Calliope

[Whistledoc]

Has anyone built a calliope for their boat???** I built mine with homemade engineering and guess work but it works great. Plays off midi files stored on my laptop in pilot house.

*

Also wanted to bring up "cutsie names" for dinghies. Annie's tender is "Orphan Annie"


-- Edited by Whistledoc on Wednesday 25th of January 2012 11:46:52 AM

 

[skipperdude]

Whistledoc wrote:
Has anyone built a calliope for their boat???** I built mine with homemade engineering and guess work but it works great. Plays off midi files stored on my laptop in pilot house.

*Are you kidding me?

I can't build anything unless I can cover it with fiberglass so it doesn't show.

I'm not worthy.

No kidding man you are good.

Sd

 

[Whistledoc]

Don't fret. I barely knew what a 2 x 4 was when I started. By the time I finished I was buying teak logs fromSE Asia *and milling everything down myself.

The calliope was really simple. Built a wooden prototype before I built the one on Annie. The wooden calliope is in the basement now*and is in the background in back of some of my steam whistle collection in the image. By the way Annie carries a 4" Lunkenheimer steam whistle in addition to her 6" air horn as a signaling device.

*


-- Edited by Whistledoc on Wednesday 25th of January 2012 12:21:16 PM

 

[Moonstruck]

I think Doc does his own dental work and surgery!

 

[dougd1]

We need to send Frank and Mike over to Doc's place to see what else he has over there!

-- Edited by dougd1 on Wednesday 25th of January 2012 03:12:20 PM

 

[markpierce]

Whistledoc wrote:
Also wanted to bring up "cutsie names" for dinghies. Annie's tender is "Orphan Annie"

*Works for me.* Good choice.

 

[healhustler]

superdiver wrote:
LOL, you home made this, Thats amazing AWESOME even! I think i might go burn down my shop, cuz now I will forever be a failure....lol

*Thanks to heaven I don't have a shop to even burn down right now. *At least I can use this for an excuse not to have built my own*calliope. *I did, however, make a horn noise once by blowing into a section of copper tubing. *Also stayed in a Holiday Inn Express last night.

 

[Peter B]

Crikey, Doc, you say you're a retired physician, but when did you ever have time to do any doctoring...? I'm a quack, and I don't have that sort of time....
Having said that...well done...I think you might have missed your calling. Lord knows what marvelous machines you might have built if you were doing it full time...? Fantastic stuff. Makes me feel...well...like I've been wasting my time the last 20 years.

 

[markpierce]

Afraid my Kahlenberg Chimetone Air Horns are about as close as I'll get to a calliope.

 

[HopCar]

That is truly stunning! Have you got a big boiler or a giant air compressor on that cruise ship of yours?

 

[Whistledoc]

Actually no and yes. No boiler...couldn't convince the admiral to stay in the bilge and feed the boiler while I was playing with my calliope. I do have two compressors but they are for the steam whistle which takes an incredible amout of air at 125 psi. I have tanks packed everywhere to accomodate the volume I need to blow he whistle. But its also serves as utility air for air tools and to blow off the dust when I am varnishing.

The calliope has its own built in air supply. Uses a commercial hot tub blower. Whistles are voiced at 1.5 psi but requires an incredible amount of volume. No clue in terms of how*many*cfm it puts out because they are not generally rated that way. They are rated in terms of horsepower which I think is a useless number. Found one that was rated in terms of static pressure which is helpful *but did a lot of experimenting with various types of blowers until I came up with the spa blower idea.. Besides they are engineered for a damp environment and are muffled for sound supression. I can barely hear the blower running when we are underway. Annies 4" Lunkenheimer steam/air whistle is in the image


-- Edited by Whistledoc on Thursday 26th of January 2012 10:20:38 PM

 

[HopCar]

How about posting a better picture of your prototype wooden calliope when you get the chance?

 

[koliver]

Doc

I would like to see a photo tour of your shop, if you have the time.

I have lots of room, and am in the process of acquiring some tools. I have the "Fine Woodworking" books on shops, and I suspect yours will put many of their finer examples to shame.

For me, every project has the added challenge of buying the next fancy tool that would complete my shop, and thus allow me to do a better job on that project. I expect your shop will give me, and others, years of challenge.

I cut some cedars and a big Western Red Maple a few years ago. I had a guy with a mobile mill come out and cut it all up. After selling much of the best cedar I had enough left to complete a house-moving project. The Maple was all left in slabs, from which I have made some fine furniture, and some workbenches, window sills, benches, a boarding ladder etc. I have some more trees down just now, but can't get the miller interested this time, as I don't have enough volume to cut. What sort of mill do you have?

