Thread: Wiles Senior cooker.

Originally Posted by 101 Ron

Just a couple of pictures.
'
The oven has been tested and a roast and veg done.

It tows level behind the 101 Landrover on the upper pintle hook.
Doing a axle under spring mod turns out to be wise and worth the effort as I noticed when towing the wiles springs are flexible enough to allow about 70mm of upwards travel when hitting a pot hole.
Also the wheel placement in the mud guards looks correct , even though it is not standard.

Waiting for correct steam hose to be supplied to me and I will do the steam hoses correctly.

Lots of smoke and wood used in the first hour of operation.
After the first hour, all the cast iron in the thing warms up and the fires only need to be small and the fires burn extremely cleanly with no smoke with little wood used.
In fact the attached pictures are with the fires going and 100psi on the guage.....no smoke and extemely little ash in the ash pans when finished indicating good combustion.
The oven fire has only need to be small with extremely good heat transfer to the oven box......I must have got the hot gas flow/battle design correct.
I had little to work with other than a few small old weld marks.
The air for the oven fire only comes from the ash pan door which has mostly only two positions....open or closed......surprisingly controls the the fire well.
secondary air can be had with with wood loading door....but not required , or makes little difference unless you are just lighting up a fresh fire.
I runs with extremely little air at temp and cleanly with closed doors.

Getting good temps out of the oven/ stove top plate.........can easily fry and boil stuff on the stove top if required when the whole boiler and stove/oven are up to temp.
The neighbors at home have taken great interest in it, especially kids who love the whistle.
The two home made whistles are adjustable for tune and after a bit of fiddling ,work far better than I could ever imagine.
I took the wiles back to work from home with a small fire still going and the boiler at pressure.
You get some strange looks at the traffic lights/passing traffic, especially when the safety valve lifts and the thing farts steam.
Still chasing small steam leaks from boiler fittings.

I have been using Loctite 567 thread sealant , it is rated for the temperature, but somehow eventually can give up with steam pressure/water/heat behind it.

Thanks Ron, another step in the right direction to perfection. You'd be well chuffed by now I can tell.

Starting to work on the steaming bins.


I am hand hammer forming the new bottom bin plates.........a new skill for me.

I am using a old forklift tyne and a big round pin in the vice to form the shape.

brass plate added to side of smoke stack and steam hoses fitted.

Originally Posted by 101 Ron

.....

I have been using Loctite 567 thread sealant , it is rated for the temperature, but somehow eventually can give up with steam pressure/water/heat behind it.

It is rated for the temperature, but is it rated for "wet heat"? Temperature plus moisture may degrade it.

I have ordered pure tin to try and re tin the steaming bins.

After removing a rusted bottom of one steam bin I have learn alot more about their construction and why they are hard to find and rust out.

I think they were made from normal steel plate with the bottoms soldered in with normal lead and tin solder.
I think some solder was placed over the welded seam going up one side of the bin and may be a slight coating every where else,,,,may be ????

The solder which dropped out of the the old steamer tins doesnt give a tin cry which indicates pure tin was used.

This makes sense in that most water tanks and guttering of the time just used normal lead/tin solder.
I must be remembered we even used lead pipes in house holds years ago.

I think the out side of the steaming bins were just painted silver in a vein effort to stop rust.

constant use, food acids and normal cleaning may have kept the insides rust free.

I now have Two steamer bins water tight ready for sand blasting and acid cleaning.

The other two, I need will take much work to sort out rust wise.
All for steam pipe outlets for the steam bins are going to be remade in Stainless steel as there is little left of the original mild steel items.

The replacement sheet steel in the steamer bins I have repaired is Zinc plated which is another no no with food.
But we have zinc rain water tanks etc.
I intend to tin over the zinc.
The whole thing should be OK as the temperature of the bins will never be more than the steam temperature of about 150c and if doing a stew or soup never over 100c........not much worse than a hot water system.
If the zinc plated steel was used on say...the oven hot plate....it would be a different story.


I just hope I can heat and wipe on the tin on at least the insides of the steamer bins successfully........its all a little bit of a experiment.

I can just paint the out side silver like the way they were done originally.

If all else fails I can see now that making the steamer bins from scratch in Stainless steel is not too hard .

Originally Posted by 101 Ron

I have ordered pure tin to try and re tin the steaming bins.

After removing a rusted bottom of one steam bin I have learn alot more about their construction and why they are hard to find and rust out.

