How Many CR4 Subscribers Had One of These? How Many Are Still Around?

Those were the days. I suppose the "Health & Safety" brigade would frown on such a "dangerous" toy today.

John

Mamod still makes live-steam models. Nice-looking products and well-made.

There is actually a classification for "hobby boilers" that doesn't require annual inspections. It's limited to 15 psi though.

You can get scalded, but not torn limb from limb.

But if you hacked one of those boilers up to a "usable" pressure, I wonder what the blast radius would be when (not if) it did let go?

It is amazing that even in a place like Lubbock, TX, over 50% of the population may be living within a blast radius of an industrial boiler. On the other hand, it could be why the population growth toward the south and west of our city seems to not have anything to do with industry (or with productivity). Seems it is all based on University jobs and health care now. (both scams of major note).

The greater hazard is home water heaters. These can go as high as 150 psi and really rip when they cut loose. There was a video out of a water heater intentionally set off for demonstration by a testing agency and it went right through the roof of the house it was in, just like a rocket, and did major disassembly on the house.

And that is why you treat the T&P Valve on the water heater with respect. If it triggers, you call a licensed HVAC tech to inspect the water heater and replace the valve/heater as required. If it starts dripping, you do NOT screw a plug onto it, you call a licensed HVAC tech. If the T&P valve HAS been capped by some idiot, call a licensed HVAC tech to inspect the system and replace what needs to be replaced.

The true origin of the word Boson - Blasted Moron.

Around here we call plumbers for such things.

Well, I don't and none of my family friend or neighbors do either so long as I am alive.

Most plumbers don't understand boilers (of which water heaters are a subcategory). HVAC techs have to know at least the basics of boilers to get their license.

I've seen your posts here, I know you know enough to be safe around boilers. There are days that I suspect you are one explosives handling permit away from being on par with Jamie Hynaman of Mythbusters fame.

Actually my brother has the explosives licence so he does all the explosives work in the family.

I just 'assist' at that point.

Hence all the stir on MythBusters with the water heater rockets.

How many times have you heard of a domestic water heater causing structural damage? I don't recall ever having heard of it. That of course does not mean it hasn't happened, but it's got to be rare.

The safety valve on my tank is indeed rated at 210°F and 150psi, and at my altitude the boiling point of water is around 208°F, so the water could conceivably be above the atmospheric boiling point, but for the unit to act as a rocket, the entire bottom seam would have to fail almost instantaneously, and even then the plumbing would make it difficult for the "rocket" to launch.

With well over 100 million units in service in the US alone, I'm not too worried!

"How many times have you heard of a domestic water heater causing structural damage? I don't recall ever having heard of it."

"The safety valve on my tank is..."

And THAT is why you don't hear of it these days; we have the safety vales to prevent it.

"so the water could conceivably be above the atmospheric boiling point, but for the unit to act as a rocket, the entire bottom seam would have to fail almost instantaneously, and even then the plumbing would make it difficult for the "rocket" to launch."

The bottom would have to fail at under 150psi, since that's what your safety valve is rated at. And we've seen the bottoms fail due to the Mythbusters testing the myth over and over. Once the bottom seam pails at one point, the failure races around the seam, removing the entire bottom at a speed that rivals a balloon popping. (If you've seen the high-speed camera work showing water balloons, you'll remember that the latex pulls completely away from the water before the water has time to react with gravity.) The plumbing will not put up that much of a fight, those pipes are nowhere NEAR strong enough to resist such a strong shear force.

In short, there's a REASON I treat the T&P valve like some mystic object deserving veneration. Without it, every hot water heater would be a bomb waiting to go off; that little valve is there to protect everyone within a quarter mile radius. (I'm serious about that, there are reports of water heaters landing a quarter mile away from where they launched, AFTER punching their way up through a three story Chicago Brownstone. That's through three floors AND a flat-top roof, if you want to count the 'structural braking/breaking events' that stole energy from the water-heater-rocket at launch.)

Many years ago I went to one of those firework displays lectures given by an explosives expert. One of the demonstrations he did was to seal an ignition tube with about ½ a ml of water in it and place it in a Bunsen flame; the whole thing was enclosed in a box about 1 m³. After a short time there was one of the loudest bangs of the evening and the whole outer box blew apart.

The lecturer said something like "That was a tiny drop; when Krakatoa erupted a cubic mile of sea water vapourised almost instantaneously."

Now that sirs, is a blast radius for the ages! Can you imagine what a 1000 cubic miles of steam looks like, hopefully from a long long way away?

That much energy, from a source as small as a big island? It would have formed a mushroom cloud.

The shockwave from the Krakatoa explosion circled the Earth seven times before it became undetectable. The volcano exploded with the energy of a 200 megaton nuke (4 times the yield of Tsar Bomba) and ejected 11 cubic miles of rock and ash into the atmosphere, some of it to the edge of space.

