Ted Lee Stirling Engine
Ted has written many articles for Steam and Engine and in an article about the Jondaryan wool shed, he included some pictures of Stirling Cycle machines he has made. This is an excerpt from the original article.
This hot air engine ran all day on an occasional shovel full of hot coals. An engine like this is mentioned in Jim Bowen's book "Kidman the forgotten king". They were used to pump water for stock. Actually the water was need to make the engine run, the stock got the water afterwards.
The guy on the right used to look at me from my mirror every morning, I wonder where he went?
The tie clip I made myself from the smallest Sidchrome spanner after the birth of my son July 1980.
This is an experimental air powered engine. This engine along with two others featured on pages 19 and 20 July/August 1999 Issue 85 of Australian Model Engineering. See the links page on this site for a link to AME.
This is a hot air engine I made from scrap while my right arm was in a sling (I used to own a motor bike). [Ed. sorry about it being sideways... I'll fix that next time around :-(]
Same engine using a trickle of water from a house tap for the cold cycle. The 2 metho lamps would last 1 hour, we ran it 12 hours non stop one Saturday. I later change the engine so that the cylinders hung down increasing heat efficiency and reducing internal friction. 1/2 litre of water connected to it would boil, in 3/4 of an hour it would become too hot to run. Fan blades added to the flywheel and a car heater radiator for cooling (held only 1/4 litre of water) it would run 6 hours before it got too hot. Larger bottles of metho were added.