How To Get My SteamWhistle Working?
 

ok so heres my trouble...


i bought this old steamwhistle off ebay and i want to get it to blow. my problem is finding a steady air flow to substain a blow for a few seconds. its got a 3/4" pipe thread so you can imagine how much air it'd take to get a 5-8 second blow. i have thought about trying to mount a compressor to a high pressure tank some how but im not real sure if it would work. anybody got any ideas? thanks in advance

With a 3/4" inlet, the CFM that puppy will consume is quite large. Because of that, you'll need a fairly large tank (I'm thinking >30 gal) to maintain the CFM without the pressure curve falling on it's nose immediately. Lastly, you'll need to plumb the whistle to the pressure tank via valving that won't restrict flow, either.

Why didn't you spend a few more bucks and get the darned train, too? :p

Looking for info about this I found this guys site.
http://www.whistleman.com/html/little_toot.html
He has set up a bunch of whistles on a trailer with a huge air tank. Maybe you can get the idea of how to set up yours from there.

well i tried to put he just wouldn't part with :D


thanks for the link i read through it and it gave me a couple ideas. its going to take some engineuity to get it to work right. thanks

It might likely take a lot of airflow to keep the whistle blowing, but the inlet air pressure to the whistle can be pretty low, I bet less than a couple psi. So store the air in a small tank at elevated pressure and regulate the outlet from the tank just enough to keep the whistle blowing. I bet it would whistle quite a bit longer than 10sec even if you use a small air tank like 5gal, but one that can withstand say 100psig; use the compressor at your local gas station to pump it up to 100psig or so, safely within the tank rating. Such tanks are usually made as portable tire filler setups.

The volume of air stored at 100psig (= gauge pressure = 114.7psia absolute pressure) is "multiplied" 7.8 times if released at atmospheric pressure (14.7psia) since 114.7/14.7 = 7.8 this ignores thermodynamic effects, but those will not be significant for your application. In any case, you will have a 39 gal volume of air at atmospheric pressure to blow thru your whistle (5 X 7.8).