A reproduction 18th.C. fire engine we made in Williamsburg

[george wilson]

This is a direct copy of an original 18th.C. fire engine we made in 1982 in Col. Wmsbg. The original is in very frail condition. I made all of the patterns for the 30 bronze castings that were involved in the pumping mechanism. At night I took them home and worked many nights till midnight machining the castings. Unfortunately,I have no photos of the castings.Every one of them,except for the 2 elbows on the top of the engine,and the bronze nozzle,are inside the tall housing at the rear of the engine. The engine is about as tall as a man.

This project was done before I became Toolmaker,and I had a 10" X 24" lathe,and a small milling machine,only just big enough to eek out the work on this project at that time.

I also ended up taking charge of the project as the assistant director got bad back trouble early in the project. I made the upper wood works of the fire engine's body in the Musical Instrument Maker's shop while I was still in public.So,all the woodwork was done by hand. I ended up also doing the final assembly,and coordinating the other shops to get forgings,hoses(not shown),copper airtank(inside the housing) and other things made.

Special huge flasks were other objects I had to make to pour 150 pound castings,the largest the Geddy Foundry ever made.They had to enlarge their furnace to hold the crucible,and a crane had to be made to extract the crucible from the furnace. The casting flasks for the 2 - 5" pump cylinders were 3' square and 2' deep to allow for the necessary sprues attached to the castings,but sawn off later.

All of the screw threads interchange with the original ones,and are 80 degree London V threads,a thread used on engines at that time (and may still be!)

The body is white oak.The paint is from samples of original paint on the original engine.

I have some photos of making a core box for the cylinders that I will post another time.

This project ran well into 6 figures before it was finished.

The photo shows the engine after a recent repainting.

Every major shop in Williamsburg was involved in making this engine. It took 1 whole year of my time to make this engine,and many nights,too. I will say that I worked like a dog on this project every day. The appearence of this engine belies the efforts it took to make it.

I do not know of a similar reproduction of,or an engine of this early(1740) type anywhere else in daily use,demonstrating firefighting to the public.

The engine is narrow because most houses had fences around them at that time,to keep other people's pigs,dogs,horses,cows,etc. out of their property. It had to go through gates. It also was actually taken into burning houses and used inside them.

The engine weighs about 800# empty of water,and has to be dragged sideways to turn it. this way,they kept it narrow enough to go through gates and doorways.

Water was poured into the body at either end by buckets,or the 4 hardsleeve hoses that hang in the empty loops could be put into a well or pond. There was also a long softsleeve hose that replaced the long copper "branch" to go where the branch could not go. 4 pumpers worked each side of the engine,while 2 people worked the treadles. the fireman stood atop the little "stage" wielding the copper branch.

The town fire engine was probably moved to Richmond when the capitol moved upriver,where the British warships could not go and bombard it,the river being too shallow. Its fate is unknown.Possibly melted down for guns during the Civil War.

It is late,I'll add more another time. These are poor photos taken with a small digital camera rather casually.

[Paul Atkins]

Thanks for sharing. You are constantly surprising and amazing me. How did (do) you have time for such a vast variety of skills? Are you really 200 years old?

[Ron Petley]

A most singular project, you should be proud of yourself, and 200 years on it will still be looked on as a even more valuable page of history.
Cheers Ron.

[george wilson]

Paul,if I can remember how to scan photos in. I'll put up some other photos later. Benjamin Franklin was,I believe,the first person to organize a fire assurance company in this country. You got a little brass(I think) plaque to put on your door if you paid into it,to assure you that members would come help in case of fire.

Otherwise,you had to pay people to help you put out your fire,though there must have been some folks who would help. Everyone was deathly afraid of fire,which could,and would spread to other wooden roofs. Very many buildings burned down in 18th.C. Williamsburg. If you've ever noticed,all the old buildings have ladders on their roofs. These were to put out fires from chimney sparks,which everyone used at the time.

Due to cutbacks in personnel,and a new director,fire fighting demonstrations have not been seen for about 2 years in Williamsburg. We used to do them at 5:00,but overtime was paid.

