Elmers Engines

[kcmillin]

Is there an official web site for Elmers series of engines? I would like to see pictures of all of them in one place. also, how many are there?

Kel

 

[Troutsqueezer]

I can see it now....Kel's Complete Guide to Elmer's Engines website!

The only thing I've seen that comes close is the Yahoo Group where you can get almost all of his plans. You have to be a member. There are two or three Groups, each with different sets of plans if I remember right (50-50 chance of that).

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Elmers_Engines_1/

-Trout

 

[b.lindsey]

Kel, the listing i have shows 52 total but one of them is a rope drive and another is for a display case...so that would leave 50 that are engines unless i missed something. Here is another source for the scanned plans though I am also fortunate to have a copy of the book.

http://www.davehylands.com/Misc/Elmers-Engines/

Regards,
Bill

Edit...theres also a boiler and a generator in there so that makes only 48 engines.

 

[Paulsv]

52 plans here:

http://www.john-tom.com/html/ElmersEngines.html

 

[rake60]

Dirk Tollenaar maintains several Yahoo Groups regarding Elmer's Engines.

He is the copyright holder for the "Elmer's Engines" book and he is kind enough
to share it's contents for free to anyone who joins his Yahoo groups.

Here are the links to all of them:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Elmers_Engines_1/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Elmers_Engines_2/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Elmers_Engines_3/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Elmers_Engines_4/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Model_Steam_Engines_1/

Rick

 

[kcmillin]

Thanks guys. It looks like I got some reading material for the next year. ;D

Kel

 

[TarheelTom]

I've been working on a complete list of Elmer's engines, including pictures. List isn't complete, as there are lots of his engines for which pictures seem to be elusive. And I have Dirk's permission to do this.

http://tomwade.me/tw/machinist/elmer/

If you find pictures of any engines I'm missing, please help me out.

Thanks

Tom

 

[cjparsons]

I checked your site out Tom, for plans for Elmer's engines - but it looks like all the links are broken?

At least the few I tried...

Regards

Chris

 

[weez]

This statement on Tom's website should explain why the links don't work.

The apparent copyright owner has placed restrictions on distribution of the Elmer articles. Not sure what the final outcome will be, but in the interim, all links to the engine articles have been disabled.

All the plans can be found here.

 

[cjparsons]

Apologies, I missed that - should have read the whole page!

I already have the plans from the site you mentioned but was hoping to find some better images, to show how to put things together?

Sometimes having a image helps orientate things or perhaps add some cosmetic changes but I can work from the plans.

Wish someone would republish the book - and it looks like I am not the only one, I refuse to pay 100's of pounds (or dollars) for a second hand one - but would love a copy!

Best wishes

Chris

 

[Sshire]

One of the (for me) shortcomings of the online plans was always the crappy repro of the photographs. I agree that having a good photo of the finished engine is a big help in understanding what goes where. This is especially important when building most of Elmer's engines for the first time. After a few, you see how Elmer used similar parts and relationships.
As far as re-publishing the book. I can't tell you how many times I've read that the reason is the cost of publishing for a relatively small market. That is a load of bull. Sure, years ago, a book could only be printed by setting type, making halftone negatives and plates, setting up a press run, sending the printed pages to a bindery, etc., etc.
Print-on-demand (POD), hardly a new technology, only requires that the copyright holder or publisher send (electronically) a PDF of the book to any one of hundreds of POD companies, set a price and sit back.
When a book is ordered from the POD website, a big machine prints, cuts, collates, binds and spits out a book. Doesn't cost any more to print one or a thousand. The copyright holder gets a check (usually quarterly) in the mail while sipping his beverage of choice.
If anyone knows the guy who owns the copyright, I'd be more than happy to get the files in a proper PDF format, do correct scans of the photographs ( if he has them) and set the whole thing up at a POD company. No charge. Just for fun.

 

[cjparsons]

According to one of the previous posts...

"Dirk Tollenaar maintains several Yahoo Groups regarding Elmer's Engines.

He is the copyright holder for the "Elmer's Engines" book and he is kind enough
to share it's contents for free to anyone who joins his Yahoo groups."

I am waiting for him to approve my request for membership for the Yahoo groups, but perhaps you could ask him?

I would be glad to help too - with modern technology I would have thought a decent PDF could be converted to a reasonable book at very little cost (our printing section in the office would do it for me for minimal cost but I am in the UK)

If you read this Dirk, any interest?

Regards

Chris