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.

Secret Mens Business Pt3 - Waxing Waxy

After the tip run, and the stacking of bricks, Andrew and Noel set to the cutting of the 4 tonnes of wax in the driveway. Much frustration ensued, the stuff would grab and clog the chainsaw and cutting with a hand saw took ages.

After cleaning a few bricks, I decided to grab an axe and try to crack the stuff. It worked!

In this shot you can see two white spots above the firewood heap. They are airborne wax from the previous swing of the axe. This stuff takes flight like nothing else when it shatters.



Andrew and Noel tipping up a block to let Noel get a better angle to crack it.

Noel's therapy for the month.

Why was that block so hard?
Because the sodding thing was formed with this almighty bowl of wax, which only wanted to crack inline with the seperate cooling line.
An amazing effect to observe so clearly.

I had figured that we'd get one of the big blocks cut up, and that it would be a big effort to get that much done, but once the axe was in play we were able to bowl over two of them with time to spare. I'll wait a fortnight before tackling anymore, but then the driveway will be that little bit clearer... now what to do with all this wax...

Secret Mens Business Pt 2 - Dust Extraction and Compressors

So the dust extraction sytem is built entirely from 100mm and 40mm PVC tube, with 50mm ag-line to the individual suction points.

Bits:

The state of play as at Thursday night;


More bits! Friday night: Still More Bits!!!! Saturday afternoon:
Bits cut free from the old pipe they were glued to;

Martin burning the poo out of the fittings. We learned a lesson here, stay away from yellow fittings, the glue in them has a higher melting point, and it's much harder to reclaim them whole and un-melted.

The suction line from the router table (the grey hose going up), connection to the main workshop space riser, curving around to the very heavy particle drop out point. The theory here is that any particle too heavy to make it to the cyclone, will drop into a bin here and not cause a blockage in the line. It seems to work too.
The connections to and from the fan. Made with gaffer tape as they are completely temporary. The fan still needs to be bolted down, and a sound proof box made up for it to save my (and the neighbors) ears. The fan will be bolted down through high density engine mounts.
Me testing the suction line on the floor. God what a noise! When we fired up the fan, the ag-line lengths set up an unbelievably loud tone, at their resonant frequency. They absolutely screamed! Ear plugs all round.
This is so cool!! It works perfectly!!
The return outside the shed, where the cyclone will go, and then heading into the fan at the bottom.
The vent line from the fan, note the white soap stone dust that has shot out of the fan, and has covered the plants in the bottom of the pic.
While Martin made the holes for the return line and vent line, Andrew and Noel set to work assembling the new compressor. Again, this seems to work (two plans in one weekend!!!), but it needs a more appropriate belt. Andrew (expert in all things hydraulic, pneumatic and power transmission) sized and specced this. I will pick on up in the next few weeks. This will be going outside in a weather proof and sound proof boxed and will be plumber back into the shed. This will be the long running compressor, with a higher start and stop pressure, than the secondary direct drive unit.
The dust extraction project has so far cost me about $400, this will increase a little when I buy the perspex to make the cyclone, but it really is a several thousand dollar result for a stupidly low cost.

The compressor so far weighs in at about $60, but only because I managed to foreigner in the base for it.

Secret Mens Business Pt1 - Shed Cleaning

This weekend was a big weekend with Andrew, Noel and Martin, at the beginning of which the goals were to have the shed clean, the dust extraction system tested and to get a few bricks and cut a bit of wax...

Friday night the shed was filthy and Andrew and I spent a few hours cleaning and sorting...


Martin came over Saturday mornign and we headed to Launy to get bits for the dust extraction system. After this all four of us piled into the cleaning of the shed and preparing of the DES, The pile that went to the tip today looked like this:

And after the big cleanup, it looked even better than this:

The guys worked so hard to help me out on this one, we've all missed the working bee weekends, lots of blokey fun and playing with toys! And we sleep so well afterwards...

The week in review

I are busy as a busy thing!

