When you are able to find a book on steam engineering, it is usually a book only a mechanical engineer can understand. Skip Goebel's book is the book for beginners.
Chapters include steam essentials, steam engines (turbine and piston), how a D-valve system works (it has no springs), the different types of steam boilers (the firetube boilers you see at steam shows have been obsolete for a hundred years), and more.
This manual is free with our steam engine. Deduct $20.00 from the price of our 1 or 3 horsepower steam engine if you buy the manual now and a steam engine later. Deduct $90.00 from the price of one of our steam engines if you buy the Special Steam Package now and a steam engine later.
This is the manual used for the steam engineering seminar held every year in Iowa for two days. We are offering this manual as it begins where Skip Gobel's Basics of Steam Engineering leaves off on firetube boilers
The seminar manual, very heavily illustrated, is the most thorough and easy-to-understand manual on steam boilers we have ever seen. Every single piece and part of a direct flue boiler, return flue boiler, and upright boiler is illustrated and explained, including boiler construction.
The second half of the manual contains illustrations and explanations of the workings of D-valve steam engines, governors, greasers (for lubrication), the clutch, and both used-to-new farm equipment.
Mike Brown spent two days at this seminar this year, learning how to operate a 1923 Illinois steam tractor. As he put it, "I’ve never operated anything so powerful."
The steam engine in the Illinois is rated at 35 steam horsepower.
Blueprints of our 1 horsepower steam engine have been redrawn so those who want to build their own engine may do so.
Details for our two cylinder 3 horsepower steam engine are included using the same components.
Done in 11" x 17" format for easy handling.
These prints will illustrate as nothing else can, why it takes so much time to produce our engine. You will also be able to see why there were only 2,000 steam engines in the entire United States by the year 1860. Even with modern CNC equipment, these are not simple units to build. A hobbyist may take months to build one.
Build a 20 kw to 50 kw induction generator out of a used 3-phase motor, a car engine, and other parts from a junkyard, and a couple of machined adapters. Most of these units can be built for under $500.00.
How To Build A Junkyard Still $15.00
by Michael H. Brown
100 proof alcohol is 50% water. 190 proof alcohol is only 5% water. If you want maximum efficiency and reliability in a spark-ignition engine running on ethyl alcohol, you need a fractionating column in order to keep most of the water out of your fuel. In Kentucky, this device is known as a "rock still."
This book shows how to build a complete fractionating column/distillery out of a garbage can, a pipe full of rocks, the back of a toilet, and some plumbing pipe. This is the companion book to Brown's Alcohol Motor Fuel Cookbook.
Learn all about the Fish Carburetor with only three moving parts.
From 1947 to 1959 the Fish Carburetor Company of Daytona Beach, Florida manufactured over 125,000 high-mileage carburetors. The Fish carburetor averaged 20 percent better gas mileage and 30% more horsepower.
The Fish carburetor would also run on a variety of fuels with no internal modifications, from farmers' alcohol to paint thinner and parts cleaner.
The Brown Carburetor Company of Draper, Utah manufactured almost 10,000 new Fish-design carburetors from 1981 to 1996. This book was their manual.
The last chapter contains, among other information, how to get a 50% increase in power and mileage with a piston and camshaft arrangement. It is this piston and camshaft arrangement that gave rise to the "urban legend" of the superior carburetor. It wasn't a carburetor. It wasn't a legend either.
Late in 1981 the author learned how to extract soybean oil from soybeans. It is actually as simple as grinding soybeans and boiling water. In 1999 Delta Press republished Brown's Alcohol Motor Fuel Cookbook, which included a chapter on this process. If you can boil water in a closed container, you have the expertise to extract diesel fuel from soybeans. The residue, after the oil is extracted, is a high-quality cattle feed.
The rest of Brown's Alcohol Motor Fuel Cookbook covers how to modify carburetors to run on farmers' (ethyl) alcohol (the same principles apply to fuel injection) and how to ferment grain into alcohol.
Why you need both books --Brown's Alcohol Motor Fuel Cookbook and How to Build a Junkyard Still-- to be able to run alcohol-fueled engines efficiently.
Read the articles by Mike Brown
Ethanol Nation (or how the United States can become independent of petroleum products in three years)
Covered in this one great book are milling, mashing, fermentation, distillation, distillers' dried grain and solubles and laboratory control. This is the book for commercial production.
A one-hour video with steam basics and how to lay out a complete home steam plant. You must recirculate the water you use for steam or you will waste both water and energy.
