[SEL] Nice Wheels/ cable plowing

Peter Scales peter at loud-n-clear.net
Tue Aug 1 11:24:40 PDT 2006


Hi Mike

A previous correspondent has quoted a speed of 4 m.p.h. for a cable plough.
I have seen them move fast enough to raise a "bow wave" of soil.  I would
have estimated 10 to 12 m.p.h., but it is nearly forty years ago....

A traction engine in bottom gear could easily raise enough tractive effort
to pull down a house - I've seen that done.  A 1" steel cable was laid out
in a loop all around the base of the building, hitched to the drawbar, and
away she went.  Goodbye, house.

I have also seen a traction engine outpull a tug-o-war team with 500 men on
it, with no trouble whatsoever.  Prior to the outpull, these 500 had the
12-ton engine running backwards (out of gear, I assume) at a good walking
pace.  Engage gear, open throttle, and in two seconds 500 men on their faces
in the dirt.

A lot of the traction engines were compound engines with H.P. and L.P.
cylinders, and some had mechanisms to allow H.P. steam into the L.P.
cylinder for heavy work.  For the sake of illustration, I will assume a 5"
dia. H.P. and a 10" dia. L.P. cylinder, and an operating pressure of 150
p.s.i..  In "emergency" gear, the pressure on the L.P. piston face would be
150 x 5 x 5 x 3.14159 pounds = 11,781 pounds, or 5 1/4 Imperial tons.  This
worked on a crank radius of, let us say, one foot, so developing 11,781
foot-pounds.  This was then geared down substantially to the driving wheels,
shall we say four to one, allowing for the increased radius of the driving
wheels?  It could easily have been a good deal more than that.  At any rate,
this gives a "bollard pull" figure of about 20 tons, or enough to allow the
engine to winch its own weight vertically upwards with plenty to spare.  On
the right surface, the traction engine could easily pull up tree-stumps.

Finally, http://www.steamploughclub.org.uk/operating_instructions.htm - of
considerable interest to me, at any rate :-)

Regards

     Pete
-- 
Peter Scales  

> -----Original Message-----
> From: sel-bounces at lists.stationary-engine.com 
> [mailto:sel-bounces at lists.stationary-engine.com] On Behalf Of 
> Mike Tucker
> Sent: 01 August 2006 18:22
> To: The SEL email discussion list
> Subject: RE: [SEL] Nice Wheels/ cable plowing
> 
> Something I'm curious about is all of the pictures that I've seen 
> with the traction engine directly hooked to the plow, it's usually an 
> 18 or 20 bottom plow.  But in the pictures that I've seen with the 
> cable system the plow is a 5 or 6 bottom plow.  Is the cable system 
> moving three or four times faster than the steamer could move or is 
> the cable system just slower on a per acre basis?  I wonder what the 
> difference in time would be for the 2 methods for getting to the next 
> plow swath?
> 
> Mike
> -- 
> _____________________
> Mike Tucker
> Midway, Kentucky, USA
> _____________________
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