June 6, 1778.
Phillip cleared a corner of the yard and marked a rectangle on packed earth with chalk and stakes.
"Foundation first," he told Henry. "Stone and lime mortar. Four feet deep. It must not move."
Masons dug and set the footing. They laid dressed stone in courses, tamped soil between lifts, and left pockets for hold-down bolts. By sundown the trench was full of stone, the top bedded flat.
June 8.
A steel bedplate arrived—plates and angles riveted into a frame to Phillip's drawing. Not as elegant as a cast iron soleplate, but stronger than anything they could buy quickly. The blacksmiths heated eight anchor bolts to a dull red and set them in the stone pockets.
"Dry fit," Phillip ordered.
They lowered the bedplate onto the green mortar. Washers and nuts went on finger-tight. A long straightedge crossed the plate; wedges went under low corners until it read true. Henry chalked the corners. "We'll grout tomorrow when the lime takes."
June 10.
Boiler plates came from their own shop—Bessemer steel rolled to sheet, edges scarfed. Three men at a time swung hammers to dome rivet heads. Phillip walked the seam with a caulking chisel, driving steel to steel until it sang.
"Fill it," he said at last.
A hand pump fed cold water into the boiler. A leather-lined plug closed the steam outlet. They pumped until the man at the gauge—just a tall U-tube with mercury Phillip had described—announced the test head. The boiler sweated along a seam.
Henry frowned. "Weeping here."
"Mark it." Phillip tapped the line. "We'll re-caulk and re-rivet this bay. Again."
They did. The second hydraulic test held. No weep. Phillip wrote in his notebook: Hydrostatic test at 1½ times working pressure—sound.
June 12.
Cylinder day. They had cast a heavy iron barrel at a nearby foundry to Phillip's pattern and shrunk a steel liner into it. Now they had to finish the bore.
"Set the boring bar," Phillip said.
The carpenters had built a stout trestle. An iron bar ran through the cylinder on temporary bearings. Two men turned a flywheel by hand; a third advanced the tool by a screw. Thin curls peeled from the liner, ringing onto the bed in blue spirals. They worked by lantern and straightedge, then lapped with oil and fine emery until the piston slid under its own weight with a soft kiss of air at the ports.
June 14.
Piston and rods. From spring-steel plate the smiths cut a ring to Phillip's curve and scarfed a gap. He showed them how to spring it into a groove on the piston.
"This ring wants to press against the wall lightly. No more hemp wadding if we can help it," he said. Still, he packed the stuffing box with flax and tallow as a backup.
The crankshaft came next—one solid forging, journals turned on the big treadle lathe the men had built for the purpose. Bearings were bronze, cast in the shop and scraped to fit with red lead.
June 17.
Slide valve chest. The plate was machined flat with emery on a surface slab Phillip had insisted they pour. Ports were cut to his template. The valve itself was steel, lapped on the same slab until it would pull tight under a fingertip.
"It must move free," he said. "Steam will do the rest."
Linkage from the eccentric to the valve rod went together on pins and cotters—nothing fancy, but true to drawing.
June 19.
Flywheel day. The great steel wheel—six feet across with six spokes—came on a cart pulled by four horses. They jacked it upright, heated the hub, and shrunk it onto the crankshaft. Phillip chalked marks around the rim, set a temporary wooden brake, and turned the shaft by hand.
"Light here," he said. "Add a weight opposite."
They drilled and pinned two small slugs into a spoke boss. The next turn ran true.
June 20.
Firebox, grate, and chimney. The masons laid firebrick inside the boiler's furnace shell. The grate bars were steel. A short stack rose above the house and drew well. A simple lever-weighted safety valve sat proud on the shell. The gauge glass—two fittings, a glass tube, and valves—was the one piece that drew a murmur from the men when water rose in it.
"Water must never fall below this mark," Phillip said, striking a line with a nail on the column. "Never."
He bolted on a small pump driven by an eccentric on the crank—feedwater, to keep the boiler supplied once the engine ran. For starting, a hand pump would do.
