A tool I found very helpful in bending copper tubing
is a spring device available through most hardware
stores. The device is sized for the od of the tubing
you want to bend. In operation you feed the tube
through the spring and then bend the spring with
tubing captured inside around a form. This prevents
kinking.
mp
--- VR Bass <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Do you cut the steam line on the outflow side of
> the lubricator, then bend
> > it around towards the backhead and down the flue?
> I take it that this does
> > not interfere with removing the burner for
> cleaning?
>
> That's one way of doing it. I would not cut the
> line, but rather make an insert,
> with appropriate unions on each end, and put it
> between the steam line and
> the short pipe that comes out of the steam chest,
> right under the smokebox.
> Since the burner is removed from the backhead, it
> wouldn't be in the way.
>
> But it doesn't have to go into the flue, IMO. You
> will pick up lots of heat if it
> just sticks up into the smokebox. When I get around
> to doing this, I'll just
> make a coil a little less than the inside diameter
> of the smokebox and shove
> it inside there, up against the front tube sheet of
> the boiler.
>
> Another way of doing it is to reroute the steam line
> down the flue, which is
> how Roundhouse do it and how Charlie Mynhier did it
> on Jim Crabb's Ruby.
> This requires cutting a clearance notch in the
> burner's stop plate. Charlie
> used copper, which will flake and eventually fail,
> but he says it's so cheap and
> easy to work with that it's irrelevant. I got some
> stainless tubing at the K&S
> display that I plan to use, but Charlie's probably
> right about that being overkill.
>
> > How does one bend Stainless (or any other type)
> tubing without crimping it?
>
> The easiest way is probably to find a really big
> bolt, one with a pitch diameter
> the same as your intended coil. Use the threads to
> guide the bend and to
> support the sides without putting pressure on the
> inside of the bend. If you
> can't find a bolt that big, and don't have a
> thread-cutting lathe to make a
> similar fixture, then just go very slowly around a
> former, pulling on the tubing
> as you bend, and hope for the best. A little
> crimping is not fatal, though,
> because as long as the open cross-section inside is
> larger than the valve
> openings, you've still got enough steam coming
> through it to run the engine.
>
> regards,
> -vance-
>
> Vance Bass
> Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
> Small-scale live steam resources:
> http://www.nmia.com/~vrbass
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