Christmas in October

Here are some BTH SC-9 magnetos for Jupiter : in the photo of both, the one on the left is a later SC9-5D and the one on the right is a very early SC9-1. The early one has J8149 painted on it, which I assume is Jupiter engine number 8149. In Australia, the Jupiter VI was used in Bristol Bulldogs and the geared Jupiter VIIF in Westland Wapitis. Both of these used the yoke type coupling of the SC9-1,and I assume the later type coupling of the SC9-5D was a later improvement. Both these magnetos had ignition advance via a lever linked to the throttle assembly. Later magnetos had a centrifugal type coupling that allowed for ‘automatic’ ignition advance as engine speed increased, and no external lever. I have seen all these types in the antipodes, so I assume that as improvements flowed from Bristols these were incorporated during routine maintenance.

Here, at last, are SC9 maggies with bakelite distributor caps intact ! These are SC9-7D, which are, as far as I can make out, the last and latest variants of this 9 cylinder magneto. I have a suspicion they were used for Bristol Pegasus engines on Supermarine Walri used in the RAAF through WW2. Now we have the bakelite to reverse engineer and give life, Igor.

Am I the only one confused by this thread?

The title is “Ploughshears [sic] into swords” yet people seem to be discussing swords into ploughshares?

Moggy

Over the years I have seen and found war items turned into useful objects that illustrate the “better angels of our nature”, so I guess the origin of this thread has to do with trying to document and share charming conversions of killing machinery. The title reflects on the warbird movement turning chook sheds back into representations of killing machinery, which, when I see a Messerschmitt with accurately portrayed swastika on the tailfin makes it unambiguous to me. I do find it unambiguous that my own interest in warbirds relates mostly to war and less to bird, or mostly the story of 20 year olds put into the circumstance of war, into the strange pleasure of ‘rhubarbs’ and 1,000 HP engines, nested in loss, brutality, dysentery and fear.

I think that what happened postwar with the jetsam of state sanctioned, industrial killing should be documented before people like me make it disappear by restoring it to its original function. I am interested in sharing S>P because everything else is P>S. I understand that I have also garnished this basic thing with philosophical rantings from out of a bubblegum machine and from God, so this is why the title may seem inverted to you. If you feel it is more appropriate to change the thread title I have no objection, but old testament God can get really angry !!

Re ploughshears, it is shears, like shearing sheep, shearing the earth, furrowing the earth, as much as it may furrow the brow.
It’s like fishplate, or fitchplate, or de Havilland, or De Havilland, you say potato, I say po tato

Not going to join in the theological debate (Despite being a clergyman’s son – or possibly due to that fact!) but as a collector of WW1 Trench Art I have always found things fashioned from military equipment and munitions fascinating. Around the area I live there are still the odd farm trailers with wartime surplus aircraft wheels, though tyres are becoming a problem I believe. Also I have heard several local versions of stories of tail wheels from crash sites being used for wheelbarrows, but have yet to actually see one! Other tales involve aircraft panelling being used to repair several chicken sheds and pigsties locally, but they are always long gone when I try to track them down! I was once involved in the recovery of a Hadrian frame that had served as a chicken shed – Now at YAM after I donated it to them.

Abroad my fascination with French junk shops has uncovered a couple of portable compressor units featuring B17 oxygen bottles, but the wife put her foot down at the time when I suggested bringing them back in our already overcrowded VW camper (Kids and their toys taking up most of the room).

More recently I spotted the following items on display at the excellent Szolnok Repülőmúzeum in Hungary – a stove made from a B17 wheel and some rather fetching privy doors panelled in aircraft skinning complete with the aircraft’s national insignia still showing – not sure whether retaining this had been a deliberate feature or not but the display was balanced with one being American and one German. Finally a Fiat G12 Fuselage section – the sole surviving representative of its type I believe, that had served as a woodshed on a farm in Hungary for many years, after it was destroyed on an airfield by strafing P-51s near the end of the war.

