized in throwing up WordPress sites for $1500 or so.

They could do this by outsourcing most of the work to an Indian firm.

The CEO was up to give us a talk on using Indian outsourcing. He was very proud of himself for figuring out that these Indian tech firms will claim they can do any technical thing, even if they have no idea what they are doing. You only know if they are any good at the task after you’ve invested in the firm.

He had solved this by going to India and personally investigating a dozen different Indian tech firms before deciding on the one that actually knew how to do WordPress sites.

He had great success using them.

He had asked this same firm, “Do you do Magento?” They had answered in the affirmative. I was the unhappy recipient of their “product”.

My question to that CEO: “Did you ask them if they can do a tech thing? “Yes.” “Do Indian tech firms always say ‘yes’ to that question?” “Yes.” “Did you violate your own rule about trusting Indian tech firms?” “Yes.”

My point is that you can find an AI that does a fantastic job on a task. They might produce great results every day for a month. That doesn’t mean you can trust the next answer it gives. It is just as likely to make it up or lie to you as give you a good, correct answer.

My office chair has been failing for about a year now. The gas tube gave up the fight. The left armrest had cracked. And the entire thing had become one uncomfortable mess.

As somebody who sits in front of his computer for many hours per week, this was unacceptable. Worse, it was painful to sit for more than about an hour. After an hour, the discomfort was making it difficult to program or get other work done.

I bought a new chair. I’ve spent the last couple of hours sitting in it. There are different issues, but mostly it is me getting used to the new chair. It is nice to have my eyes at the correct level for my screens.

Auburn Duck Race

This is an event that Ally has been attending for a few years. She dresses in period garb, does a cooking demo, and sells her cookbooks. Normally I drive her out to the event, drop her and her gear off, head home, and then go and pick her up after the event.

We were both uncomfortable with her being in a crowd after what happened to Charlie, so I went along and stayed. SIG P365, two spare magazines, truck gun briefcase.

Nothing happened; we had fun, plenty of people, some book sales. I got to see one of my clients in person and met his family.

Shit Talk from Leftist

I had mentioned to Ally that the amount of Trump and right bashing on the Reddits had gone down. I spoke too soon. It is still full of hate and evil.

She’s right! Donnie started this!

J6 was the most violent thing in living memory. That’s the problem; MAGA lives in a completely different reality from what is actually going on. They don’t have the mental capacity to apply critical thinking skills, they just ride on hatred and lies.

I think I’m going to have a “speak out” day once a week.

The project list keeps growing.

• Mud the hallway so the wife can paint it after it’s been stripped to the drywall (and then some).
• Finish building the joiner’s chest. This has subprojects:
  • Finish planing the first end to thickness and avoid knots in the future.
  • Sharpen the plane irons for the new planes
  • Finish smoothing and jointing the boards on hand to create the top, front, back, and other side.
    • Repair the broken saw handle.
    • Take the handle off the saw panel.
    • Clean the saw panel.
    • Sharpen the saw.
    • Preserve the saw.
    • Reattach the handle.
    • Repeat for the crosscut saw.
  • Get the rest of the lumber needed
  • Finish the required sides and top.
  • Smooth and plane to thickness the bottom boards.
  • Rabbet the bottom boards (learn how to cut nice rabbets.
• Fill the joiner’s chest in an organized way.
• Build a new 6 board chest for Ally to use in reenacting.
• Build a couple of stools.
• Create a new nut and screw for the leg vise at the Fort.
• Install and configure a new Ceph node to replace an existing node.
• Upgrade the Ceph cluster.
• Build, populate, and configure a new Ceph server.
• Make the new “managed” switch do switching stuff.
• Move the current switch from the internal net to the DMZ
• Loose more weight
• Exercise more.

Boring, but it just keeps growing, and after my wife reads it, I expect her to add to it.

Got busy and forgot to write last night. Take some memes as an apology and checkout Giga Based Dad’s thread for more.

Yes, I took them all from him.