This design was among the first,or perhaps the first commercially available engine to put out a continuous stream of water. Older designs pumped ineffectual squirts.

What we did was get collections to remove 1 casting at a time from the original engine, and give it to me to carve a pattern of. I had to allow for shrinkage,and figure out how to make the coreboxes for them. Coreboxes are hollow shapes carved out of wood into which you pack specially treated sand which won't fall apart easily. These shapes represent the hollow interior shapes you want your castings to have. The core boxes have means to suspend them in the centers of the cavities representing the external shapes that other patterns have made in the sand. The molten metal runs around between the cores and the outside cavities you have molded into the sand. After you let the metal cool,you have to chisel out the cores,which are rather like soft bricks in hardness,and you have a hollow casting.



The castings need to have a reasonably constant wall thickness,or the metal will crack when it cools,because it shrinks a fair amount as it cools. Cast iron shrinks about 1/8" per foot IIRC. It's been so long,I can't recall how much the bronze shrank,3/16" per foot?

There are special rules that patternmakers use,called shrink rules,that have lengthened scales on them. They allow the patternmaker to just measure off of them. I didn't bother to get a shrink rule,and just figured out how much to allow for with a regular rule. I think a Starrett shrink rule was over $100.00. Can't remember now.

I have seen World II photographs taken in London,and Germany,too,which show that old fire engines like this one were still used to try to put out fires from bombing. I think one was of the Wedgewood factory,where they apparently kept a company owned engine on premises. Needless to say,after several minutes,everyone was exhausted. Effective fire engines needed to wait till steam powered pumps were developed.

I was rather unofficially the engineer on many of these projects,and had to figure out how thick the copper air tank had to be. The water was pumped in a steady stream by means of pumping water into a tall,tapered air tank. There was always a head of compressed air in the tank,which bore down upon water being rapidly pumped into it from below. Inside this air tank was a vertical pipe with an open bottom. The top of the pipe was connected to the long "branch" that the water spewed out of.

Old engines are notorious for their airtanks blowing up,even 19th.C. ones,because metal was expensive,and safety was not much considered. This may be why the tank was enclosed. I figured that a man can put out a burst of 1/2 H.P. There were 10 men pumping. Sustained power is only 1/10 H.P. per man,but that first burst of power was dangerous. I had to figure the length of the pumping levers,where all the levers and fulcrums were,and their lengths,etc.,and allow for frictional loss. There is a formula in Machinerys handbook for copper tanks,even showing how wide overlapping soft soldered seams had to be. The round top of the original airtank was lead soldered on,with a very wide seam. I decided that with a modern safety factor of 6,the tank should be made of 10 gauge copper. The silversmiths,who made the tank,were not thrilled to hear about that!!!

I expect the old tank was made from the copper sheathing they used on the hulls of warships at the time.This sheathing kept the submarine Turtle from being able to bore a hole beneath the ship to attach a mine during the Revolutionary war,when Bushnell tried to attack ships in the harbor. His drill was a wood auger that wouldn't grab into copper,though the copper was only thick enough to be reasonably durable,and keep worms out of the hull.

This sheathing was about 1/16" thick,or so,and was probably one of a few available gauges of sheet copper available at the time. At least,the new engine has never blown up,causing lawsuits,because tourists were allowed to man the engine. I can tell you,they really pump hard! I calculated the engine would put out about 75 # of pressure. It was advertised in the 18th.C.,that it could break windows on 2nd. stories,to let water in.

[Mike Henderson]

Fascinating - both the story of the building of the pump, and the history behind it.

Thanks for posting, George.

Mike

[Tom Godley]

Cool - great post!

[Jim Koepke]

Encore! Encore!