Fantastic S>P ! I wonder how close the magnesium wheel stove might have got to rapid carbonising of the sausages !

Great poem

powerandpassion, if you are not familiar with it you may appreciate this poem known as The Ballad of Tubal Cain. I first discovered it years ago when it was reproduced in Model Engineer magazine and found it inspiring. Here is the link:
http://phoenixmasonry.org/tubal_cain_poem.htm

A great poem that sums it all up pretty well !

Not Pilkingtonesqe.

If you consider the methods by which a rubber stamp of a signature might have been created in the early 1930’s then I would assume the inked signature is authentic and his own natural hand writing, and the rubber stamp was more likely based on a forced and un-natural signature, intentionally done large and open to support the rubber stamp processes to reproduce it.

The rubber stamp likely required a female mould to be created with the signature drawn deeply into it and allowed to set, or alternatively, the signature reverse traced onto the face of the rubber block and the excess rubber cut or removed leaving the type-set raised.

Either way the smaller and tighter signature would not have reproduced very well at all.

http://www.grmarking.com/lang/eng/id/history

http://www.holmesstamp.com/guide/faq/stamphistory.html

http://www.msmmarking.com/how-to-make-stamps.shtml#vulcanized_rubber

Regards

Mark Pilkington

Mark, I have come to rely on you for scrupulously researched facts, not conjecture !:)
I appreciate the research on ink stamping.
My conjecture is that a junior signed the ink signature and the rubber stamp might be a more accurate facsimile of the real Fedden signature. For devotees of handwriting analysis the first signature is almost reticent and apologetic, while the rubber one is flamboyant and more Feddenesque. Then I think that in 1930, only a few years after the Cosmos company went broke and plunged Fedden and the Jupiter engine into difficulty, the Depression may have affected his morale as well as the prospects of the Bristol Aeroplane company, enough to make anybody’s handwriting wobble.

I think its great to see the inventor and driving force of the Bristol Engine division signing off on obscure customer service documentation, implying a sensible commercial anxiety to make sure the business prospered. I am still waiting for a letter from Bill Gates solicitously enquiring if I need assistance with Windows.

Yes

I think Bakelite is a thermo-setting plastic (you have to ‘cook’ it to get it to harden) so I’m not sure how you could 3D-Print it anyway; it isn’t a reversible process either unlike most modern plastics.

Can you still obtain asbestos?

Unfortunately yes, in respect of the large quantity of asbestos product still ‘out there’. I was a bit surprised to see asbestos in old recipes for bakelite distributors, but understand it was a filler used for fireproofing purposes. You can add cutting open old distributors to taking off the glass front of a radium dial to the fun hazards possible in old aviation. I would imagine that, consistent with brake linings, there are modern replacement materials for this purpose, but already understand that ‘any dust is no good’.

Fedden signature

Fedden was the big picture man, Butler the details man who worked out all the intricacies, a real partnership. Butler had a heart attack after Fedden went, so the engine division lost both the painter and the man who strung and framed the canvas.

Stuck in an old book in the library of the Moorabbin Air Museum were two letters concerning technical notes for Jupiter engines from Fedden in 1930 and 1931. The early one has a personal signature and the later one a rubber stamp signature, far more florid. I wonder if the first one was perhaps done by an assistant. Does anybody have a copy of a real Fedden signature to compare?

Air compressor

What are some of the wonderful things you have found warbirds turned into ?

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Here is a Cheetah engine which was used as an air compressor. The exhaust valve gear has been removed and the exhaust manifold has been blocked at its usual exit and a pipe fitting welded in. I assume either an electric motor or other engine was coupled to the prop shaft to drive the system. I have seen this before in four cylinder car engines where two cylinders ran conventionally while two were adapted in the same way to pump air, being a self contained ‘bush mechanics’ air compressor. Given the volumetric capacity of a Cheetah engine this would have pumped a huge amount of air.