1927 fire monitors

[Umi_Ryuzuki]

I also had time to stop by the Portland Fire boat David Campbell today.

Here are some images of the fire monitors on board.
Apparently this is the oldest operational fire boat West of the Mississippi.
There werer three built, one was scrapped, the other is now a tug boat somewhere in Camas Wa.

If the propellers were to fall off, the crew could point the main fire monitor off the stern, and make way at full speed... 14 kts. :p

[herrmill]

Cool Umi! Sounds like that was the first example of a jet drive!

[willhaney]

Very nice.

[Soar Master]

Nice pics Umi. You gotta love those polished brass nozzles. Do you have any pictures of the entire boat?

[Kmot]

So, how soon till we see a scale model of these? :D

Gotta love the heart shape of those monitors!

[green-boat]

Umi,

Thanks for the pictures of the monitors, this is what I was needing. Now to see if I can get brass tubing to bend in such a tight radius.

[Umi_Ryuzuki]

Fill the tubes with sand, or a low melting temperature bisthmuth before you make your bends. If you can find some slightly thicker wall tubing, then it will be less likely that the tubing will tear or break as you bend it.


Nice pics Umi. You gotta love those polished brass nozzles. Do you have any pictures of the entire boat?
There is no good place to stand to get a good shot of the entire boat.
I do have a waterline up set of plans, it was the first fireboat I wanted to build. (the hull is riveted steel...)

Oh yeah,

They split the water flow because the back pressure from one single pipe would make the monitor useless. The fireman on duty said that if the monitor ran the single feed pipe directly to the monitor, at 150psi, the stream from the nozzel would barely reach the bank to the starboard side of the boat. The heartshape or split feed pipes help overcome the backpressure.
:confused:

[smart_racer]

Very impressive

[green-boat]

I think that I'm going to have to make a dedicated tubing bender for these tight radius's. I have tried those spring type benders before but I don't like the results. I do have a lever type bender but it is for 1/4" to 3/8" tubing and every bend comes out perfect. There has to be some kind of formula out there that shows just how tight of a radius I can bend based on tubing diameter and wall thickness.

[Soar Master]

Thanks Umi,

That is one very special boat. A piece of history. Nice to see that it still looks new, and that they actually use it. I suppose being in fresh water helps alot. I like the telescoping ladder also.

Kmot is right about the nice heart shape of the monitors.

Green-Boat I would be very interested in what you come up with as a dedicated small tubing bender.

[patmat2350]

For a slightly older style, here are some monitors on the 19-oh-something E.M. Cotter from Buffalo.
PM

[der kapitan]

You've gotta love a fireboat---. The Edward M. Cotter, formerly the Grattan, is the
oldest working fireboat in the world, having been put into service in 1900.

[Brooks]

The most experienced tubing bender I know (Torry Krutske, Colorado, makes a Beautiful coal conversion of Accucraft's 1:20.3 K-27)), says there is no formula for bending, you just have to try it. He thinks a minumum radius in the order of 4-5 pipe diameters is the usual limit for brass. Copper can be bent tighter, as you can see by his bending device. He agrees that the spring type benders are practically useless... my feelings too.
----------------
Here's what I copied off a posting at the livesteam site. I made his bending device. It works fine :-)

"The proper material to use is available from K&S or rather their subsidiary Special Shapes. This <copper> tubing is 1/8 OD by .097 ID. I buy it in 3 foot lengths, 20 sticks at a time.

It is not listed on their website, http://www.specialshapes.com/, so you will need to specifically ask for it.

I regularly bend the thin wall tubing, 1/8 OD X .097 ID to a 7/32 radius using the tubing bender below. It is machined out of brass.

Lay the tubing on a hard table overhanging the edge with the bender over it. Lift the overhanging portion while rolling the bender away from the edge as you hold it down tight over the tube. PERFECT BEND EVERYTIME. You will need to aneal the tubing to get the best bend.

The advantage to the thin walled tubing is that it has a MUCH GREATER cross sectional area, and is a lot less restrictive to the flow of the steam. The Accucraft and thick walled tubing tends to inhibit flow considerably. I also replace the stock superheater line with a pipe having .105 ID.

Torry"

[jerryj98501]

Here are a couple of additional ideas for benders. The brass and aluminum ones are made with the width of slots equal to diameter of tubing. Anneal tubing and roll it around the slot with the radius needed. These were made when I worked in the model shop at Boeing 36 years ago. The two store bought ones are from DuBro and work quite well. Jerry J.

[Kmot]

These were made when I worked in the model shop at Boeing 36 years ago.

Oh man! Dream job!!!

[Brooks]

Very nice tools, Jerry. Could you give us the dimensions of the slots (width and depth and resulting bend radius)? I am sure Torry would be very interested in your tool, also.

[jerryj98501]

Brooks As far as dimensions, I just turned the tapers on both ends then ground a tool bit for the radius and width of the tubing I wanted to bend. I turned the grooves to the depth of the diameter of the tubing and that was it. Another tool was ground for the other end to the diameter of that tubing. Not really rocket science, just make something that works. Jerry J.

[jerryj98501]

Kmot, yes for the most part it was an interesting thirteen years. We built and tested all types of wind tunnel and also built some display models. Sometimes the job got kind of monotonous like filing a stainless calibration wing to a tolerance of .003 both chordwise and spanwise, it took two crews of three working something like three weeks. (The wing was six feet long,) Boeing also picked up four years of my five year university degree plus we got to travel to some of the other tunnel facilities when our facilities were working at full capacity. At that time we were working with many of the exotic materials that are common place in model building today. Eastman 910 we paid $35.00 per oz. and now we can buy it in the LHS for about $3.00. At that time we had to have parts machined close and then hand contour to final shape, now we just machine with a CNC and polish the results plus much of the testing is now done with computer programs with tunnel testing backing up the computer results. I never regret the experience I got working in the facility. Jerry J.

[Brooks]

Computers are nice things, I use them a lot, for modeling and everything else. But the problem is, they only Know what they've been Told. By definition, research is investigation of the Unknown. A computer can only extrapolate from the known stuff it was told, it can't really find out new stuff. Interpolation between known data points, fine, extrapolation past the known, well, it's just an electronic guess, that's all. Looks impressive to the Brass, though, with the blinking lights and beeping *grin*. Moreover, extrapolations don't work for systems of non-linear equations that are subject to deterministic chaos....which is my definition of aerodynamics *grin*. When Boeing (and the other aerospace mftr's) substituted computer modeling for the wind tunnels, they gained the ability to (inexpensively) fine tune what they already had, but they sacrificed their ability to find out something new. There was an article in "Air & Space Magazine" recently about windtunnels, if you are interested.

[jerryj98501]

Brook, yes, what issue? Jerry J.

[Brooks]

Hi Jerry, look for "Model Behavior" in the Feb/March 2007 issue. PM me if you can't find it, I might be able to retrieve my copy (from the office magazine pile) and mail it to you.

[Tachikaze]

Umi's model of LAFD's Fireboat #2, giving Portland Fire Department's David Campbell a little help during the Maritime Display this weekend along the Portland Marina.

[Tachikaze]

Umi's LAFD Fireboat#2 and the Portland FD's David Campbell in route to the Portland Marina for a display