Laying Out for Boiler Makers
and Plate Fabricators 5th ed (1944)

revised by George M. Davies
reprinted by Lindsay Publications

Boring old boilers. Like anything else, if you know nothing about them, there is no chance you'll appreciate them. Those boring ol' boilers built this country. They stored up energy in the form of steam to drive engines that carried goods from one end of this country to another, across the oceans, turned the machines of industry, heated homes, and for a while threshed grain.

Boilers are works of art. You start with a thick plate of heavy, rigid steel and convert it into a three-dimensional form of incredible strength. The water and steam will hold some areas of the boiler at 300 degrees or more, while the fire will heat other areas to more than a thousand degrees. Metal in these areas expand and contract at different rates. So the boiler must maintain its strength containing incredible forces while changing shape!

The men who designed and built boilers not only relied on science but experience as well. Boilermaking was, and still is, an art.

What you get here is (I'm assuming) the last edition of this classic work released in 1944. I feel confident in saying this is probably the finest book ever to reveal the techniques of locomotive boiler construction, and because diesel-electrics were on the way in, was probably the last book of its type.

Chapters include the subject of laying out, triangulation, cones and spheres, the tubular boiler, laying out the locomotive boiler, constructing the locomotive boiler, laying out and computing boiler patches, laying out for welded construction, elbows, layout and construction of steel stacks and tanks, transition pieces and breechings, pipe and pipe connections, and chutes and conveyors.

Laying out. Hmmmmm.... Take a look at a blast furnace with the gas and blast air piping around it. Feet in diameter. Wild twists, turns and contortions. How was it made? No, the steel mill didn't go down to the hardware store and buy PVC pipe. Someone created lines on a sheet of steel, cut out the weird flat shape, started bending along some lines and not others, and before long had a strange, twisting pipe (a transition piece) ready for installation.

Here, you can see it done. You'll learn how to make tees and elbows, and strange pipe connections from flat sheet metal. Of course, they're working with heavy plate here, but it's much the same for light sheet metal.

And it's such a magical process, I've done it just for fun with light cardboard. You plot the points on the paper, connect up with lines, and end up with something that looks totally useless. But when you cut it out and fold it up, lo! and behold!, a magical complex three-dimensional form appears. I've done it many times, and I'm always amazed.

You get a book loaded with valuable wall-to-wall how-to. Loaded with illustrations, sample layouts, dimensioned blue prints and much more. If you work sheet metal, would like to build a boiler, or just have an interest in railroading, this is a book worth having. Top rate. Get one soon. 8-1/2 x 11 hardcover 522 pages

No. 23438 ... $44.95