I think they were made from normal steel plate with the bottoms soldered in with normal lead and tin solder.
I think some solder was placed over the welded seam going up one side of the bin and may be a slight coating every where else,,,,may be ????

The solder which dropped out of the the old steamer tins doesnt give a tin cry which indicates pure tin was used.

This makes sense in that most water tanks and guttering of the time just used normal lead/tin solder.
I must be remembered we even used lead pipes in house holds years ago.

I think the out side of the steaming bins were just painted silver in a vein effort to stop rust.

constant use, food acids and normal cleaning may have kept the insides rust free.

I now have Two steamer bins water tight ready for sand blasting and acid cleaning.

The other two, I need will take much work to sort out rust wise.
All for steam pipe outlets for the steam bins are going to be remade in Stainless steel as there is little left of the original mild steel items.

The replacement sheet steel in the steamer bins I have repaired is Zinc plated which is another no no with food.
But we have zinc rain water tanks etc.
I intend to tin over the zinc.
The whole thing should be OK as the temperature of the bins will never be more than the steam temperature of about 150c and if doing a stew or soup never over 100c........not much worse than a hot water system.
If the zinc plated steel was used on say...the oven hot plate....it would be a different story.


I just hope I can heat and wipe on the tin on at least the insides of the steamer bins successfully........its all a little bit of a experiment.

I can just paint the out side silver like the way they were done originally.

If all else fails I can see now that making the steamer bins from scratch in Stainless steel is not too hard .

As you have said many times during this rebuild Ron, these things were made for an expected short life, as well as when something wears out then a Requisition goes into the system for new replacements from Stores, & back then it didn't matter so much, easy peasy. The ones at Woodside in '56 would have been say, 16 years of age, if they were produced in 1940 but I bet they had replacement bits in them. They may have been a lot younger too. Possibly the fors & againsts using certain materials may not have been known back then, regarding health & corrosion properties etc. I reckon you are doing well with what you have done already, & it is a credit to your efforts there being a fair bit of experimental stuff you have had to work around. This is on a par with Sitecs Truck but a bit older.

Keep it up.

Yes, I think you need to remember that these were produced in the middle (well at the beginning) of a war.

Also, it is easy to forget that stainless steel for cooking, even for catering, was an impossible dream before about the 1960s, and only became relatively cheap and available in the last thirty or so years, even in the last ten it has come into more general use as it got cheaper. I am not sure it was even available at all in Australia in 1940 - dip tinning would have been the preferred technique for food items then, but a wartime shortage of tin would have seen it restricted to only surfaces in contact with food.

Originally Posted by JDNSW

Yes, I think you need to remember that these were produced in the middle (well at the beginning) of a war.

Also, it is easy to forget that stainless steel for cooking, even for catering, was an impossible dream before about the 1960s, and only became relatively cheap and available in the last thirty or so years, even in the last ten it has come into more general use as it got cheaper. I am not sure it was even available at all in Australia in 1940 - dip tinning would have been the preferred technique for food items then, but a wartime shortage of tin would have seen it restricted to only surfaces in contact with food.

I recall reading an article about using overnight standing water out of taps first thing in the morning.

Apparently the water leaches out certain ingredients from brass fittings (not sure, but I think Cadmium was one ?????) but I'd be surprised.



Recom. was to flush the taps first.


I don't know how legit this theory is, but these days I give the system a quick flush when selecting potable water.

The Toilet Pan or shower doesn't bother me as I don't normally drink water from there.

Whether this applies to Mains &/or Rainwater no idea, but I would suspect some Mains water with associated treatment chemicals ie. Chlorine could do this.

Originally Posted by 4bee

I recall reading an article about using overnight standing water out of taps first thing in the morning.

Apparently the water leaches out certain ingredients from brass fittings (not sure, but I think Cadmium was one ?????) but I'd be surprised.



Recom. was to flush the taps first.


I don't know how legit this theory is, but these days I give the system a quick flush when selecting potable water.

The Toilet Pan or shower doesn't bother me as I don't normally drink water from there.

Whether this applies to Mains &/or Rainwater no idea, but I would suspect some Mains water with associated treatment chemicals ie. Chlorine could do this.

I think the issue is in fact lead. This is apparently often added to brass mixtures to improve machinability, but there are legal limits on the level of it for fittings used for drinking water.

How much of an issue it is depends entirely on the water composition - how readily lead dissolves in the water depends on what else is in it.