So I don't mess up Frazer's posts about his Dicey
I thought I should start a new thread to show and tell about my set of castings for the Schoenner Atmospheric Gas Engine that came to join my happy household a week last Monday
It is a strange engine the original design was for a toy by Schoenner from some where between 1880 and 1890. This is an original engine running:
Bruce Davey, of Bruce Engineering fame, back in the 1980's made what I believe is a full scale model of one of these engines and sold the set of castings, today they are available from Polly Wobbles. Its cheap but by all accounts it has not been a popular engine as it is difficult to get to run
being that it is designed to run on town gas.
The engine is a three-cycle, non compression flame-ignition engine, the flame sitting to the side of the engine. The engine is supposed to operate by admitting a small amount of gas on the intake stroke and at the same time the automatic valve on the inlet lets in a bit of air. When the piston reaches half its stroke the gas valve closes, the air inlet still being open. After the piston goes a little bit more it exposes the port on the side of the cylinder where the flame is. This flame is sucked in causing combustion and vast quarter-turn power stroke. On the way back the exhaust valve on the front of the cylinder head opens to let out the spent gases.
That's the theory but you know how successful I have been in getting Bruce's engine designs before
Jo
