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Kearsarge Windlass Engines

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crueby:
The next engine has been decided on, its actually going to be a pair of engines that work together to drive the rope and chain windlasses on the battleship Kearsarge.  They were designed and built by the American Ship Windlass Company in 1897, and sold as the 'Providence Steam Winch' model. The Kearsage, BB-5, was launched in 1898 and named after the sloop Kearsarge that sank the Confederate ship CSS Alambama in the US Civil War.

I was able to download a complete set of drawings for the original winch assembly from the US National Archives, which has quite a large collection of engineering drawings for the Kearsarge, including a huge steering engine that I may model someday (CAD version already drawn). The archives has a lot of ship and ships engine drawings, some of which are digitized and available online, others have to be accessed and copied in person at their facility. Quite a good source of information!

Since downloading these drawings back in 2022, I have made a CAD 3D model of them at full size, and after deciding on a scale for this model (1:10), have copied that model and am generating the 2D drawings to work from at the smaller scale. Here is a screen capture of the engines:

In the center foreground is a 15x14 two cylinder steam engine that drives the anchor chain windlass behind it through a large worm gear. The handwheel visible on the back column of the engine moves the reverse links. Over on the left side is another engine, an 8x8 two cylinder engine that drives the rope drums visible at the far left and right sides. This engine has a two speed gearbox buiilt in, with the gear shifting hand lever sticking up on the left in yellow and the reverse lever next to it in pink. These two engines would be housed in a small deckhouse near the bow of the ship, with the one engine attached to the inside of the wall, the two control levers going through the walls to be accessible from out on deck. The chain winch engine was controlled from inside the deckhouse, the chain coming in through openings in the front wall of the house, and then dropping down through large openings in the base plate to a storage locker on a lower deck.

With the model made at 1:10 scale, the cylinders will have a 0.8" bore on the smaller engine, and 1.5" on the larger engine. This scale lets me stick with 2-56 screws on most of the parts, and will give a model large enough to work on easily while still being fairly compact (at least when compared with some of my other models!) When he is done helping Tghs with his Navy launch model, maybe Slim can come help on this one!   :Lol:

So far I have the 2D plans generated for the smaller engine, and I'll build that one first. Most of it is like a typical 2 cylinder mill engine, with the 2-speed gears added, plus the crosshead guide has a curved cross section to keep that part interesting. The engine bed will be pieced up from flat stock, with thick stock used for the center section, and smaller flat bars used to form the outer perimeter and the supports for the engine.
I got lucky and had just enough 4" wide flat stock left over to make the two engine bed plates from. They'll get the top surface milled back to form the various mounting lugs and supports for the engine and bearing blocks, and have the perimeter added on from smaller bars. The two engine bed sections bolt together in the center. Actual construction has started today, with the blanks cut to rough length, and paper prints of the top views glued to them to help as a guide in locating all the holes/recesses:

Since printed plans are close but not precise (having worked in the printer industry I know how much they can be off across a sheet), I'll use them as a guide but will reference all locations from the edges of the actual stock. First up will be to trim the plates to length and width on the mill. To get started on that the larger plate, which will hold the engine, has been clamped onto the mill table, up on some 1-2-3 blocks to get them in reach of the end mill while keeping the cutter from hitting the mill table.

I'll start out by trimming the ends/sides, then start in on the various hole and recesses... Should be an interesting build!
Chris

steamer:
Oh imA  digging this!

Art K:
Chris,
Should be a really big show!
Art

Krypto:
 :popcorn:

Looks like a lot of modeling coming-up!

cnr6400:
 :ThumbsUp: :ThumbsUp: :ThumbsUp: :popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn:

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