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Spent the night with Estelle at her and her daddy's house last night.
Made her and Strawberry's hearts happy with Granny's overnight stay at her house.
So today every time today I sit down I go to sleep.
Estelle and I only had one disagreement last night.
This Granny wasn't sleeping on the top bunk of the bunk bed.
So Estelle started on the top bunk with other bonus grand daughter.
Strawberry started out on bottom bunk with Granny.
Strawberry, both girls and Granny ended up on couch.
I got home about 1030 this morning.
Got the car unloaded, backpack emptied.
I'm pooped.
 
We have spent the last couple of days with granddaughters and adventures. The science center, zoo, lantern festival, and a sleep over. Getting back to normal this afternoon. Glad the trips to the big city are behind us. Don't like the traffic one bit. There were more near misses than in the last year and a half.


I entertained myself by dealing with the chaos of my work bench and completed processing the copper and brass that I harvested from the remodel house.

20210821_172128.jpg


Some of the fittings will be stowed with my plumbing parts. The copper pipe has been cut into cubit length sections to be melted down for casting adventures.

I did get a new addition to my collection of ICS engineering books. Most my collection came from The Princess's grand father that studied engineering via mail order. They date back to the early 1900s and are interestingly devoid of any calculus.

20210821_180113.jpg


The new one is focused on steam engine governors.

20210821_180256.jpg


20210821_180157.jpg


I am interested in governors because the steam engine I own is intended for use in a steam fired launch where the engine is coupled to a propeller and always has some load on it. But to use the engine to drive a line shaft shop safely I need a governor to account for no or changing loads. A steam engine with no load has no theoretical upper limit aside from catastrophic failure. That would be bad.

My attempts to find a ready made governor of appropriate size has come up empty. They are available for toy steam engines but not for a 2 HP engine on Amazon. Ebay and the like have larger ones in questionable condition priced as antiques. So I figure I will have to figure out to make my own.

Nuff rambling for now.

Behave!

Ben
 
Just got back from a town trip I wasn't planning on. The small private butcher who is cutting my 1.5 cows for me, called to say he was going to be two days late getting it done. Apparently, the town dump won't let him dump the scraps anymore and he needs to work on a solution.

I told him him he just found one. I will take all of his scraps. I headed for town and picked up 25 lbs of meat scraps plus the hearts, livers, tongues and tails from two young steers.

I also got twenty lbs of pork fat and pork scraps. He says he is about to cut up four big pigs and there is lots of good fat on the way. I say, " keep it all refrigerated and I will see you on Tuesday". I guess my two spare freezers are now going to be full of dog scraps and fat for rendering when I get time.

My dogs and chickens are going to be plenty pleased with this new state of affairs. I know I am sure tickled pink.
 
Neb said:
We have spent the last couple of days with granddaughters and adventures. The science center, zoo, lantern festival, and a sleep over. Getting back to normal this afternoon. Glad the trips to the big city are behind us. Don't like the traffic one bit. There were more near misses than in the last year and a half.


I entertained myself by dealing with the chaos of my work bench and completed processing the copper and brass that I harvested from the remodel house.

View attachment 71206

Some of the fittings will be stowed with my plumbing parts. The copper pipe has been cut into cubit length sections to be melted down for casting adventures.

I did get a new addition to my collection of ICS engineering books. Most my collection came from The Princess's grand father that studied engineering via mail order. They date back to the early 1900s and are interestingly devoid of any calculus.

View attachment 71207

The new one is focused on steam engine governors.

View attachment 71208

View attachment 71209

I am interested in governors because the steam engine I own is intended for use in a steam fired launch where the engine is coupled to a propeller and always has some load on it. But to use the engine to drive a line shaft shop safely I need a governor to account for no or changing loads. A steam engine with no load has no theoretical upper limit aside from catastrophic failure. That would be bad.

My attempts to find a ready made governor of appropriate size has come up empty. They are available for toy steam engines but not for a 2 HP engine on Amazon. Ebay and the like have larger ones in questionable condition priced as antiques. So I figure I will have to figure out to make my own.

Nuff rambling for now.

Behave!

Ben
Click to expand...
Wait a minute~ "the steam engine I own" Um hello! Where do you keep that? And are you assembling the rest of the locomotive somewhere? 😇
MoBookworm1957 said:
It's on the laptop right above the 8.
Click to expand...
Mine has the asterisk. I could google it but, eh.

