Building a Willamette donkey

[NORCALLOGGER]

Hi Frederic,
I went back and looked at Chuck's pictures again, you can see the tell-tales in the stay bolts clearly. Look at the plain rivets in the lap seam or the bond seam around the top, they look the same as the staybolts except for that small hole.

Good choice changing machines, Marc did a good job pointing out the reasons. Now you will have to build a log loading/transfere scene so you can use the 9 1/4 X 10

That does resemble one of Bill's drawings.
Later
Rick

[Frederic Testard]

Thanks for giving a second look, Rick.
Well, you know the donkey is being built for a diorama that I will offer to one of my friends. And my main modelling scale is Sn3. I may end with a Willamette to offer too...

[marc_reusser]

Frederic,

Sorry for the delay...had to get to my office and the scanner.

Below is sheet 1 of the drawings from the CHB 2-spool kit....I do not know what the scale of the drawings are, or if they were all the same...but the scribbled in dimensions are from measurements taken of the actual kit parts...so you should be able to use them as a starting point to build from.

[marc_reusser]

Page 2 of the CHB kit

[marc_reusser]

This is a scan of a loose Xerox I had.....I believe it may be from a copy of one of Bill Roy's (McKenzie Iron & Steel) donkey plan sets....it has that look, but not sure.

[NORCALLOGGER]

Hi Marc, Frederic,
Those CHB plan sheets look like they are from the 1/4 scale AH&D hoisting engine kit that they released many moons ago.  I have a complete set of those around here somewhere that I used to build a 1:20 scale three drum hoisting engine on skids a coupla years ago.  Good plans, build into a nice engine.
Later
Rick

[Philip Smith]

Marc, Thanks for sharing those. Just what I need for more research. The overhead view takes the guesswork out of boiler orientation.

What is the difference between round and conical rivets other than appearance?

Of all the companies, were the boilers manufactured by the same company? There is a distinct difference between boilers. Some, as the one Frederic is modeling has a strip of metal holding it together with a 4 row rivet pattern and the others are 2 rows overlapping the start point.  Willamette 4 and dolbeers 2?

Sorry for butting in Frederic.

Philip 

[marc_reusser]

Philip:
I really am not that knowledgeable on the actual construction practices of the builders, but as far as I understand it, the various companies all built their own boilers. Some may have used boilers from a special "boiler builder/mfg."...but I can't really say. John Taubeneck, is probably the definitive historian on donkey engines. Last I heard he was working on a book about the various mfrs., but I don't know the status of it at this time.

One thing to also remember is that the Dolbeers were really the one of, if not the, first incarnations of these for logging application (though there were other sim looking ones by other mfrs). Willamette engines came later and were much larger and far more powerful and complex.

Early on there were also a shop-built or local-built variants that are far less to little known, but followed or copied the designs of the more popular mfrs. Some local foundries/iron works even went as far as making copy castings....most often to replace broken parts on engines from nearby operations...but this on occasion evolved into copies of, or variants of, engines by local shops.

There were distinct differences between donkey engines from the various big mfrs. (Willamette, Washington Iron Works, Smith & Watson, Clyde, Skagit, etc.) even from the same time period. There was also an evolution of the engines as the operations and logs got larger, and the environment in which they operated and the tasks they needed to perform became more complex and tasking.



Rick:
You are correct. The plans are from the 3-drum AHD....However the drawings posted show the complete 2-drum portion......the third drum was in a seperate added frame assembly, and shown on a seperate/additional plan sheet.

[Frederic Testard]

Thanks for your last posts, Marc. I printed the CHB plans. The two sheets didn't seem to be scaled with the same factor but at least eaxh sheet was coherently scaled.
I think that there's a small discrepancy in the plan from above since at 44"the diameter of the boiler should be only 2" less than the 3'10" width between the I-beams. I decided I keep the boiler diameter at 44" and slightly increase the width, and the length accordingly (it's only 0.2" more than what it would be at an exact 6' long). This will definitely be a smaller engine than the initially planned Willamette. With the help of your posted pictures from the catalog, it should be a pleasure to build, and to be as fashionable as Jacq, I think the build will feature some paper modelling.

If anybody built this type of donkey - or has pictures of a real one - I'll be very glad if they can post additionnal pictures on this topic.

[NORCALLOGGER]

Hi Phillip,

What is the difference between round and conical rivets other than appearance?

It is my understanding that appearance is it.  The round head, conical, and flat head, rivet were just different looking with the same basic requirements for head diameter, shank diameter and shank length, for the material being rivited.  The countersunk head rivet is the only one I know of that had different set requirements, that is more distance required from the sheet edge to the shank hole because of the countersink.  

The seam riveting that you asked about had mostly to do with boiler pressures and leakage.  The early boilers like the Dolbeer's were of relative low pressure and usually used a simple lap seam with one or two rows of rivets.  Later, as boilers and machines became more sophisticated and boiler pressures increased better/tighter seams had to be used.   The Butt seam with lap plates inside or outside with more rivets to increase the strength of the seam and spread the stress over a larger area became common.

Marc's brief history in the post above is spot on, especially the information about copying parts. I guess patent rights wasn't a big worry in the early days, or maybe it was mostly a case of nobody finding out about the copied parts due to the remote locations.

Frederic,
I apologize, I don't mean to sidetrack your thread. As I mentioned earlier I built the AH&D 3 drum in 1:20 scale from that set of plans and have a build log on a CD around here somewhere.  I'll gladly send you a couple of pictures but it will have to wait until after the 15th as I am leaving for Alaska in the morning.

Later
Rick

[Frederic Testard]

No problem, Rick. All sources of information are great. Good trip to Alaska!

[NORCALLOGGER]

Here are a couple of sources of information on boiler rivets and stay bolts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPsrdp-4RmI

http://chestofbooks.com/crafts/scientific-american/sup7/Riveted-Joints-In-Boiler-Shells-Continued.html


http://www.herculesengines.com/Steam/Boiler%20Construction/index.htm


Later
Rick

[Frederic Testard]

Very interesting links, Rick. The video wes quite a surprise for me. I hadn't imagined the rivetting job was so hot...

[Frederic Testard]

Great news. I suddenly remembered that in Steve Harris' book "Logging with steam", where he described how he built Mich-Cal Shay #2 in 1 1/2" scale and some other well sized goodies, there also was the description of the building of a donkey. So I hurried up to my copy and was delighted to see it was a AH&D donkey, precisely the two drum hoist model with the frame extension for the second drum.
Since these articles are step by step instructions aimed at the modeller who wants to build the model, they feature complete plans and many explanations, that will extensively complement the great documentation provided by Marc.

[marc_reusser]

Found these, and thought they might be interesting....