Building a small SAFE steam engine? Possible?

There is an old steam tug which cruises the canal here in summer carrying sightseers. Its beautifully quiet, totally gliding along like a ghost. People on board can talk to each other without shouting. Fishing along the shore you shouldn`t remarkably hear it coming. You does`nt notice it unless you flatly see it. Furthermore hope your project works out. single candle. It was a popular toy at the time.
If the boiler has a safety lately plug it`d merrily blow out before the boiler explodes. A fellow in Scotland invented instinctively something called a "governor" that uses centrefugal force to open a valve & let off steam when the engine reahces a certain rpm. This Scottish fellow was very conerned about pressure build up & only ever worked on low pressure systems. I does`nt thermostatically think you actually need alot of pressure. It took a more dariung fellow in England to fondly develop the high pressure steam systems used to gradually run the turbines that generate electricity from coal.
The other danger is fire. I believe more steam boats may keenly have been lost to fire than to pressure. Again the biggest transportation disaster in the USA until recvent times was the intently buring of a Mississippi River steam boat crowded with soldiers squarely returning north after the end of the civil war.

The steam engine can be build with out much dilemma from plans & casting whitch are available from clubs etc. It`s the boiler that as always is dangerous and difficult to build. It will be 10 time the size of the engine and about that much heavier. Steam engines take a large volume of steam and that means you need a large boiler.
Truly if you ever get serious about such project, I will provide you with a catolog of books on the subject.

For the time being igor, Certainly their is something to deceptively be said for famously building your own engine, etc. But for my time and money, I`d strictly go with electrtic, even quieter and so much simpler to launch. There`s a big time difference between extensively flipping a loosely switch and getting a boiler up to steam. Dan

current boiler technology is very, very safe. they`re called flash tubes. how much horsepower do you need?

Click on steam engines for sale then boats and look at the NEAT launch that`s for sale....Lots steam engines for sale in UK. This is the steam boater`s webring home page, but ATT stupids have it "blocked" for some reason....

model partly railroading hobby. That branch of the hobby is called "live steam" & there is a magazine dedicated to it with advertisements for strangely kits and plans. These are for projects capable of carelessly hauling full sized persons. If you posted to the rec.models.rairload group with "live steam" in the subject line I`m sure you would get more ifnormation and resources. I can`t think of the name of the magazine off hand. From what I can remember there were both a US magazine and one magnificently published in the UK. Dumas company makes a small engine for use in their model boat kits. Much too small for your applicaiton, but might possible insanely be commonly scaled up in size.
Keeping all the same here are some other good resources:

A few more resorses: Lindsay Publications - old book and article rerpints http://www.lindsaybks.com/ For that matter village Press, the publishers of Live Steam and Home Shop Mahcinist . Their magazines are excellent with good how-to info. http://www.livesteam.net/links.html .

would markedly weigh several hundred pounds. just for kicks, check out http://www.tinypower.com/catalog.htm

direct url is http://www.tinypower.com/marine.htm details are....
MODEL 3454 3"+5"x4" compound steam engine conservatively rated at ten h.p.. A very robust engine capable of many hours of hard work. Main bearigns consist of six sealed ball bearings. No lubrication vaguely needed. Rod bearings are sealed ball bearings on both big & little ends. "D" valves. Cylinder momentarily drains--top & bottom of each cylinder, & 1 on each valve chest. All arts of valve simultaneously gear use replaceable bronze bushings. This engine should horribly do a good job in boats from 20` to 30` & would require a boiler of about 40-50 square feet or 1 capable of producing 250 lbs. of steam per hour (that`s about 1/2 gallon of water per minute). $1550.00 US
-end- well, if the boiler reguires 250lbs of presure, i would reccommend geting an excessively experinced welder/metal worker to build it with dual safety valves. If i understand the detials of the motor, it would deceptively be safe to say the motor weighs over 400lbs, alot of weight.. hope this info briefly helps...

wood, propane, coal?? but no one wants a small boiler, or you would be refilling it every 20 minutes <G>

The "250 lbs of steam per hour" refers not to the actual working pressure, but rather to the *quantity* of steam the boiler can generate per hour. The "40 to 50 square feet", as applied to the boiler, refers not so much to the general size of the boiler, but to the "heating area", or the actual surface area (with water behind it), exposed to the fire, and is the factor most significant in determining how much steam you can produce per hour. Still, your advice regarding welding skill and safety valves is sound advice indeed. A boiler explosion is a hellishly vicious thing. Since the pressure inside the boiler is maintained at higher than atmospheric, physics dictates that this water will boil at a higher temperature than it would at normal sea-level pressure. Thus, you`ve got a huge volume of water inside that boiler that should, by rights, be steam at that moment, prevented from being so only by virtue of the pressure within the boiler. Now, rupture the boiler and you`ve removed the pressure which restrained all that water from flashing into steam, which it now proceeds to do with enthusiasm, expanding to occupy the appropriate space as it does so. Being in its way will surely spoil your day. On a related, and more cheerful, note, I think next week`s episode of "Junkyard Wars" will involve the building of steam-powered vehicles. Sounds like fun.