"The lecturer said something like "That was a tiny drop; when Krakatoa erupted a cubic mile of sea water vapourised almost instantaneously.""

If I had been at that demonstration, I would have been:

(jawdrop) "Oh ... [*BLEEP*] ... me ..."

And I'm not one to use profanities lightly; just THINKING about the amount of energy released like that is brain-breaking, my mind struggles to find a comparison to Krakatoa that is *NOT* Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

Krakatoa energy was 10¹⁹ Joules, by estimate.

A one Megaton Hydrogen bomb: 4x10¹⁵ Joules, thus we would need one 2500 Megaton device to match that one super-energetic volcano, and that would still not remotely compare to what happens when the Yellowstone Caldera finally blows its top.

That day will be the day that starts a decade without summer.

That's not a big deal. You should hear the stories of propane/butane delivery trucks in the old days involved in bad wrecks. The tank would more often than not be found far off the highway, or street, in some farmer's field...and they weigh a helluva lot more.

About ten years ago, one went off (maybe the pilot went out and re-lighted, IDK.) and leveled an old man's house in an older neighborhood here. Could have been a lot of root causes, but the epicenter of the blast was clearly the water heater.

Friends of my grandparents that lived a few miles form me had their water heater blow up some years ago while on vacation. They came home to see it sticking half ways through the roof even though it was originally located in the basement.

As I understood it it was just a freak failure being the T&P valve was found to be working plus being a rural home system on a private well they had no explanation as to why the tank let go before any of the plastic piping did.

Ever since then whenever I am going to be gone from home for more than a day or two I shut off my well and water heater power.

This is why one should have one's water heater tested first.

I believe this was also the subject of at least one episode of 'Myth Busters'!

I had one too.

I still have mine although it looks slightly different like this one I remember using it quite a bit when I was a kid and being careful to clean and oil it. It wasn't very powerful but I did connect it up with one of those spring belts to run some lego wheels.

I also have a couple of stirling engines one looks like this one and another is mounted on a solar collector like this

I have some newer stirling engines also, I am sure you can still buy all of these in one form or another.

They still sell the "like this" one?

Did the instructions for the #3 model mention the need to use distilled water?

I am going to guess you mean the steam engine one since the stirling engines don't use water. I don't remember if the instructions said to use distilled water but I know I used tap water.

I was just wondering how long one of the steam units would last on West Texas brackish branch water.

Ah well, there's one way to find out - though I think we already know the answer to that question.

The tap water here is laden with minerals that even hot vinegar has difficulty removing completely. It would ruin one of these steam engines in short order. Distilled water only.

I bought one from tmart for about $25. It runs on the heat from an alcohol lamp and has a generator that lights an LED.

http://www.tmart.com/Stirling-Engine-Model-Physical-Motor-Power-Generator-External-Combustion-Educational-Toy-Silver_p358323.html

My brother had one of the steam rollers like this:-

Not sure of the exact model.

Roughly what year did he get his? The Mamod SR1 was first produced in 1961, the SR1A in 1967. Also produced in the 1960s were Mamod's TC series traction engines featuring a canopy top.

Thanks Andrew. Much closer to 61 than 67, so, I guess it was the SR1.

Not so.

The one on the left was made from 1937 till 1954. The one on the right after that, directly. I had the 1954 version.....

See here:-

Mamod Stationary engines from 1937 to 1979

From article for that picture I posted:-

Mamod Minor engines from 1949 and 1954. The red disc-crank version is the earlier engine, whilst the 54 version clearly shows the red 'unclipped' mazak flywheel.

I knew roughly how old I was!!! That helped.....I remembered which flywheel as well, and it was not the earlier version with a red crank either....

From the Wiki article that you linked, Section 5:

"The SR1 steam roller was Mamod's first mobile steam toy. It was introduced in January 1961... "

You are not paying proper attention (as usual!), I never had a steam roller!!

I had a fixed steam engine, the one on the right of the picture I posted......

Or you are (again!) mixing me up with someone else.......

Of the two of us, I am sure that I remember what I had better than anyone else still alive on this planet!!

You are hardly in a position to tell me what I had.......!!

The steam rollers came much later than the one I had, though what I had was produced for many years to come.....I believe I mentioned that!!

Follow the thread, mate. You responded "No" to a comment specifically about a steam roller the like of which he posted a photo. The context doesn't get any clearer than that. After writing "No" you wrote about a different mechanism. If you cannot decipher the immediate context from something so patently obvious then please keep your ad hominem attacks to yourself and work on your reading comprehension skills instead. You'll be better for it.

You spout only complete unadulterated rubbish......as ever!!

As the old saying goes, if you caught fire on the street, I might have to think twice before pissing on you to put it out!!