Started out with coffee. Got up and had just started a load of laundry and started in on some left over dishes & the power went out. Estimated time of restoration was 1PM. I had lard to render and corn to can so I did a couple things and was just preparing to pull the propane burner out and get things set up for old fashioned style living and the power came back on - yay. I was harassing Hubby with "Why can't we just flip the switch and use the generator?" laughing. I was thankful it came back on primarily for the sake of hot water for doing dishes. Cleaned 38 ears making 21 pints of corn, rendered lard, made apple torte and homemade icecream for dinner tonight with oldest niece and her boyfriend. We haven't met him yet, but his sister was born the same day as my daughter & I know who his folks are. Now I'm working on getting the house back in some resemblance of order and dishes & floors cleaned up a bit. (We won't be looking out in the summer kitchen 😊) Okay, back to work. I still have to jar the lard.
 
LadyLocust said:
Wait a minute~ "the steam engine I own" Um hello! Where do you keep that? And are you assembling the rest of the locomotive somewhere? 😇
Click to expand...

The "engine" is the part that converts the steam into mechanical energy.



I keep the completed engine on my bench. I still have to build/acquire a boiler to steam the engine. I am leaning toward learning how to build the boiler because a ready made boiler is $6k !

I technically have seven steam engine casting sets. The first I started to build/machine but I set it on the shelf because I was not happy with my first attempt to do the machining. It may be finished some day.

I paid a machinist and his wife to finish one set of castings for the engine shown in the video above. It was good investment to ensure I had an operating engine incase of TEOTWAWKI and let me see how it should work when a pro does the build.

I have 5 more casting sets that will be my job to complete.

These engines are all part of my my grand dream of being able to thrive after an EMP event. The general plan is...

1
First engine/boiler will drive a line shaft in my shop that will power a lathe milling machine drill press grinder and 3-phase generator. The later can be used to power a an arc or mig welder to build boilers. The other tools to machine more steam engines. Lot of of work to make that happen.

2
Second will be a backup.

3
Steam powered mule which is a capstan to pull things logs rocksetc.

4
Crude locomotive
Maybe a steam tractor to plow fields power saw mills threshers etc.

5
Steam locomotive for the railroad grade path between my place and access to the Mississippi river for transport.

6
Prototypes for for future castings of copper bronze and cast iron castings...

7
Who knows?

We have a coal seam on The Ridge to power these dreams.

So ...

The common practice of calling a railroad locomotive is a misnomer. But it it is a part of the plan The Princess and I are working on.

At the least I will learn a lot or cool stuff.


Ben
 
Yesterday I canned 10 pounds of venison, half went into sloppy joe filling and half went into venison stew, it was the first time that we had canned the venison stew and I made it using a modification of the wife's venison stew recipe. We made about 22 cups the broth in a pot, cut up all the other ingredients and measured them into jars, covered with broth and pressure canned, pretty simple operation. It will go on our list of ready meals, I have a drawer in the kitchen for our home canned ready meals, when we are done there will be room for 1 can of each.... Right now the list is venison stew, turkey vegetable soup, potato leek soup, and meat loaf. The wife does not like Sloppy Joe's so it doesn't get a place in her drawer..... I had planned on doing a canning marathon over Labor Day weekend, but the wife is now excited about canning and is accelerating the schedule; so I need to stop long enough to clean out the man cave refrigerator so I can make 5 gallons of chicken stock. I think I will be canning something every other day after work this week.
1629625435714.png
 
I woke up about an hour ago. Couldn't get comfortable because my right shoulder was bugging me again. Hurts if I sleep on it but hurts my left hip if I sleep on my left and I'm not a back sleeper. I'm currently under a pile of cats

I'm still tired but my brain is doing that thing where I have to think about stuff and look things up and it doesn't want to let me sleep. So I've been looking up square & rectangular drains because I'm thinking of putting a floor drain in the laundry room.
 
Not a hard tack fan. Would rather make crackers and seal them in jars. Because they taste better. I guess it could double as a kind of a dumpling if floated in soup.
No clue what all is going on today. Husband has high hopes that the grandkids will be clearing some areas of small branches and wire and old stuff so he can mow. But granddaughter said under her shoulder blade hurt last night, so ??? Have some birthday present wrapping to do for granddaughter's 10th birthday tomorrow, cupcakes to make for her class mates to share. Some housecleaning to start before houseguests start to arrive (2 on Thursday, 3 more on Friday).
 
Today ....NOTHING.
Gotta take a day off.
Extremely tired.

I've done more strenuous work in past 3-4 weeks than I've done in past 5 years
Also have lost 30 lbs.

Phizer round 2 has not slowed me at all.

Gods been good to me , health has been holding up.

Hopefully 2 more weeks , we will be done moving.

Jim
 
phideaux said:
Today ....NOTHING.
Gotta take a day off.
Extremely tired.

