MYSTERY OBJECTS

[Gloria]

Doesn't the Pendle Forest Hunt around you way? they do cover a large area.

[Gloria]

Bit of a stab in the dark but is it a leather stitcher or puncher for a series of holes?

[Stanley]

Re hunt. couldn't say Glo, last time I saw a hunt near Marton was thirty years ago.
Nothing to do with punching holes, sorry Glo....

[Gloria]

Something gets fed through or dragged through, something quite substantial ???
Think I am clutching at straws.

[Stanley]

I don't think you are the only one Glo. Nobody has leapt in with the answer. Clue, it's part of the Bancroft steam engine.....

[tmason]

Anything to do with belt tracking?

[Pluggy]

It plots engine RPM against time on a paper roll. Probably has a name.........

[StoneRoad]

mechanical lubricator / actuator for valves is my guess

[Stanley]

The Lumb governor on the engine at Bancroft. You can see the mystery object is part of it but what is it? What's its purpose?

[chinatyke]

Was it to adjust or control the speed of the governor or regulate how much the valve was opened?

I remember Miss Jackson, our maths teacher, saying the governor's balls would be lost by turning too fast. She wasn't normally known for her humour. She had a dreadful lisp and once came out with "Wigg, You've put a wing wound the wong one." [Rigg. You've put a ring round the wrong one.]

[Stanley]

Miss Jackson was right and it's one of the oldest steam engine jokes. "As the speed rises the governor's balls fly outwards".

I think this mystery object is a bit too specialised. I'll leave it with you one more day with another clue. Mr Wilby........

[EileenDavid]

I tried to cheat and looked up the patent number, this is what I gleamed for use in a speed regulator and used in marine engineering and navel architecture Eileen

[Marilyn]

Using your loaf isn't creating, Eileen.
(I did the same thing)
Speed regulator??

[Stanley]

Time to put you all out of your mystery. It's complicated, it took me a long while to understand what was happening even though I had the advantage of being able to watch it working. Here goes....
First thing to recognise is that there are two mechanisms at work here, The Lumb Governor which regulates the amount of steam going into the HP cylinder because it is connected to the valve motion by rods and as the speed drops it admits more steam and vice versa if the speed rises. This is a very efficient governor and was widely used but without the Wilby speed regulator it had to control the valves over the whole range of steam admission and so a small alteration to the speed meant a large alteration of the valves by the governor and this meant quite large fluctuations in the overall speed. The Wilby regulator altered the range over which the governor was working and meant that the governor linkage could be made so that a very small variation in speed could be corrected very accurately because the Lumb governor only had to cope with a small power range. This meant that the speed of the shaft going into the mill was far more closely controlled and was stable with no 'hunting'. To give you an idea, when I took over the engine and started to get the valves and drive sorted out I became the most popular man in the shed because I raised the weavers wages by a minimum of 30/- on a wage of under £40 a week. The actual speed variation was less than 0.5%, a very good figure.
If you've followed this you'll see that there was a major flaw in the arrangement. If for some reason the speed changed drastically, the governor couldn't cope because it had to wait for the regulator to shift its range to the new demand and this could be dangerous. For instance, if the load went off suddenly the engine could overspeed. This was taken over by a safety feature which was a catch i9n the linkage between the governor and the links to the valve gear. If there was a sudden over or under speed the catch flew out and broke the connection to the valve rods. These rods were designed so that if the connection was broken the steam valves shut and cut off power going into the engine.
Sorry about that! Hope it is somewhere near an explanation!
Now I'll have to think another one up.....

[Stanley]

Bit festive this one... Ignore the old whisky bottle, what could be the reason for preserving this drop of clear liquor in it? Any guesses what it is?

[Bodger]

If it has Celtic connections, Poteen / Poti'n

[Stanley]

You must have led a disgraceful youth Bodge! You've got it in one. However, it's Barlick White Lightning. It was given to me many years ago and this is all that is left. My late friend John Martinez, who knew about these things, said he thought it was not the usual sort but distilled wine and he reckoned that whoever made it knew what they were doing. He said that aged in bulk it would have changed into very good brandy.

Now I'll have to find another.......

[EileenDavid]

Should have known, I used to have some given to me by an Irish contractor but he took the labels off the bottle. Eileen

[Stanley]

Eileen, it came in a plain quarter bottle but they wanted it back so I decanted it into another bottle. In the days when potato whisky was made in Barlick down at Coates it was passed round in Lanry Bleach bottles. Remember Lanry? Alan and Harry Brown from Nelson I think.

[Marilyn]

Electric Shaver Cleaning Brush?

[Bodger]

wine distillation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grappa

[Marilyn]

Wine distillation?
Doesn't explain the hairs/ whiskers on the brushes unless it has some distant connection to 'hair of the dog'.

[Gloria]

Ha ha Marilyn, I think Bodger is still on the previous one.
PS---I think you are right with this one.

[Stanley]

Bodge is right in a way and my mate said that it was very similar to what the French call a 'marc' which is a distillation of what is left over after making a wine like champagne. Remember Maigret ordering a marc with his coffee?
Maz you're getting close but what exactly is it?

[Stanley]

One more day and I'll reveal all.