My then head of department made the hot-air engine circa.1968, although, my memory tells me he didn’t make the base a cast aluminium one. My memory also says the author suggested some tubing from a scrapped bicycle frame for one of the components. It ran very well and was always a great success at parents evenings especially when many of the parents were hugely skilled personnel from the railway works.  He used a bunsen burner as a source of heat.

Edited By Niloch on 02/10/2011 19:09:10

I work as a school design & technology technician & looking through our library one day I discovered the steam engine book, I built one straight away for my grandson & some of the lads showed intrest, so I decided to run a lunchtime ”model club”, I made a pattern for the baseplate as opposed to the original folded steel ones & the lads cast them in alloy in our foundry [me pouring of course] & to date we’ve built 12 of them & they’re a really robust little engine. I wrote an article & it was published in the model engineer on 8th april 2009 [& I got paid for it!!!] a colleague built the hot air engine & it runs very well so I made a pattern for the baseplate for that & cast & machined a few of them up & have started to make a couple, apparently Mr TE haynes was still alive a couple of yrs ago as someone wrote to M.E. kindly commenting on my article & informing us, he also wrote one on making an electric motor as well,[ a really good craftsman& writer!!]

We did not have teachers that were interested in steam only go karts and bikes.

Humbug

brian

Yes I made one at school (my parents still have it) and I'm still making them as presentation pieces today.

Peter, If you want a copy of the drawings I would be happy to oblige.

Edited By Lofty76 on 04/09/2014 18:46:42

As a couple of people have shown an interest in this engine, I've created an album of a build.

All the best

Lofty

I remember my metalwork classes at school fondly it was a brand new Secondary Modern school with two new ml7 a drill, forge and usual hand tools.

The Teacher had an interest in model engineering and built a Sun steam engine I made an Edgar Westbury Theseus that was the start of my interests in engineering as a hobby.

There seemed to be a lot of common sense in those days not so much health and safety as today.

My rose tinted glasses are slipping again.

Paul

Edited By Windy on 31/10/2014 11:51:55

I was told recently that engineering apprentices at a local college make stationary steam engines as their project. Part of the judgement of the quality of workmanship is to run the engine on the lowest possible compressed air pressure. The better the build the better it runs.

The better the build the better it runs.

I'm not entirely convinced of that the engine with least friction engine probably runs smoothest at low air pressure, which may mean some pretty sloppy fits.

The real test is which one runs at lowest pressure under load.

Neil

An even better test than a steam engine is the hot air engine, see how slow that will run, then see how fast on the minimum of heat/smallest burner. A steam engine with a good size flywheel will run slow.

Ian S C