Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Thought-experiment

[MerlinSub@t-online.de (Carsten Standfuß)]

Hi Mike..

"Michael B. Holt" schrieb:
> 
> Simon Lake's Argonaut Junior seems a fairly simple boat.  I've been
> wondering how to duplicate it.  Duplicate in terms of fuction, that is.
> 
> The original boat was two layers of pine planking separated by a sheet
> of canvas.  Any modern copy would be three layers of 3/4-inch plywood,
> fiberglassed.

It my private opinon but : 
If you build a replica it should be so much original as possible - 
if you do not want to build a replica - use a modern design.. 
> 
> In the water, it appears to have had no propulsion.  The wheels
> weren't paddle wheels, and no one has yet found a reference from
> Simon Lake himself to anything other than "paddling."   So I presume
> that the two guys rolled the thing into the water and then towed
> it, behind their rowboat or canoe, to the dive location.
> 
> Once there, they dropped to the bottom and drove around.  Driving
> on the bottom was powered by humans.  If I had to do this, I'd find
> a way to use electric motors.

On the picture I have here it looks that the one or both big bow 
wood wheels were driven by a bike-chain. The chain was outside the
vessel
and the chain axis was very high and more or less in the middle of the
hull short
behind something looks like a porthole. So I think it was handdriven. 

It was a trike and the stern wheel could be turned - was much smaller 
than the other and below the bottom of the boat. 

> 
> There was a hatch for divers, on the boat.  I'm not sure where that
> was (forward or midships; opening to the side or on the centerline).
> Just looking at the helmet used suggest the diver did not dare tilt
> his head more than a few degrees.  To exit out of the bottom of the
> boat means that the diver would have to lay down on the bottom.  (Of
> course, he might have gotten out and then put the helmet on ...)
> 
In my description the hatch was at the bottom and on the picture it
looks 
like that it was short behind the forward weels. There is a description 
that the crew can have a view to the seabottom and also grab something 
- there is no description that they can leave the boat.. on the other
side 
there is a short description of a divers suit. On the picture with two
mans 
on the boat - one half in the top hatch one near the stern short behind
the boat - it looks like that the distanve between the seabottom and the 
boat bottom was about 2 feet. 

But maybe the author missunderstand the picture and the turned small
wheel was in real the bow area - in this area over this wheel are
visible
some (3) holes looks like portholes. I think good old Simon would prefer
portholes in the bow area - not in the stern ..  

There is one thing I do not understand on the picture: There is a rope
goes from the middle of the hull to the end of the vessel were the big
wheels 
are. Any idear what it could be ? 

> Argonaut Junior was really a mobile habitat, it appears.  It must have
> been a great toy for the two guys who operated it.

It was maybe very - very slow..
> 
> Things I have not yet figured out just yet include the interior
> arrangements, the power train and ballasting.  I'll work on it as
> time permits.
> 
> What I'd really like to know is how two men managed to crank the
> thing over the soft bottom I see in rivers near me.  Simon Lake
> must have had a rock bottom on the river he was in.  It was seven
> tons of waterlogged wood, and it could not have been easy to
> handle, even were it trimmed to just less than negative.
> 
> A project, for comment.  My Other Half says Argonaut Junior would
> make a nice garden wagon ... but she also wants a boat to use as a
> planter.

I have seen here a one man submarine from the 60ies made from GRP 
and instead the dome - a flowers box in .. It was in a garden.. 

see you - Carsten

> 
> Mike