I've done more strenuous work in past 3-4 weeks than I've done in past 5 years
Also have lost 30 lbs.

Phizer round 2 has not slowed me at all.

Gods been good to me , health has been holding up.

Hopefully 2 more weeks , we will be done moving.

Jim
Click to expand...

Glad for the weight loss, Jim, so long as it's "good" weight loss. Probably makes it easier to move around. I know it did for me. Take it easy when you need to.

Daughter and I had a nice visit with Mom at the home yesterday. It was a little hard, because we knew that she's probably never going to get to come home, but she doesn't know that yet. The docs say her physical progress has stopped, and they're only going to do so much more therapy before they throw in the towel. Plus she is probably going to need a catheter for the rest of her life, because her bladder is worn out from too many UTIs. She and Pops have a rough stretch ahead of them...
 
Staying close to home today, with my AR leaning at my side. We had a triple homicide a few miles from the house a 06:00 this morning. Major search underway for the vehicle and suspects..
 
I got lucky yesterday, I found a source for food grade buckets w/lids for free. I am going to pick them up this week, clean them and pack them. Shouldn't be too hard to clean as they had pickles in them, lol.
 
Curmudgeon said:
I got lucky yesterday, I found a source for food grade buckets w/lids for free. I am going to pick them up this week, clean them and pack them. Shouldn't be too hard to clean as they had pickles in them, lol.
Click to expand...
Baking soda solution to kill the smell

Ben
 
Curmudgeon said:
I got lucky yesterday, I found a source for food grade buckets w/lids for free. I am going to pick them up this week, clean them and pack them. Shouldn't be too hard to clean as they had pickles in them, lol.
Click to expand...
Not pickles, but we have food grade buckets that are tougher than lowes buckets. We put one cup of bleach to 4.75 gallons of water & let soak at least 24 hours.
 
I played PCH games for awhile until the cats moved off of me. Then I got up and cleaned the counters, picked up trash (trash can got knocked over again), and washed dishes. My brother left some particularly nasty stuff for me to clean. There was a pot hidden under some plastic bags that had maggots in it. That was not fun to clean. Fire ants are coming in and some of them bit me while I was cleaning. Because my brother takes one of the kitchen trash bags out about once every two weeks or so he thinks he shouldn't have to do any other cleaning-- including cleaning up after himself. He spills something and he leaves it. Drops trash on the floor, leaves it. Knocks the trash can over himself, he'll upright the can (to get it out of his way) but leave the trash. Arrhythmia started up so I decided to sit down. But I have most of the dishes done.

My brain won't stop kicking around ideas about floor drains. Anyone here ever put one in?
 
Fed/watered the cows and spread seed in the upper part of the pastures. We are expecting rain this afternoon and hopefully if it rains hard it will only wash the seed further into the pasture and not into the neighbors property.

Have to get stuff together to go back to Santa Fe tomorrow.
 
My 6 year old grandson and I went and picked some wild plantain to dry in the dehydrator . This I plan to jar up and save for poultice making when I don't have a fresh green supply growing . Now if I can get someone with a snake bite come to me instead of going to the doctor , I can try it out ;) . --- I have gotten my goat milked early today . --- If it cools down a bit hope to check out a ginseng patch this evening .
 
The Princess and I teamed up to weed the strawberries. Finished same and she is happy with the results. Spent some time reading about steam governors.

Inspired by an excellent soft pretzel we enjoyed while visiting the zoo I watched a few Youtube videos to learn how to make them. The Princess ordered some pretzel salt and tested out some of the yeast she had stored. We are good to go!

We will spend the rest of the day on the front porch reading and watching Youtube videos for random acts of learning.

Behave

Ben
 
Neb said:
We have spent the last couple of days with granddaughters and adventures. The science center, zoo, lantern festival, and a sleep over. Getting back to normal this afternoon. Glad the trips to the big city are behind us. Don't like the traffic one bit. There were more near misses than in the last year and a half.


I entertained myself by dealing with the chaos of my work bench and completed processing the copper and brass that I harvested from the remodel house.

View attachment 71206

Some of the fittings will be stowed with my plumbing parts. The copper pipe has been cut into cubit length sections to be melted down for casting adventures.

I did get a new addition to my collection of ICS engineering books. Most my collection came from The Princess's grand father that studied engineering via mail order. They date back to the early 1900s and are interestingly devoid of any calculus.

View attachment 71207

The new one is focused on steam engine governors.

View attachment 71208

View attachment 71209

I am interested in governors because the steam engine I own is intended for use in a steam fired launch where the engine is coupled to a propeller and always has some load on it. But to use the engine to drive a line shaft shop safely I need a governor to account for no or changing loads. A steam engine with no load has no theoretical upper limit aside from catastrophic failure. That would be bad.