You can't put out fires by spraying them with exclamation marks.

I had one similar to this as a child. Boiler heated with little white hexamine bricks (the smell of which always reminds me of Christmas). I don't recall if it was a Jensen Model #65, but it looked a lot like this one. It too came with a saw accessory but the saw was useless even to cut balsa.

You do know what that hexamine is made from don't you...

looks like a sugar cube. yum!

Recycled witches' spells? Old CR4 threads? Phlogiston?

Formaldehyde and ammonia, though I don't recall the fumes smelling like either. Just an odd smell that I associate with Christmas as a child. I was eight years old when 'Santa' gave me that steam engine.

No, it did not smell like almonds. Had it smelt like almonds I would have given it to my spoilt-rotten cousin Andy and kept him swimming in fuel pellets for the rest of his short miserable life.

We need a toy thread.

Toys we had or toys we wanted and didn't get?

I had put up with enough crap gifts by the time I was about 10 - 12 that I just asked for cash and made it clear why.

It made a few family members upset at first being told why but they at least honored it.

If no one would give me what I wanted I would pool the money plus whatever I had to make up on my own above it to get what I wanted.

I got the exact same cubes to use with my steam engine.

I still Have Mine!

I wanted one of those as a kid but since they cost money I never got one. (cheap family so birthdays christmas gifts sucked big time.)

I could easily buy a bunch of them now but given what I have for metals fabrication and machining skills I will probably just build one some day.

I would have heard a line like "If that's the only thing you want (for every holiday) this year and the next you can ASK"

Of course I wouldn't have even asked about this one.. I saw them in the back of pop sci and at the hobby shop.. I already knew they were way out of my league..

Soap box derby? Soap boxes don't grow on tree's

I know my steam engine was purchased at a store, I think we were on vacation in Florida if I had to guess. I know it was expensive but was the cheapest one they had.

I'm on your side of the fence. I always wanted an Erector Set with an electric motor, but they were too expensive. I didn't even dream of actually getting a real steam engine.

Most Christmasses and birthdays were pretty threadbare, but for a couple of years 'Santa' made good money. Other years mum and sis made our Christmas gifts. Salt & flour dough instead of real Play-Doh, a small bean-bag, and trinkets and cheap tin toys donated by a local church. But for a couple of years? It was awesome.

Yep.

By about 4th grade I was pretty well convinced that santa was a class profiling racist bigot with absolutely zero concern over that suposed list of who was naughty or nice given who got what from him every christmas.

Wow, political rancor at such a tender age!

I never knew Santa was a "Republican". I R 1 2.

Speaking of naughty and nice, what is your opinion on the Comey firing?

(1) Yes you are.

(2) There is no there, there.

(3) He was fired for making judgment calls outside his job description, plain and simple.

(4) This has nothing to do with left-wing frenzy over made up stuff that never happened.

(5) Trump had not fired anyone "big" in a while, and was getting an itching trigger finger.

(6) Who wants to go next?

Puh-leeze folks. Can we PLEASE leave these tiresome, horse-so-bluddy-dead-it's-maggot-infested politics out of a thread about toy steam engines?

Please?

I didn't know the full terminology back then but I know full well that the poor indian and black kids got the worst gifts regardelss of how good of people they were. Then us poor white kids were next up for crap gifts where as the kids from well off white families got loads of high end stuff from santa despite being well known lieing thieving animal torturing brats.

Seems like a pretty solid case for him being a social class and racial bigot that clearly could care less about fairness or how 'good' or 'bad' any kid really acted.

Now Santa thinks you're one and he's hiring.

The only people I am bigoted against are the stupid and the entitled who have done nothing to deserve what they think they should have.

Their race, religion, political affiliation, age, gender, social status or anything else really doesn't mean much to me. Who they are and who they portray themselves to be is all I judge by.

I can tell the difference between simple minded and rational over stupid and entitled at quite a distance.

I had my Fathers, probably dated from the 20's.

I had one like that from Mamod about 60 years ago.

Long, long gone with all my travelling!! I expect my parents threw it out when I was abroad with the Navy.

I had forgotten about it!!

Loved it!!

Update.

Mine was a 50's model, it was the one on the right in the picture. It used Meths as a fuel. Smelt great!!

Are you sure you're a Weimaraner and not a Meth Lab? Check your pedigree.

Sadly my Weimaraner died today, she found a ball in a field, a bit too small for her, breathed it in and died. I am as sad as I have ever been in my life today........

And your uncouth, childish comments here are simply not required.....try smartening your act up....

If you left, the strife would stop, its that simple and that obvious!!

I have over quite a long period of time, ignored many of your comments, so as to NOT cause strife.....often I leave that particular blog completely, because you are so full of yourself!!

Try doing the same more often!!

