Re: Request for a recommendation.

Kevrob wrote:

On 10/13/2024 10:56 AM, Michael F. Stemper wrote:

On 12/10/2024 12.48, William Hyde wrote:

Kevrob wrote:

On 10/5/2024 2:07 PM, William Hyde wrote:

Lynn McGuire wrote:

On 10/2/2024 1:46 PM, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:

In article <vdk2tj$t76$1@panix2.panix.com>,
Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote:

William Hyde  <wthyde1953@gmail.com> wrote:

>
I am looking for a book which will interest a 12 year old kid who is
fascinated by things mechanical.

>
A fiction book or nonfiction?
>
When I was... younger than 12, might have been about seven... I got my
father to buy me the Chilton's engine rebuilding annual.  I still have
it.  I spent months poring over it.
--scott

>
L. Sprague deCamp actually wrote a non-fiction book about engines.
>
Huh, it's actually called _Engines_:
>
    https://www.amazon.com/Engines-L-Sprague-Camp/dp/B0006BZMX8

>
That is a wild picture.  I can tell you from experience, working on a outboard engine in the middle of a lake or river is not fun when you drop whatever you were working on in the drink.  In my case, it was the propeller after we ran over a log and broke the prop key. One should always have a spare prop and several keys on board.

>
I had a similar experience but without the log (why it broke I do not know).
>
It's amazing how long it takes to  move a 10 foot boat a mile with only one paddle.  If there had been any kind of current the other way I'd still be out there.
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I could have swum back faster.
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I never went out again without checking the spares, even if I absolutely knew they were there.
>
>
William Hyde
>
>

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I used to put my Great-Uncle's 3.5 hp Evinrude (a 1956, IMS) on the
back of my family's 10-ft aluminum dinghy,

>
>
We also had a 3.5 Evinrude, and the year is about right.
>
Also an aluminum boat.  It usually had oars, but for some reason they were gone that day and only a paddle remained.  I could have rowed it back easily enough, but paddling is for canoes, not boats.
>
My uncle was well off, and every year he had new and stronger engines. the last I recall were twin 80 mercs.

>
Hopefully, they weren't on the same old aluminum rowboat.
>
>

 A frequent comment from older salts down where folks put their craft
in the water:  "You've got too much motor on that boat."
 I thought our 3.5hp engine was just right. I thought anything more than a 5hp gas engine might be too heavy for the stern.

In my childish way I thought that bigger was better.  I longed for a ten, or even a five.  But I grew out of that.
  Since the last time I

piloted any kind of boat, electric engines have come in, so I don't know
what tiny craft get rated for, these days. I imagine the shape of the
hull still matters. BITD you'd not want much power on a dinghy that you could also sail, as it would draw differently than our almost flat-
bottomed one.
 Twin 80s would be nice on the back of a cabin cruiser, or a mid-sized
skiff.  How big was your uncle's boat?

I was eight last time I saw it, so I can't be too accurate.
He was very into skiing and ski jumping.  In summer he lived on a large house on Lake Muskoka, with a boathouse and at least two large craft, winter in Florida where he had another establishment.  He may have had a boat like ours, but I never saw him in it.  Fishing was not on the agenda except in the ocean.
If he were twenty years younger, he could have been in a 60s beach movie as the cool or alternately creepy older guy.  Twenty years older and he'd have been a natural extra for "Weekend at Bernie's".  He did love the water.
William Hyde