Designing a boat at age 12

Very good, very good, The Minn Kota on the same side is the much better one for 20$more!!! Read the buyers guide.

 

alright.

 

Haha! my mom burnt my teacher!!!! I tell you the story tomorrow.

 

Welll, the time zone i'm in it's 10:41 am. so, my teacher called, and said she was coming thursday, (she usually comes on friday) I do online schooling, so I do school at the house. And on friday, the teacher comes to check my progress. So, I would've had to get my work done really fast, But, my mom called the teacher and said that she had an apointment with her neighbor that day. And my teacher usally comes a 8:00 am, but since we reschedualed, She is coming at 2:30 in the afternoon on friday!! 10 and 1/2 more days to my birthday!!! (where I live)

 

Thought she burnt her by using your new boiler.

Go for the Minn Kota! The rest comes in asecond step.

R.R.

 

My birthday is on saturday, so no school for me on my birthday!! I think I oughta build the boat first... but I have to wait until I move to Texas. I'll have plenty of time to jack around with the steam engine, like attaching a pully to the shaft and seeing how much weight it can lift. Is that the right way to measure torque? if not please give me a way to measure torque (in pounds). I know that a six hp gasoline engine has 9.0 ft pounds in torque, so if the engine was you, then you would be putting 9 pounds of pressure on a shaft, with a handle on it to turn it? http://www.northerntool.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product_6970_200347226_200347226

 

No..............but
in principle yes, if you take the lenght of the involved lever into account! Notice the difference between torque as a static momentum and torque as a power!
My English is´nt sufficient to go much deeper here, and imperial is a mess, please use Wikipedia to read the law of nature in deep.
Regards
Richard

 

horsepower (mechanical) = 33000 ft·lbf/min = 550 ft·lbf/s so, 6 hp = 99000 foot pounds of torque per minute, or 3300 foot pound of torque per second. Nice huh? I need to know more about steam engine torque though. So, 1 ftlb of torque is=to:1.3558179483314004 joules exactly, 1 joule = the power to lift a small apple 1 meter straight up in the air (in simple terms). So, I could have a basket , with a few small apples, and I could keep adding small apples until it can't lift anymore, then I could convert it to joules, then torque. Then I'd have figured out how much torque my steam engine has. One joule is equal to: 0.7376 ft·lbf of torque. You think I might be able to make that boat into a micro houseboat? Well, here's an example... http://www.duckworksbbs.com/plans/jim/dockbox/index.htm

 

Every idiot who knows someone with a neighbour who has seen a hammer, can build this boat. So why not you?
You have seen the model?
http://www.duckworksmagazine.com/06/Projects/dockbox/index.htm
But as shown there.... absolutely sheltered waters only! And it will not live long. But it is perfect to use the Minn Kota because it easily accommodates the batteries sheltered!
Regards
Me

 

o.k "me." I see. How about this one? how long do ya think it would live?
http://www.duckworksbbs.com/plans/jim/harmonica/index.htm

 

Same life, but too heavy, do you have a car and trailer? The first one is a heavy boat too! Every square inch of boat you have to cover with a sealant (glass Epoxy), that means cost, weight, time.

Please do not come up with the next boat, I will not disappoint you, but I do´nt have the time to go through every new idea, sorry. I have to build two new Container Harbours here. That means I daily have to deal with the governement, the operator, prospective clients, have to make the businessplan, the architecture, the financing, the construction and all the related stuff of a several billion Euro investment. Usually a job to keep some 140 to 200 employees busy. I do it with a secretary only. I hope you understand. Building boats is just my hobby, even though I do it in larger scales.
Naturally I´ll stay with your project and like to provide every possible guidance. But that has to be done a mature way, means I have to understand your target. I am absolutely unable to follow a new one every day. Very sorry.
Regards
Richard

 

I'll leave you alone, Then when I have built my boat, I'll send you some photos of it. I'll send photos of the steam engine also, after I get it. You have helped me alot thanks! I don't need anymore help.
Mike J.

 

Nono, do´nt misunderstand me, I like to assist with your project! I should, I am a project developer! I just cannot go too deep into daily changing thoughts, thats all. So please keep me informed!
Kindest regards
Richard

 

.....................

You did that on purpose.... My wife doesnt like tech museums..... So when she told me to just take my time cos' she had found a sofa... She had actually found a "Cray".... Didnt belive my eyes, the watchman had steam blasting from his ears......

And one more thing on the "todo" list...; Kent, and another museum, if Im in the "area"....

For info of Cray:
http://www.universitetsavisa.no/ua_lesmer.php?kategori=nyheter&dokid=456e91b62c9420.67787431 (Part of it does actually look lika a sofa ..).

Btw;
1 litre of water, heated to 180 deg C, will cause a pressure of approx 12 bar. If released quickly, it'll expand to somthing in the area 180-200 litres atmospheric pressure. A perfect recipee(?) for a bad day will be (a lot of) hot metal parts flying through the air in 200 km/h, include hot steam with a tendency to scold the skin of any living creature nearby. To that add a restricted area with small escape possibilities, and a burning/ sinking boat....
Oh well; I belive that I once calculated out that you need 3 litres of overheated water, and you can replace that with 1 bar of dynamite. I did that consideration/ calculation sitting on a boiler, testing safety functions, testing volume was 3000 litres..... I have abselutely no problem with remembering how the hair of my body started to rise.....(something wrong here....??). Consider a boiler as an explosion already happened, Its a spring you wind up. And its the grace of the steel, good builders and God thats between you and an urgent appointment with St. Peter.

Just my pessimistic rambling here.....

Go for the Kudo or a small outboard - First.

Some links to the accident that shaped the rules for calculations and the opened the eyes for the need for regulations for the steam industry:

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~genepool/sultana.htm
http://freepages.history.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~indiana42nd/Sultana.htm

The first rules were written with blood....

There have also been speculation about that this caused the explosion:
The Courtenay Coal torpedo:
http://192.220.96.192/coal.htm

(well...; the North did hollow out wood, preparated that in a similar way and tried to smuggle that into the stores of the Confederates ) .

 

Hi again 'confused'

Running a steam-powered generator to keep a couple of batteries charged up, and having the main drive as electric, could be made to work. You could think of it as a very small, fossil-fuel-powered version of the massive, nuclear-fuelled steam turbines that drive the generators of big Navy ships!

I had a look at the motor you posted earlier from HarborFreight. It is a single-phase induction motor with capacitive start. Unfortunately, this type of motor cannot easily be converted to a generator without a lot of heavy, expensive control circuitry (ie, a regenerative VFD, which would cost a few thousand bucks).

The MinnKota equivalent of that trolling motor you found would probably be a good match for a boat like this. These things are 12 or 24 volt, which is fairly easy to work with. Why not do the generation at this voltage, too?

I'd suggest giving your local auto wrecker a call to see if you can track down a used truck alternator with the same voltage as your chosen motor. Then run it with a belt drive from the steam engine. This would be fairly cheap and compact, and by playing with pulley sizes you can get both the steam engine and the alternator running at appropriate speeds. A 40 to 60 A, 12 V alternator would be comfortably driven by a 1 hp steam engine.

Please do keep us posted on how your project is coming. No doubt you'll have plenty more questions come up during the design and build process, we're here to help