Great stuff George. I want a copy of your book when it comes out.

jim

[george wilson]

These photos might make the pump mechanism of the engine better understood. In the first photo,there are original 18th.C. drawings of the pump mechanism. In the lower right is a drawing I made as a freehand sketch of the pump as if it were transparent. This view is as imagined from the front end of the engine,which is the end without the tall enclosure. I cannot get these pictures any larger on this forum,so you can't read my writing. However,you can see big arrows pointing out the path of the water. The water comes in at the bottom through a pair of clapper valves that open and slam shut as the 2 pistons alternately go up and down. The water is forced up through another set of valves,where it is directed into the tall,tapered air tank. There is always air in the empty tank,with nowhere to escape. As the water rises,the air gets rapidly compressed,bearing down on the water. In the center of the tank is an open ended pipe. The water goes up the pipe under a steady air pressure,and is forced out the nozzle.

The second photo shows a steady rest I had to have cast from bronze for my lathe. My original steady rest only had a 4" hole in it,and the hose couplings had dogs sticking out either side,used to tighten them. I needed more room in the steady rest to swing those dogs while I turned the threads. We had bronze,and used it.

There is also a picture of a finished nozzle,the pattern,and the core box. Look closely at the nozzle and its pattern,and you will see short cylinders on the pattern that are not on the nozzle. These are core prints. In the core box,you see the same cylindrical cavities present. After the nozzle pattern is imprinted into the sand,cores are made with the core box. The prints fit perfectly into the print cavities left by the pattern. This suspends the core in the center of the casting cavity. The metal flows into the spaces in between,leaving a hollow casting with the sandy core in it. This is gotten out of the casting,leaving it hollow.

The 3 small photos show,starting on the upper right,me planing out a core pattern for a "Y" shaped casting that goes beneath the air tank.,next,is me,holding the pattern for one of 2 large pump cylinders. On the workbench is its core box under construction. Last,Dan Berg,Master Founder at the time,is seen filing on a casting called the sucking piece. It is a large 2 way valve that can suck water in from the inside of the fire engine's body,or from a well or pond.

I had to retype this whole thing because somehow the computer copied the description of the fire engine at the top of this post.

[harry strasil]

I was a volunteer firefighter for 23 years here, 11 of those years as a chief. I made numerous things for our little Dept. including a portable hydrant to position at the end of our 5 inch supply hose for places that were far from a normal hydrant, and several different styles of Wall Nozzles and other assorted stuff and modified some factory stuff to improve its efficiency. Also removed, patched and epoxy coated the supply tanks built on our 2 old pumpers before we got new ones.

[harry strasil]

1.5 inch wall nozzle.

[harry strasil]

2.5 inch wall nozzles. A wall nozzle puts a thin spray of water between buildings or propane tanks or such to prevent heat from damaging or igniting nearby structures or things. An old wood 3 story hotel burnt to the ground 10 ft away from an old wood Apartment house, the big Wall Nozzle kept the paint from even being scorched on the other building. The wall nozzles have a 1/16 opening to let water out in a fan spray.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v81/irnsrgn/25inchwallnozzle01.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v81/irnsrgn/25inchwallnozzle02.jpg

This one is used with a deck gun or deluge gun to keep burning embers from rising in the heat waves and setting other buildings on fire from flying embers.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v81/irnsrgn/25inchwallnozzle03.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v81/irnsrgn/25inchwallnozzle04.jpg

[george wilson]

What threads did you use,Harry? Were they 80 degree? Maybe that thread is just English. It's been since 1982 that I was concerned about these things,but if I recall correctly,firemen were pretty traditional about their threads. Possibly from old bits and pieces of equipment continuing to be used.

[harry strasil]

I brazed old hose ends on to the nozzles.

It was after the big fire in philadelphia I believe long time ago, when they called in surrounding towns for mutual aid and at that time each city had their own fire thread, so not many would fit. after that they settled on a National fire thread NFT, which is still standard today in the fire service.

[Marc Casebolt]

George,

I just have to say thank you for this post and all your other posts and input. I can't tell you how much I enjoy them, and look forward to more. I don't know if you are "200 years old", as another poster suggested, but you sure seem to have crammed a lot of living into your life.

My best to you sir, and please keep then coming.

Marc

[george wilson]

Thank you,Marc. I am glad all of you enjoyed the posts.