 

[swampu]

superdiver wrote:
LOL, you home made this, Thats amazing AWESOME even! I think i might go burn down my shop, cuz now I will forever be a failure....lol

*SD's my hero for speaking the truth, my shop is a "non" shop and would probably never burn correctly. *As goes the whistle contraption can you post a you tube of it doing it's business please Doc.?

 

[HopCar]

Youtube me too! I want to hear the Calliope.

 

[Whistledoc]

This is about as good a it gets. Whistles are made of butternut and the base is walnut. Air supply is a centripetal blower like the ones used on "bounce-houses" and other inflatable things. Does OK but a little noisey. Runs off a laptop computer. Can be played off keyboard which I can do but find it easier to point and click on the computer. There are 61 notes on this one. The box contains the driverboad that runs the pallet valves inside the airchest.*


-- Edited by Whistledoc on Saturday 28th of January 2012 11:54:00 PM

 

[Whistledoc]

I don't have a sawmil. Have thought about getting one but I can get everything I want sawn *for* 20 cents a foot. And If I take some extra logs to the sawmill for the owner the price goes down. I have so much lumber drying in the barn, * I could never use it in a lifetime. I have about thirty logs back in the woods stacked up. Mostly white oak and hickory and a lot of poplar. I was down in the woods today and there was a dead tree that had come down so I decided to drag it up to the burn pile. Couldn't tell what it was till I had drug it up the hill. It was about 30 feet long so I had to cut it up to stack it on the burn pile. When I cut it I descovered it was walnut so rather than burn it I put it on top of the stack of logsto be milled. Cut the stump off and drug it to the house and sliced it up into some big turning blanks for the lathe. Will probably turn some bowls out of it.

 

[Whistledoc]

These are a few views of the shop. Has everything I need in the shop except room to turn around. When I was building the boat I had two 10 inch cabinet saws and a 8" saw. Didn't have room in the basement here in Alabama*so I have been thinning out a little but added a lathe. Did some turning back in Texas but had no source of material. Here* I*have a never ending source of raw material so I started turning aagain. There are always a bunch of projects going on in the basement. Stacked up beside the lathe are the windows I built for the playhouse- treehouse I am building. An oak tree was dying in the back yard and was in danger of coming down on the house. Rather than take the whole thing down I took it down to about 16 feet and decided to build a treehouse. Not sure why. Just seemed like a good idea as my grandkids are a thousand miles from here.

 

[Whistledoc]

Whistledoc wrote:
These are a few views of the shop. Has everything I need in the shop except room to turn around. When I was building the boat I had two 10 inch cabinet saws and a 8" saw. Didn't have room in the basement here in Alabama*so I have been thinning out a little but added a lathe. Did some turning back in Texas but had no source of material. Here* I*have a never ending source of raw material so I started turning again. There are always a bunch of projects going on in the basement. Stacked up beside the lathe are the windows I built for the playhouse-treehouse I am building. An oak tree was dying in the back yard and was in danger of coming down on the house. Rather than take the whole thing down I took it down to about 16 feet and decided to build a treehouse. Not sure why. Just seemed like a good idea as my grandkids are a thousand miles from here.

*

 

[Peter B]

Whistledoc wrote:Whistledoc wrote:An oak tree was dying in the back yard and was in danger of coming down on the house. Rather than take the whole thing down I took it down to about 16 feet and decided to build a treehouse. Not sure why. Just seemed like a good idea as my grandkids are a thousand miles from here.

I know how that feels.* Our only granchildren (two of them) are both 12,000 odd miles away on the opposite side of the world, in London.* However, yours will sure have a ball there when they do visit, and I certainly hope they do.* We are getting excited about ours coming over in about next August.

*

 

[MartySchwartz]

Whistledoc wrote:Also wanted to bring up "cutsie names" for dinghies. Annie's tender is "Orphan Annie"


-- Edited by Whistledoc on Wednesday 25th of January 2012 11:46:52 AM

*Well, since the boat is name Knot Knormal we thought the dinghy would be named Knear Knormal.

 

[Carey]

Whistledoc wrote:
Rather than take the whole thing down I took it down to about 16 feet and decided to build a treehouse. Not sure why. Just seemed like a good idea as my grandkids are a thousand miles from here.

*If you build it, they will come.*

*