June 22.
First assembly. They lowered the cylinder onto the bedplate, squared it to the crank, and set the crosshead guides. Rod to crosshead, crosshead to guides, everything oiled. The valve gear hung from its bracket like a clock waiting to tick.
Henry came with a list. "Coal and water loaded. Ash pit cleaned. Men briefed."
Phillip nodded. "Light a small fire. We'll warm it gently."
Coals glowed. The thermometer—Phillip's simple mercury stick in a brass tube—crept up. The U-tube manometer for steam pressure rose a finger's width. No leaks at the door, none at the seam. The boiler shell hummed softly.
"Open the drain cocks on the cylinder," Phillip said. "We don't want water hammer."
He cracked the throttle. Steam hissed into the valve chest, then out the open drains in white jets. The condensate ran clear. He shut the drains, eased the throttle again.
The piston moved. Just an inch, then two. The flywheel twitched. A cheer went up, then died as the engine stalled at dead center.
"Bar it over," Henry called. Two men with a lever moved the wheel a quarter turn. Phillip opened the valve. The piston drove through its stroke, the wheel rolled, and this time momentum carried it past dead center. The next stroke came easier. The third found rhythm.
The engine ran.
Slow at first—thump, hiss, thump—then smoothing as the flywheel stored energy. The slide valve clicked. The connecting rod flashed with oil. Steam beat the sky from the exhaust line.
Phillip listened with his palm on the bedplate. "Too much cut-off. We're wasting steam," he said quietly. He shifted the eccentric a degree and shortened the throw.
The note changed. The hiss softened. The engine steadied at a constant speed.
Men laughed and slapped each other's backs. Someone crossed himself. Henry just grinned.
"Load it," Phillip said. "Let's see it work."
They belted the flywheel to a line shaft they had rigged along the shop wall. Pulleys spun. A treadle lathe that had taken three men to turn now whirled on its own. A drill press pecked a neat hole in steel plate. In the yard, the pump they had plumbed to the river drew a steady stream up the pipe and into a cistern, cold water splashing like music.
Phillip eyed the feedwater pump. It chuffed with each revolution, sending a pulse into the boiler. The gauge glass held steady at the mid-mark. He put a hand on the safety valve lever; it trembled under his fingers but did not lift. Good.
"Bring up a rope brake," he said.
They wrapped a rope around the flywheel rim, hung a scale on one end and a bucket of stones on the other, and oiled the rope. With a bit of arithmetic on the back of a scrap, Phillip estimated torque from the pull and speed from a tally stick.
"Eighteen to twenty horsepower at this throttle," he said. "As designed."
They ran for an hour. A valve stuck once; he lapped it with a touch of emery and oil. A bearing ran warm; Henry scraped a hair more from the bronze and fed it tallow. A weep formed at a boiler plug; they nipped it up and it sealed.
At last Phillip shut the throttle. The engine coasted down, the flywheel whispering to a stop. Steam drifted away in white veils. Men stood around it, faces shining with sweat and soot, saying little.
Henry wiped his hands and looked at Phillip. "It runs."
"It works," Phillip answered. "Now we build two more."
June 25.
The second day they ran the lathe all afternoon, turning crank pins and shafting for the mill orders. The pump kept the sump dry. The drill press bored bolt circles faster than four men could mark them. By evening the carpenters had framed a proper engine house around the machine, with shutters to keep rain off the valve chest and a plank floor laid tight.
June 28.
Phillip added one more device—a simple centrifugal governor. Two iron balls swung on arms from a spindle driven by a belt. As the engine sped up, the balls rose and pulled a linkage that pinched the throttle. As it slowed, they fell and opened it.
"Try it," he said.
They set the belt. The balls rose, the linkage moved, and the engine found a new, calmer steadiness. The line shaft no longer surged when a man leaned on the drill press.
Henry watched the governor with open admiration. "It almost thinks for itself."
"It saves men from mistakes," Phillip said. "That is enough."