Hodge Boiler Plant Photo (1890s)

HeatingHelp.com

Thanks to our friend Steve for sharing this piece of history with us!

Pumpguy

Impressive!

Can you imagine the noise created from doing up all those rivets?

ScottSecor

Thank you for sharing, I find these tidbits of heating history interesting.

On a sort of related note, I was at a Christening recently. I was talking to the proud father at the party afterwards. He is an ironworker by trade and often works on high rise buildings, and other structures made of steel. He was telling me they are rebuilding a steel bridge, replacing all of the original rivets. I never realized ironworkers did this kind of work. He has spent the last few weeks removing rivets that are more than one hundred years old and replacing them with high grade 7/8" diameter bolts (and nuts). They use a special tool to torque the bolts and nuts that operates on 120 volts. I asked about battery powered impact guns. He suggested batteries would need to be swapped every five minutes.

After speaking with him, I sat down at our table and imagined what the "dead men" went through when they erected the old bridge. They did not have electricity, no lights, no electric drills, no automatic man lifts, no safety harness, no hard hats, probably no gloves, no safety glasses, etc.

bburd

When they rebuilt the Longfellow Bridge in Boston a few years ago, they trained ironworkers in old school hot riveting because they wanted to keep the historic construction accurate. They did a beautiful job, too!

mattmia2

They had steam or pneumatic hammers to set the rivets depending on when it was built. They had steam/pneumatic drills although most of the holes were probably punched with huge presses in a shop.

EBEBRATT-Ed

I cut up and removed an old Scotch Marine boiler about 8' in diameter and 20' long. Not nearly as big as the one in the picture. That is a monster!!!!!

The one we cut up (into 2'square pieces) was made in 1929 and was all riveted although welding was starting around WW I it took a while and WW II to really get it going. They ran at 100PSI steam. It was a Dillon Boiler I think

The boiler shell was 3/4" plate. As I recall the two plates butted together and it had a 5/8" plate on the inside and another 3/4" plate on the outside with rivets going through the whole mess. We cut it all with a torch and that's where I really learned how to cut with a torch

I just can't imagine fabricating that back in the day with the conditions they worked under and the tools they had or didn't have.

Never saw a Hodge Boiler but I remember hearing the name.

ScottSecor

@mattmia2 I did not know that. I always assumed the steel bridges they built in the 1800's and early 1900's used the "hot rivet method" that I saw in the cartoons as a kid some fifty years ago. I think it was Bugs Bunny or perhaps it was Wile E Coyote?

mattmia2

The rivets were installed hot, they were heated in a brazier but they had power tools to set them. sitting on the other end of a large steam/pneumatic hammer all day is hard work, but better than doing it with a hammer. They would have had line driven machines to fabricate metal.

Didn't someone show a line drive threader on here a year or so ago?

ScottSecor

Sorry to derail further, but I just sat down and watched the second half of the Bulding of the Eiffel Tower on television. As I understand it, a top notch riveter could install 1700 rivets per day (up to 12 hours). There are two and a half million rivets in the tower. Riveters were paid seventy cents per hour, almost double what riveters received at other less glamorous sites. They used sixty-six tons of paint when they repainted the tower for the nineteenth time recently. I apologize for the almost worthless information.

mattmia2

i watched that when it first aired like a year ago.

HVACNUT

Will "The Mark" have a cool picture like that to show in 100 years? I think no. That picture should be in the lobby.

medinabrock

What a fun time to work back then. You can just see all the smiles and happy faces just ready to get to work that day. Makes it hard for me to complain about bolting or push nippling a sectional boiler together these days. Harder but not impossible. I'll still cry about it Not that anyone cares

Also working at a couple water works plants I look around at the 36-48 inch threaded screwed piping and wonder how they did that back in the day. Man, are we spoiled today or what?

mattmia2

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1863396#Comment_1863396

Compound wrenches of one form or another. Probably need a thread cutting mill and machine to thread them.

EBEBRATT-Ed

@ScottSecor

Seeing how you mentioned paint I just got back from Cape Cod for 2 weeks. They have the Bourne Bridge and the Sagamore Bridge they want to replace (only two bridges access the cape) and they get LOTS of traffic. All riveted 500 + feet each built by Bethlehem Steel in 1935 and shipped to the job in pieces. they are in good shape but are very narrow, I guess 1930 cars were smaller.

but back to the paint.

They also have the Cape Cod Railroad bridge that spans the same 500' wide CC canal. This doesn't have enough clearance for big ships to pass so they raise and lower the bridge with electric motors. It's the second largest vertical lift bridge in the US, i think. It has 1000-ton counterweights at each end. i forgot what it weighs but it's a lot.

But back to the paint.

I guess because the bridge and the counterweights have to be almost perfectly balanced so the motors don't have to work as hard

Every time they paint the bridge, they have to scrape all the old paint off