Workshop heater

So, it's getting cold already, and I'd managed to lay in the parts for my waste oil heater (as designed by Roger Sanders, over the last couple of years. So I recently began the project.

I took some shortcuts on Rogers design:

1. Instead of machining a burner from steel, I used an old 1" shaft aluminium pulley, and cut down the centre stock to make the entire shape of the pulley into a cone.

2. The centre shaft is the remainder of the drum shaft from the apple scratter. It's 1" and has a 3/4" thread on the bottom, which makes mounting much easier. To lock the burner up at the top, I simply did a hose clamp up underneath. One day I may change this out for a shaft collar.

3. The vessel for the heater is an old gas cylinder.

Which I cut the lifting ring off of.

and then cut holes for the shaft, air pipe, flue and door.

4. The feed pipe is scavenged copper tube.

5. And the control valve is a needle preceded by a gate valve.

I did a test burn, with the burner sitting in the anvil hardy hole.

Compared to Rogers burn, it looks completely right!

Next I fit the shaft and burner. Then positioned the air pipe and tack welded it.

With the shaft and burner out, I secured the air pipe, and drilled the hole for the feed to go through.

Then I used a piece of large scrap pipe to make the flue mount.

And took the whole lot outside for a real test burn.

The next weekend at home saw me fit off the flue and mount the whole lot inside the shed with a temporary tank for the oil.

Only one problem, no dektite was fitted, which meant that the whole shebang got filled with water when it rained....

And I didn't clean all the water out....

So I had a BLEVE in the shed...

Which I and the heater survived.

So all that is left to do is to dektite the flue, and move the old oil tank fromt he house, up to a decent height above the shed.

Functionally the unit is excellent. On a very chill night, it got the big space almost long sleeves warm, and it's definitely capable of making the shed a useful painting space in winter.

What I did on my holidays.....

So, on the easter weekend just passed, Andrew, Heath and I built an apple scratter (scratcher to some, codling grinder to fans of blackadder).

This is part of our long term plan to make better use of the long orchard, and any windfalls we can lay our hands on.

The results of our efforts look like this;

The whole item, note the cleats on the feed table, to keep the apples from moving down the chute too quickly, so we can sort out any rotten ones (then goes to the animals, definitely getting a pig next spring!). Also note the angled front-to-back braces, to add heaps of strength, but leave plenty of room for the buckets to be shoved under.



Under the feed table is the working box, where all the choppy stuff happens.




Inside the working box. You can see the nastiness in here. This is definitely one of those NO HANDS ALLOWED zones. Blood would taint the cider.

Currently the screws in the drum protude much too far. We'll drive these down so they are only just proud of the surface. The goal in doing this is make a finer cut, and therefore a more effective pulp for cidering.




The working box removed. This is to make cleaning that much more efficient.




We then started in on the cider press, but that's another post.

And then we went and got about 200kg of quinces, and the girl is in near permanent quince processing lockdown.

All in all the nicest easter I've had in 12 years. No rovers, no scouts, no waking up and having to put armour on. So good! Canty faire for a while now we thinks.