Also anyone posting such a sentence as this is VERY suspect to my mind:-

"I am normally a nice bloke and easy to get along with, and so if I'm an arsehole to you, you need to ask yourself why."

I have no need to ask myself as to why you are a "rear end", as we both apparently know its true!!

Have a great day anyway.....

I just wanted to put everything aside for a moment and give my condolences for the sudden loss of your pup. Tragic in every way.

The sorrow you feel is a direct link to the life you shared. Wonderfully I'm sure.

I am slowly getting through it. The whole family are very sad.

She was highly intelligent, very good looking, and understood German unbelievably well, many friends were totally surprised at what she understood.....she would even understand them, with no prior practice...

My last Weimaraner in the UK, understood English well, as I always "talk" to my dogs from when they are really young....even short sentences are easily understood by them.

Provided you take the time to teach them.....many dogs can understand language, but they get little training, only commands from most owners....

See here:-

Dogs-understand-language-say-Researchers-canine-brains-far-more-capable-than-thought.

It was funny to speak to her in English, where she demonstrated a complete lack of understanding to it, never having been trained in it. Cocking her head from side to side, to try and understand....

We buried her last evening, with a ball she loved, in our garden, in our "Pets Cemetery", while the whole family (the German side) watching.

Lots of tears..... She is already sorely missed after more than 8 years with us.....

Overnight, I even worked out exactly why it happened.....awful, but she was at fault....hiding a second (killer) ball in her mouth, which she was strictly forbidden to do....

As she looked, with her blue eyes, in November 2008, 9 weeks old.

As she was for many years, lying on her special chair in the lounge....

She loved, from a very early age (her decision!) to carry a torch/flashligh on dark walks...

In spite of her short coat, she went out in any weather gladly....Loved a towel rub down and even a bath!

We will see her in Heaven I hope.........

Andy: What a sweet, lovely animal. I know I could not love my doggies more than you loved her. Das tut mir ja so leid.

I have missed my dachshunds (two girls) since they got old, old, and left me. As to seeing them in heaven, I would not know why angels would not be found in heaven.

Dogs are people, too, yes, but people are dogs too! And that is not an insult.

My ball playing dog, sometimes he will come and fuss at me with long tirade barking, with various inflections therein, sometimes with an almost whining tone. It is that the ball has found a place to rest where it is not retrievable by him. Most of the time I am not tuned in, being busied on a project in my work shed, and only find out later what he was talking about. Then I feel so dumb!

We recently spend a small fortune on a little rescue dog (part rat terrier, part Chihuahua) that had been so badly neglected, she lost the litter she was carrying inside her. The vet was furious when he learned another vet passed on doing emergency surgery (it was definitely a plugged uterus that was full of necrotic stuff), and he did the surgery that night, saved Kyrie, and she is now thriving once more, no longer a potential mother dog. We have already found her to be worth the cost and so much more.

You understand completely....

This picture says it all for me and you I feel:-

This is not Chloé actually, but the likeness is so, so close, I see it as her.....those fine yellow eyes, that kept people of dubious character well away, without a bark or a growl. One look was enough.....

"I have over quite a long period of time, ignored many of your comments, so as to NOT cause strife.....often I leave that particular blog completely, because you are so full of yourself!!"

How magnanimous of you. This is what what that is supposed to look like, right? Magnanimity on your part?

Right.

Keep trying, mate. One day you may actually even dupe someone of your virtue, pure as the driven snow. Some unwitting noob, perhaps. Meanwhile there are many who are not so convinced, having patiently endured your posts of the past - your railing against Americans, for instance. Yes, I've read a few of those too.

Nice try but no cigar.

C'mon Andrew! I've "known" Andy Germany for over a decade (via CR4) and have never seen such animosity!

That's probable. I'm a very slow reader, and don't come to CR4 to kill time. Whenever a comment starts to criticize anyone, I skip over the rest of that comment.

There are a lot of things I was taught as a child. I don't still believe all of those things, but one I do still believe is the advice: If you can't say something nice about a person, then don't say anything at all.

Post some please?

Just for the record:-

Andrew's post #18 was in reply to my post #5, before your post #24.

My post #25 was in reply to Andrew's post #18.

I think you must have mistakenly believed that my post #25 was in reply to your post #24.

All just a very simple bit of confusion really.

I bet you are right, two Andrews!

I think this entire brouhaha started as a result of a misunderstanding. I think everyone on the entire forum has merit, and we can get along most of the time.

Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! (Round #2 over)

How about everyone take a deep breath, go back to your respective corners, sit on the stool, rest your arms on the ropes, let the cut man work on your bleeds, have a drink of cool water, etc. When the bell rings again, don't come out flailing, but tap gloves and box away on topic (maybe some other topic less emotionally charged).

Cheers gents.

Good move. I agree.

Good post, thanks.