My good friend Rich has won! For his operating USS Monitor engine.
Here is the press release about Sherlines 2009 award winner.
Richard Carlstedt of Green Bay, Wisconsin is the 13th winner of the Joe Martin Foundation for Exceptional Craftsmanship’s top annual award. As a manufacturing engineer, precision metalworking has been a part of his life for many years, and in his own home shop those high standards carry over into his personal projects.
As a kid he built model airplanes, once building six straight stick and balsa models of the WWI Spad biplane fighter until he got it just right. At age 11 he built a powered model of the Union ironclad ship the USS Monitor. Interest in that ship would follow him through life, and that early determination to get it “just right” has paid off in a world class project.
A little about Richard Carlstedt’s career
Richard studied pre-engineering in high school and worked as an apprentice machinist at Ford Aircraft to make money for college, hoping to get an aeronautical engineering degree. Once in college he changed that to mechanical engineering when he was told only graduates from MIT or Cal-Poly actually end up working in the wind tunnel. Finances eventually ended his college days and he went to work in construction to support a young family. He went back to the metal working trades and worked his way up from mechanic/machinist into management. During this time, he continued to attend night school with aspirations of a degree. On assignment in Canada in 1971, he met some friends who were live steam addicts and joined the Ontario Sun Parlor Lines steam club where he built his first steam engine—a Stuart Turner 7. He returned to Chicago four years later and joined the Chicago Model Engineers where he learned from experts like Emery Ohlenkamp, and Roy Ozuf as well as his own father-in-law, a retired tool and die maker.
After working for ten years in Northern California in a manufacturing engineering capacity he returned to Detroit to take the Society of Manufacturing Engineers test, which he passed to become certified as a manufacturing engineer. He continued working with metal dies and machinery and was eventually transferred to Wisconsin, where he resides today.
Over the years his hobby interests involved model airplanes and later, live steam engines. His Hypocycloidal Pumping Engine, based on an original on display in the Ford Museum was selected as the featured engine at the 2005 NAMES show.
Building a model of a historic ship engine
His early interest in the USS Monitor was rekindled in the early 1970’s when he read an article about the ship in National Geographic stating that the sunken wreck had been discovered and work was planned to recover it. He had also seen a pattern model of the engine on a trip to England in 1977. He vowed that someday when he was retired he would like to model the engine from that historic ship. In 1997, the US Navy started recovery of that ship, and he began several years of research on the engine. This took him to many museums and archives in the US and Britain, but eventually between these archives and consultation with the Mariner’s Museum in Newport News, VA he was able to piece together details on the original engine, no complete drawings of which were ever published.
Years before, a medical restriction on lifting had cause Richard to move from heavy model steam railroad projects to smaller stationary steam engines that could be built on a tabletop. This in part helped determine the chosen scale for the Monitor engine of 1/16. The engine was completed in 2007 and displayed at the North American Model Engineering Society show among other places. Richard plans to gather all the research data he prepared in producing the engine and publish a book on it to further the understanding of this unique engine among historians.
The extensive research involved in this unique engine and the uncompromising level of quality to which it was produced brought Richard to the attention of the Joe Martin Foundation. Richard’s intention to make this information available to others in a book is also a factor in the decision to name him the Foundation’s “Metalworking Craftsman of the Year”. This award along with a check for $2000 will be presented at the North American Model Engineering Society Expo, April 18-19, 2009 in Toledo, Ohio. Several of Richard’s engines including the Monitor engine will be on display at the Foundation’s show booth, and Richard will be there to discuss the project.
A page on Richard with photos of the engine, his other projects and his shop can be found at
www.CraftsmanshipMuseum.com/Carlstedt.htm. A video of the engine running can be seen at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWn8gQ9Ykpk. (Be sure to select “View in High Quality” to better appreciate the fine workmanship.) The video is also liked from his museum page. You can also learn more about the Joe Martin Foundation and its goals at
www.CraftsmanshipMuseum.com. The foundation was established by Joe Martin, owner of Sherline Products Inc. to honor the "best of the best" in the field of metalworking at the small end of the size scale. The foundation is approved as a 501(c)(3) organization and contributions of tools, projects or funds are tax deductible under US Tax Code.
For further information contact Craig Libuse, director. 1-760-727-9492 or craig@craftsmanshipmuseum.com.
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Topic: The 1/16 Scale Steam Engine of the U.S.S. Monitor (Read 11025 times)