Jason, you are correct, the throatplate is in compression against the barrel. I had assumed that the throatplate was curved to fit on the outside of the barrel. This is an insignificant difference that could have ramifications? Not noticed that the instructions were to position it as drawn. The Allchin is drawn similarly.
Duncan, the most highly stressed joint in a static engine is the longitudinal barrel seam, but how does this change if you are driving it over rough ground, or even a road?
FEA! Count me out. But why does the barrel show patches of blue and green? The whole shell is pressurised to the same pressure, so variations like that show something os wrong with the calculations?
Zan, narrowing the firebox rather than the water spaces is obviously the way to go, get no water movement at all in 1.5mm. I don't dispute that many, tens of thousands, of boilers have been made, it was the question in the ME I was echoing, where are they? I rather suspect that more get scrapped than run an engine. Nothing to back it up, but the always repeated how to stop leaks with every design. One was to put some bran, or something, inside and pressurise it whilst shaking.
I don't wish to take on the whole ME community about boilers, of which I have made none, but they are expensive in materials, solder, gas, time and everything else and didn't want a dud. I decided to make a couple of Minnie boilers, simply because they were small and would cost around £350 each, before trying the BB boiler, £1000+?
SoD makes the statement that copper tears slowly. From where does he get that fact? Used to have lots of The Engineer, and read the explosion reports, and the size of the area that the bits were thrown. Iron is much stronger than copper yet it didn't seem to stop an explosive explosion. Go and read the srticle about the failing boilers made with Silfos, weeping joints, would have been interesting to have pressurised them until they failed.