Vertical boiler plans.

[ron]

Hi All
Can anyone suggest a source of plans to make a vertical copper boiler, coal or [preferably] gas fired, say about 4/5" dia and 8/10" long.
Ron

[havoc]

Do you mean 4/5" as in 0.8" or do you mean 4" to 5"? Because I don't think you would find them that small.

[ron]

Woops, that was badly layed out, I meant 4" to 5" as I'm sure you knew.
Ron

[Old Biker]

3" vertical test boiler by Tubal Cain - ME vol.143pp191 (1977)
5" vertical test boiler by Tubal Cain - ME vol.144pp965 (1978)

I made the 3" (gas fired) - ideal for running small engines

Mark

[Tel]

I prefer a horizontal boiler, as the verticals tend to overshadow the engines. The 'Monarch Steam Plant' by E.L.Yallop?, published in EIM many moons ago is a good, sound design using a 4" diameter barrel. I've built three of thee plants over the years

[Tel]

PM me you email address Ron, you never know wot might trurn up in the mail

[chris vine]

Hi Ron,

I have the book here by KN Harris, Model Boilers and Boilermaking. In the back are several designs for boilers of various shapes and sizes. One is a vertical of 6" diameter.

You are welcome to borrow it if you like or I could scan some pages for you

Chris.

[jackrae]

Why not base your model on an actual vertical boiler
The local company where I was brought up was Cochrane Boilers who specialised in making vertical boilers. They latterly changed to horizontals but their original designs were all vertical.
I'm sure you could obtain copies of their designs from some engineering archives but if not I could see what i could scrounge from old collegues who used to work there.
regards
Jack

[GeorgeRay]

Weren't Cochranes the company that used wiggly firetubes in their verticals. Not sure how you could model those in our sizes though.

[jackrae]

George
Yes, I believe they were called "sinuflow" but if memory serves me correctly I think they were a fairly recent inovation (1960s) and were used only on their horizontal models called the "Chieftain" range.

Around Annan, where their plant was based, you'd be amazed at the number of private houses that had sinuflow tubes in the front gardens in place of the normal wrought iron fences and most seemed to be painted in the Cochrane green to boot. It was quite a nice pale shade, not unlike the modern Myford green. I can only assume that their QC was quite strick and the rejection rate of supplied tube material and paint was quite high - haha

I believe the original vertical boiler design was first drawn out in the flyleaf of a bible - the sermon must have been really inspiring.

The beauty of the design was that the smoke box was at the front of the boiler so access to the rear wasn't required - until you needed to do a tube replacement -

Jack

[GeorgeRay]

Jack
When I was doing my Apprenticeship at RAE back in the late 50's we had a vertical Sinuflow driving a Sissons twin cylinder compound for our thermodynamics practicals on steam engines. I understood from our lecturer that the wiggles were to improve heat transfer in the vertical boiler. I wouldn't have thought they were really necessary in a horizontal boiler but I have just learned something I guess that shows you're never too old although it some times feels like it nowadays.

[jackrae]

The following site shows one of the old cochran verticals (one before and one after preservation)

oldenginehouse.users.btopenworld.com/fboiler.htm

Obviously this is a fire-tube boiler with all tubes being straight and horizontal.
Note that the boiler is of rivetted construction with all tubes roll-expanded.

Fire goes into a box at the back, then comes forward through the tubes and exists up the chimney sitting on top of the smoke box (well that's what they called it but everyone I looked into would be better described as a soot box.

This design was originally of solid fuel firing but many were converted to liquid fuel by simply installing a conventional force fired burner in through the fire door.

Many were to be found in ships acting as donkey boilers when in port.

Jack

[dscott]

Dear Chris Vine,

I would also be very interested in a scan of the 6" vertical boiler for the De Winton engine,
I sometimes do some building of.

David Scott.

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