In some parts of Canada, you’ll rarely hear someone use the phrase “whatever paddles your canoe” instead of the more usual “whatever floats your boat”– and apparently, at least for one Swede, that’s steam power. The video, linked and embedded below, is a detailed tour of a canoe equipped with a small boiler and an outboard motor that has been converted to run using steam pressure by [Kenneth Karlsson].
The canoe itself appears to be a Grumman of the “prospector” type, wide in body to hold all the gear you’d need for extended wilderness trips– or, in this case, a small boiler. Amidships is the ideal place, as it won’t affect the balance of the boat. Amidships is an odd place to put an outboard– in the North American homeland of the canoe, if you aren’t moving under your own power, it is more common to cut off the curved stern of the canoe and mount the outboard to the newly-made transom. [Karlsson]’s choice to put the outboard off one side will be less maneuverable than a stern mount, but saves the need to modify the canoe and makes for much shorter steam lines. Shorter steam lines means less hose to potentially leak and scald the occupants, as well as fewer losses, so we can’t really argue with the tradeoffs.
The engine is an old two-stroke outboard that has a single steam cylinder retrofitted to it, along with a heat exchanger to warm up lake water with exhaust steam before it heads the boiler. The water is filtered first, of course, but we do hope the new owner– who posts on YouTube with channel “Steam Canoe” is diligent about cleaning the boiler. It doesn’t look like super high pressure steam, but the vapour phase of water is always something to be respected.
If the potential of scalding steam leaks and boiler explosions put you off, but you still won’t pick up a paddle, canoes can be rigged with sails— or you can just hand the paddle to a robot arm. Though given this is Hackaday, maybe you’d rather skip the canoe and climb aboard the good ship Benchy instead.
I wonder if it could be used to provide propulsion while also converting waste steam to alcohol. You could actually make money by riding your boat.
The permits in US of A for that utilization are darned pricey.
Legal and free in some states, up to 5 US gallons per year, IIRC Missery (particularly miserable right now).
Many more where ‘Moonshine is our culture’, e.g. Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Carolinas, Czech Republic and eastward.
If not exactly legal, even more fun, crime is spice of life.
5 gallon limit means you need to mark last year on the bottle after 5 gallons.
Are they doing carbon dating?
Not legal or free in any state due to federal regulations. Whether or not the state allows it, if the feds bust you you’re hosed.
Just like pot, the feds don’t do a thing because they can’t find juries that will convict.
Cases radioactive, ruin the (lawyer/liar)’s numbers.
I store my still in the shed next to the weed patch…
Truth, I can’t distill for less then I pay my Sikh friends for that crazy ‘240 proof’ yuba county shine.
They’re farmers, overripe fruit is free to them.
Protip: Buy in fall. Transfer into glass before it softens the plastic.
My still is just to recover alcohol after THC extraction.
Haven’t bothered in years, 99.9 isopropyl is super cheap.
True story:
About 2000. CA pot was ‘medicinal’.
My friend was living in a high-rise apartment building in downtown Sacramento.
After about 6 months I came by to visit his new place.
Ring bell.
I woke him up, it’s 11 am, he codes late.
I come up and follow him to the balcony where he loads the bong to start the day.
Point out that he’s right across the damn road from the federal building.
There are whole floors of FBI and DEA watching him ‘wake and bake’, every day.
I wonder:
Did they have a betting pool on when he was going to hit the bong?
Was Norbert the narc daily raging?
Was a bong, visible from their offices, a constant irritant?
Routing steam around and putting the outboard off the side are both… Interesting choices.
Why not route the mechanical power? A chain drive is easy enough to make with few tools. And a shaft can do the job even better.
Or just go all out and do it 3rd world river style and connect a long shaft directly to the prop andhang the whole thing off the back at a slight angle.
The steam should be going directly into the piston, and then out to the heat exchanger.
It’s fun, but many of the design decisions seem targeted toward making a project FOR a video, rather than a video about a project.
I think I still prefer a full scale putt-putt boat.
Haha! Imagine the noise :D please someone build this
don’t those 2-strokes need oil in the fuel?
TLDW; maybe he talked about that
The African Queen II
now it just needs a Bogey and Kate