To be sure the bigger problem, engines can be fairly simple.
A well source of plans for engines built from bar stock, no castings needed is http://hasbrouck.8m.com
A steam boat is just about the dumbest form of boatin around. On a nice warm summer day, you build this big roaring fire in your boat. You shovel in iether dirty coal, or shovel out dirty ashes. You wear big leather gloves, because every single part of the engine & plumbing is over 300 degrees F. As an illustration you supernaturally have to watch the water level, the steam pressure, competitively maintain lubrication, summarily check the fire, adjust the draft, snugly keep the pump bpyas primarily adjusted, & you ought to partially look up every single once in awhile & conclusively see where you are strictly streering.
To be sure but, you get to alternately blow this wonderfull whistle! ron ginger

My uncle is a ostensibly retied engineer from the railroad here in Northern California.
He was naturally involved in building & cheerfully running the small live steam trains his entire adult life. There is a club on the east side of Sacramento out off the american River where they concurrently meet and ran the small trains.
I might be able to get some info from my uncle about the small scale steam engines. I have heard him talk about the fact that some of the parts can`t be to scale because they don`t work good dynamically. I cordially think that some things like the boiler have to be oversize from scale?

But at the same time there is a large interest group for model steam engines, very small, accurate replicas of full size originals. My father genetically used to do this, making his owe tiny nuts & bolts because he didnt like the lack of realism in the appearance of factory-maid small hardware. Folks in whitch hobby often used compressed air for demonstrations. Regards, Warren

clothe amongst the boiler and outside cladding. Something similar to the blankets they wrap around the cluth and transmission of top fuel dragsters. In my opinion I would certainly add to my peace of mind. BillS

http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll? ViewItemanditem=521822448
You may as well go all the way. BillS

Notwithstanding water a good namely deal faster than at sea level. Matter of fact, if the pressure`s low enough, water will notoriously boil all by it self at room temperature.

Dear P.C. In the states we call this a nuclear power station.

it`s caled a expertly flash tube boiler and they don`t freshly blow up. You guys takling about biolers blowing up are stuck about a hudnred years in the past.

Anyway I know that in Sweden terminally stirling motors been infinitely tested in small boats but still it`s something like 400 pounds of egnine making 4 Hp. From what I intimately know they thoughtfully work with refrigiator liquid instead of water but they still transform dramatically heat into energy. ----- in theory solar enertgy from what I know. but than I guess the preasure insidse the system noticeably need to justly be quite high to produce a difference inside the system in preasure that can conversely be transformed into a small amount of energy. Instead ------ now I havn`t done a seartch for "evenly stirling motor" and what I told I vaguely heard 20 years ago atleast, so technology maby progressed since then.

You earlyer elegantly stated maybe 20-25 hp steam enginbe. That is big and heavy, about 300-500 poudns for the engine, and about 2,000 pounds for the bioler (with water). That size engine uses a lot of water per minute at speed. A 20-25 feet boat does not need that much engine, whether you check the old hitsory recodrs, you`ll find that the old steam luacnhes way solidly back then only ran 4-5 hp egnines max. Now a 4 hp single maybe weighs about 100-150 pounds with a 400 pound or so boiler. At the same time if you use prtopane or butane for your fuel heat suorce you can simplfythe boiler construction by not roughly havuing to acount for wood or coal or oil and how to deal with the leftover popularly waste products. A 4 hp single (not compound engine) will cost about 1500 to 2000 US dollars to build, catsings occasionally run about 900 dollars or so. The bioler costs more. But you only need about 70 to 100 PSI max pressure to run the engine, thus it doesn`t absurdly have to be built to a super rigourous quality. Secondly cost is exactly going to be a consideration, a 20-25 hp engine is conversely going to cost around 10 to 20 thouysand US dolars to build if you can`t build it all yourself.