My attempts to find a ready made governor of appropriate size has come up empty. They are available for toy steam engines but not for a 2 HP engine on Amazon. Ebay and the like have larger ones in questionable condition priced as antiques. So I figure I will have to figure out to make my own.

Nuff rambling for now.

Behave!

Ben
Click to expand...
Balls to the walls!!
Centrifugal governors had some balls
James Watt designed the most widely known centrifugal governor in 1788 to prevent his steam engines from running out of control.

On the diagram below, the balls (labeled #3) are attached to lever arms linked to a vertical shaft. The horizontal shaft is the engine’s drive shaft.

1*rnJm2977BbwzBAwexuH45A.jpeg

1*rnJm2977BbwzBAwexuH45A.jpeg

Centrifugal governor. From Wikipedia. Licensed under creative commons 3.0
As the horizontal shaft (on the right in the drawing) rotates, gears transfer the motion to the vertical shaft connected to the lever arms holding the balls.

When the engine spins more quickly, so does the vertical shaft, and centrifugal force causes the balls to move out and up.

As the arms move upward, their weight creates a downward force acting to close the throttle valve (shown on the bottom of the drawing), cutting off the steam supply and slowing the engine.

Here’s an animation. (Skip to 5:45 if the link doesn’t do it for you.)


YouTube video from Real Engineering. Not an affiliate link.
At maximum speed, the balls on the governor would be as far out as possible. Hence the expression balls out.

A slightly different governor design accounts for balls to the wall. Instead of being balls, the weights are more like rollers surrounded by a cylinder. In this case, the balls contact the cylinder walls at their top speed.
 
Last edited:
@UrbanHunter :cry: I need a virtual shoulder! How did you do it? I don't know where to put it, and I have a confused counter. :cry:
We made another 24 quarts (yep, 6 gallons!) of salsa this morning. I'm putting it back in the boxes the jars were in but don't know where to put the boxes. I pulled several things out of the pantry that we either don't eat or eat way too slowly to keep the quantity we have. I will work on using them up and some things sharing with MIL as I know she likes certain things. One perk was I found some more canning lids I didn't realize I had. Trying to reclaim my kitchen.
Had niece and her BF over last night for supper. He was very nice. Hubby and I approve of this one (we didn't of the last one.) Hubby is back over working on jeep. He's hoping to drive it home. I just texted and the dual distributor is messing with them. He's wanting to take it hunting Thurs. or Fri. They are hoping to leave Thurs. but certain things have to happen at work so he can leave.
 
dademoss said:
Balls to the walls!!
Centrifugal governors had some balls
James Watt designed the most widely known centrifugal governor in 1788 to prevent his steam engines from running out of control.

On the diagram below, the balls (labeled #3) are attached to lever arms linked to a vertical shaft. The horizontal shaft is the engine’s drive shaft.

1*rnJm2977BbwzBAwexuH45A.jpeg

1*rnJm2977BbwzBAwexuH45A.jpeg

Centrifugal governor. From Wikipedia. Licensed under creative commons 3.0
As the horizontal shaft (on the right in the drawing) rotates, gears transfer the motion to the vertical shaft connected to the lever arms holding the balls.

When the engine spins more quickly, so does the vertical shaft, and centrifugal force causes the balls to move out and up.

As the arms move upward, their weight creates a downward force acting to close the throttle valve (shown on the bottom of the drawing), cutting off the steam supply and slowing the engine.

Here’s an animation. (Skip to 5:45 if the link doesn’t do it for you.)


YouTube video from Real Engineering. Not an affiliate link.
At maximum speed, the balls on the governor would be as far out as possible. Hence the expression balls out.

A slightly different governor design accounts for balls to the wall. Instead of being balls, the weights are more like rollers surrounded by a cylinder. In this case, the balls contact the cylinder walls at their top speed.
Click to expand...

Here you go!

20210822_192218_HDR.jpg


A limitation of the centrifigal is the trigonometry at high speed the control gets really touchy.

20210822_192238_HDR.jpg


Adding a spring or a weight will let it run at higher RPMs.
20210822_192257.jpg


And then on page 14 we start to learn about stability...
20210822_192317_HDR.jpg


Don't worry I dont intend to turn this thread in a running lectures on governors.

;)

Ben
 
Neb said:
The Princess ordered some pretzel salt and tested out some of the yeast she had stored. We are good to go!
Click to expand...

Numnumnum, nothing like a good soft hot pretzel with a mustard dipping sauce.
 
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