No 60 Boiler

[Kim]

Glad you were able to get that broken bit cleaned up and taken care of!  That's wonderful news!  

Pictures should be easy to attach to your post.  I you look just below the white box your type the text for your reply in, you should see the words "+ Attachments and other options".  If you click on that It will pop up some options and below that you will see "Attach:" and a "Choose File" button.  If you click the "Choose File" button it will take you to a file explorer like interface where you can select the picture(s) that you want to attach.  The pictures are size limited.  I think <500K each.  But please, resize your pics to something like 800x600 or 1024x768.  That is plenty large enough for the forum and not only saves space but makes it a better experience for people with slower internet connections.

As for the comsol - I'm not really familiar with that, but when I did a google search, it came up with soft solder.  Are you planning to use soft solder there? I have heard it's best not to use soft solder for these applications.

Kim

[Admiral_dk]

Great news that you solved the broken bit problem 

Sorry but not the right person to answer the other question .....

Per                 

[vtsteam]

Great that the drill bit is out, quite a relief I'm sure! Never heard of comsol.

Re pics: exactly what Kim said, but with some operating systems also, if you open your photo folder you can just drag a photo file into the message attachment box and that works as well as using the file explorer.

[Midland60]

Backhead  back to normal, superheater fixed, have a stinking cold but happy. First we need to get the strip along the poor old girl's belly and then off to get a cert, hopefully!!!

Will try to show you a few pics and then we might move onto restoration!!!!
Cheers David

[Midland60]

Just catching up with your replies, YES, thanks it worked.
I am new to an Apple Mac Air so finding how to get pictures down to size is another exploration!!

Comol is a 'not too soft solder' with a 396F melting point so ideal for a small fix on silver soldered work with a little 'hole'. It did the superheater this afternoon so maybe we go with it. One drawback is that once used you cannot go back to silver soldering, it has some muck in it!

I have to add a small comment from my Dad living in Canada for 60 years, for the American readers. In Britain, using soft solder we use a soldering iron. My dad called once to ask why do the Americans call it a sodding iron. No idea Dad why? Because if you pick it up at the wrong end it is sodding hot!!!!

Back to work on the photos!
Cheers David

PS Just found how to reduce picture size, watch this space!!!!
cheers

[vtsteam]

According to the company it is a soft solder composed of 1.5% Silver,  5% Tin,  93.5% Lead.
With a 296C melting point (565F)

[internal_fire]

Comol is a 'not too soft solder' with a 396F melting point so ideal for a small fix on silver soldered work with a little 'hole'. It did the superheater this afternoon so maybe we go with it. One drawback is that once used you cannot go back to silver soldering, it has some muck in it!

I suspect that heating an old boiler up to silver soldering temperature could lead to a complete disaster.  As is well known, soft solder was used in the past for the entire boiler, along with rivets for strength of course.

In this application it would seem that Comsol or similar is the best choice.

Gene

[Midland60]

Ha Ha superheater fixed, now holds 200 lbs, we are on our way. Been a bit quiet we have sticking colds around here, more next week.  And poor old Tsimplyloco is back from India via Qatar airways with food poisoning, not too well. We wish him good progress to get better!!
Cheers David

[Midland60]

Life for No 60 has moved on over the past 8 days. First Janie and I have had ghastly colds and been laid flat out for a few days. The idea of going out to the workshop was the last thing I needed.  But,
we got a bit better and I solved the last weepy problem so now the boiler holds 220 lbs fine for a quarter of an hour. Have now put the decorative strip of copper along the 'zipper' bottom and she looks good. Again took her up to 15 bar which is 217 psi. So on Friday I will present said boiler to the examiners and see if they can hold the pressure at 15 bar. Once that s dn there is no exceed]se to give me the cert I need.
Have taken photos. but they are dragging behind. Once I cab get them into my Mac and then down to size I will show them here.Then I think we close this thread and we can get onto the rebuild!

Cheers David

[springcrocus]

Best of luck, David. I'm sure that the truss you have fitted to her underside will stop her belly sagging. 
Regards, Steve

[uuu]

Excellent.   

Wilf

[Kim]

Glad to hear you've gotten it past the pressure testing, at least, for yourself. Now lets hope if passes for the inspectors too!

Looking forward to the pics.
Kim

[Midland60]

Best of luck, David. I'm sure that the truss you have fitted to her underside will stop her belly sagging. 
Regards, Steve

Steve
That is a very rude thing to say about an absolutely gorgeous Victorian old lady, Will bring her to your next IOW rally so you may kneel and beg forgiveness. I have anyway asked that she Knight you for services to (my)  locos and as she lives just down the road you should be in like fln!!!!! For our American colleagues, Queen Victoria had a summer place at Osbourne House on the IOW, look it up on Google quite a nice little summer cottage as they say!!!!

Will post the pictorial story, now that I can get photos off my iPhone into the computer, that was the challenge!
Cheers David

[Midland60]

. . . . and may I add that with encouragement from Portland, OR, FL and Denmark how can anyone go wrong. And BTW, comsol is a solder that melts at about 396 deg F, lower than solver solder, hence its use!
David

[Midland60]

Hi all
This boiler inspection business is starting to get me down as each time I take it for inspection there is another little nitpick!!  Last Friday, a couple of days ago, one of the inspectors glanced at it and said, 'don't like to look of that'. I was so annoyed, I simply picked it up and left. I must be slightly careful in what I say as I have been bollacked once being rude to them but I just wish they would follow the 'code'. First off all the code calls for 'an' (meaning one)  inspector and 'a' witness and 'the' owner. With this lot, four of them descend on the damn thing. Next I was required to change all fastenings from brass to phosphorus bronze, not a code requirement, just their whim. Then we get to the scratches, how deep are they? Maybe 5 thou, maybe even 10 thous.
With the able help from 'springcrocus' and wu (Wilf) in the IoW club the idea of the copper strip was born. It is really only a sop to these people here as one can see from the numbers. To assess how thick the walls should be let's look at Martin Evan's drawing, it requires 3/32 seamless copper tube. That is .094 thick. The actually thickness of my boiler is .109. KN Harris in his boiler making book calls for .072. Tubal Cain in The Model Engineers Handbook calls for .059 so one could conclude that there is lots of metal there anyway. The last claim was that the scratches give rise to stress 'risers'. I am not an engineer but understand what that means. But what effect might this have? one would need a stress engineer or metalogist (Sp??). Certainly none of our boiler testers are engineers just hobbyists. The trouble is that the man who fixes your central heating calls himself an engineer, we know the driver of a steam loco in England is the driver but in the USA he is the engineer and so on. Perhaps the fact that I own a lathe makes me an engineer!!!! The problem is that the BTC (Boiler Test Code) allows jumped up tin gods to be the final authority there is no appeal procedure so one has to be patient until they run out of excuses to fail the boiler.
When my Princess of Wales Boiler needed a hydraulic after 30 years successful operation, they made me take the lagging off and they were genuinely sorry that they could not find anything wrong. So we soldier on patiently, thanks for letting me let off steam!!  And btw people ask why the club runs so few locos.
Cheers David