What is it? Set 252

[Rob H.]

I had been wanting to change the address on my site for a while and finally got around to it. Here is the new location for all posts starting today:

[Christian Stüben]

one day earlyer, only one silly guess this time ...

1432 und jetzt stellen wir uns mal janz dumm, watt issene dampfmaschinn ... some kind of steam engine?

greetings from germany chris

[Alexander Thesoso]

1423 Guess: Steam powered water pump. Could be an air compressor. The wood and brass things suggest coverings for lagging/insulation around steam cylinders. The two different sizes of black pipes connecting the two cylinders suggest double expansion. The first picture seems to show a crankshaft mechanism to operate a non-insulated cylinder that has a rather large open pipe connection on the front. OK... I'll go with water pump.

1426 Guess, and not even a good/complete one... The cylinders being movable, but constrained, suggest some type of friction/sprag clutch, but there is no visible ramp/cam mechanism to force them inwards. Also there is no wear pattern, or mechanical input/output force transfer structure. I'll still guess part of sprag clutch mechanism.

1428 Guess: Air photo flash/shutter timer. Ground speed range suggests an airplane. Discrete count setting suggests a few events, such as dropping flares or taking pictures. The 12-volts, though, seems strange; I'd expect

1. Yes, there were flashes used for some WWII photo missions. Yes, I understand that almost always flashes don't work at any distance.

[Brian Lawson]

1423... looks like an in-line vertical compound steam engine, purpose unknown, but it looks like it has a pump attached.

[Mark F]

1428 Reminds me of a PPI, Plan Position Indicator. The disks visible thru the side are likely ball and disk variable speed couplers - some call them integrators. COmputes Sin and Cos of airspeed windspeed vectors to get ground speed, if I remember correctly... /mark

[Andrew Erickson]

My guesses this week--emphasis on "guess":

1423 -- This sure looks like a steam engine or possibly a steam pump (basically a steam engine cylinder directly connected to a pump cylinder) and associated appurtenances. I'd guess it was intended for marine use, as it appears an attempt may have been made to keep the center of gravity and the output shaft (assuming there is one) low, both important for use on a boat but less necessary for a typical stationary installation.

At present, it appears to be a museum exhibit.

1424 - A very odd tool. The business end looks vaguely like a star drill, used with a hammer to drill holes in concrete, cement, etc., but the handle end does not look at all suitable for hammering upon. If thrust into some material that's not entirely solid, it would tend to make a strangely shaped hole; perhaps the tapering triangles are just what is needed for planting certain kinds of seeds or bulbs? 1425 - Sifter or huller for some agricultural product, maybe cherries or cranberries. 1426 - Specialized wrench to turn five-sided nuts (such as those sometimes seen on fire hydrants)? If so, a bar or similar passed between the studs would go with it. 1427 - Purely a guess, but this kind of looks to me like it could be a latch or catch of some sort, maybe for a window or a folding top of a desk. 1428 - Controller/computer for setting a bomb fuse.

[Stuart]

casks though a friend here suggests clearing the holes in moulds prior to pouring in the metal

[DoN. Nichols]

here (rec.crafts.metalworking) with a blogspot URL is spam, and if it were not for your site, I would be killfiling everything with blogspot in it.

Anyway -- posting from rec.crafts.metalworking as always.

1423) Looks like a vertical dual-expansion steam engine to me.

I don't see a flywheel visible (though there might be one below the deck and thus not visible). If there is no flywheel, it might be a water pumping engine.

1424) Sort of looks like a chisel for dividing things into three equal parts. 1425) These look like variations on washboards - designed to squeeze water, soap, and dirt out of clothing. The drum design one is probably for some early form of commercial laundry. 1426) This is an interesting one. My guess is that it is part of a a one-way clutch type of bearing. It would be located in a outer housing which would consist of five (in this case) spiral ramps ending in a step. A smooth shaft passes through it and when it rotates in one direction, the bearing cylinders are pressed against the step, while rotation in the other direction would cause them to roll down the ramp until the cylinders are firmly pinched thus locking the shaft to the outer bearing. 1427) Hmm ... if there were a crank to turn the wheel, I would say that it looked like a miniature version of an "English wheel" a device which is used to form smooth three-dimensional curves in sheet metal -- things like a motorcycle fender as an example.

Not sure how practical it would be for this given the lack of a crank, and the lack of a cylindrical roller opposing the narrow wheel.

1428) Aircraft instrument -- from US military aircraft. I think that it is a settable alarm to warn when a specific airspeed is reached. Given the range of ground speeds, I think that it is part of a stall warning alarm. Perhaps part of the blurred out red scale is for setting the gross weight of the aircraft, which would affect the stall speed. This probably means that it was for a cargo aircraft.

I'm not sure what the 1-16 switch is for. And it appears to be more of an analog calculator than a digital one, which reenforces the thought that it is a rather old one -- probably WW-II period.

Now to see what others have suggested.

Enjoy, DoN.

[Steve R.]

From the size of the pump, it's probably a vacuum pump for the condenser, which would be out of sight under the deck.

Steve R.

[Steve R.]

1423 compound steam engine

Steve R.

[whit3rd]

1424: some kind of nut cracker? Maybe a cocoanut husker?

1426: a light-duty centering chuck, perhaps for a glassblower's lathe. It would have a few other parts, of course.