Last wednesday I sent off four chooks in trade for some drafting of armour patterns to use in a laser cutter.

Then on thursday seven more turned up with clucky white hen. Although I noted this afternoon that the little black one was dead, not sure why...

Still have two hens sitting, and the duck and the peahen have both dissappeared after lots and lots of mating rituals.


Spent time on the weekend working on fences and putting the flashing on the peacock shelter and wiring up the windows and making it all good. Now all it needs is a door, shutters, and a paint job.


Here's the middle paddock all fenced up, with two new gates. Goats are much with the happy.

Today I also broke new ground by pushing a fence around a blackberry hedge and through an ivy thicket. Should be right now until February, when I think I will hard fence all the way up to the road on the far side of Mary's place and down to the front border to bring it all into line, before stepping further out into the scrub and removing the fire hazard. Don't worry Miss Krin, none of it is native!

Once I had the yard cleaned up, goats to bed, tools away, I thought, time to look at the bathroom.

I looked at it and then...

It Imploded!!
This is all a really good find. The peatrap is in the right place to move across to where the new basin will go, and then I can put one in for draining the floo and one over in the old hot water service space to cater for the new shower. I reckon I should have in under control before Canty Faire.... I hope.

Worky work

Have spent this evening cutting iron to complete the eastern wall of the peacock shelter and to make a new gate, to go on the new gate deadman.

Battled a bit getting sheets into position, and I still need to put some boards and the last sheet on the eastern wall and then I can put the last sheet on the western wall. Will also cut the timbers for the northern windows tomorrow night.

Fencing the new yard will take place over the next week and thenew yard on the far side of mary's place in the next 3.

Will look at pulling the bathroom apart in the next fortnight also.

Had thought about going to Hobart this weekend for a tourney, but given the number of blisters on my hands, I might give it a miss.

New Project!!

I'm plugging away on my devest garb presently. But once devest is passed, I really want to get the shed projects underway again. It's just been so messy up there since december.

I still haven't put away stuff since festival either. Most not good.

But it's starting to cool off now, and I can't be bothered carting firewood up to the shed all the time, and it's kind of wasteful given the cost.

I remembered that Mother Earth News had a burner deisng way back when, so I went looking today, and I found this little gem!

http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/ethanol_motherearth/me11.html

This guy has addressed all the problems I saw in the Mother Earth designs. The only difference between his design and what I'll go with is that I am aware of another designthat used a ratio of 3 drops of water to every 1 of oil. THis ameliorates some of the soot (coal) by carrying it off in the flue.

I also remembered this cool sucker.

http://www.backyardmetalcasting.com/oilburners.html

A little overpowered for the shed heater perhaps...

But one day...

In my retirement house...

In the hills...

Made of stone...

With a steam engine....

Things Projecty and Farmy

Had a realisation this weekend that this could be a handy place to record other stuff, kind of like the log/almanac I always mean to use but never do....

So last Monday this little guy woke me up;
Only 11 weeks till chop day if it's a boy.
Interesting to note the low hatch rates this year, after an exceptionally dry winter. This white hen normally hatches 10-15 chicks per clutch and one of the brown hens gave up on her clutch of 8 eggs, although there were a couple of decent thunderstorms in there as well.

Given that my one solitary duck is laying I might invest of borrow an incubator to hatch out some more gal pals for her, so that the boys stop rogering her every 10-15 seconds. She's starting to waddle kind of funny.

Spent a couple of hours on Saturday morning working the bees, reorganised things in the hives from all ideals to having a couple of full-depth supers in. Populated them with 50-50 ideal comb and full-depth foundation, so that I can build up a stock of full depth comb.

















Also took our first harvest of honey;
Very yummy.
















Spent Saturday Afternoon and most of Sunday making gothic arch chairs for the Barony, with Miss A, Mr W and Mr D. These will look very funky once painted and setup up behind High table.









Now I'm trapped in the land of day one back at work after the change-over to daylight savings, sucky sucky ball balls.