Yep - except you left out "our" for orange - I still use it. My tech school instructors were all ex-military. Unfortunatly my aging eyes need ever stronger glasses to see these bands these days, I use a cheap multimeter to verify the values more and more.

B = Black = "0"
B = brown = "1"
R = red = "2'
o = orange = "3"
y = yellow = "4"
g = green = "5"
b = blue = "6"
v = violet = "7"
g = gray = "8"
w = white = "9"

quote:

Originally posted by Tim c cook:
Yep - except you left out "our" for orange - I still use it. My tech school instructors were all ex-military. Unfortunatly my aging eyes need ever stronger glasses to see these bands these days, I use a cheap multimeter to verify the values more and more.

B = Black = "0"
B = brown = "1"
R = red = "2'
o = orange = "3"
y = yellow = "4"
g = green = "5"
b = blue = "6"
v = violet = "7"
g = gray = "8"
w = white = "9"

Oops.. You're right!! But I think it was "Only"..

I had to use that a while back... I was sifting through my shoebox of resistors and none of them were labled.. so I spent an hour going through each feaking stick of resistors decoding the little rings.. My shoebox is 20 year old and seems some of the colors are not quite a vivid..

Seem's like you are working with about 10 gauge or less materials, stainless would be a minimal cost, if you so choose... tigman

For a stainless bowl, try the cover from a stainless pot. I have a few that looks ideal in shape. Nice gentle shallow curvature from the center. Just have to find time to build it.

Pot lid -- Might work - I would like something a bit heavier but it may not be that nescicary ?

It's not the cost of a small piece of 90-100 thousanths thick stainless sheet so much as it is the unavailability locally, especially something that has a slight bowl shape, farmers don't use it much. I will keep my eye out at the local salvage yard for something stainless that I can use to make up a burner bowl but it is not too likely.

Any idea how thick the stainless is in a beer keg, salvage yard has several of these, I think the ends are dished a bit ?

If you have access to a hydraulic press it is easy to dome a piece of stainless, set it on a chunk of 6 inch pipe find center and press it down however much you need. I live in Montana where everything has to be ordered, and stainless is readily available? It takes stainless wire or rod to weld only if you are worried about attachments deteriorating, otherwise weld with mild steel... Tigman

How thick does the burner bowl have to be? If it doesn't burn out, the thinner the better no? Thinner means quicker cold starts. The stainless pot lid I have has a threaded stub for the lid knob. I'm not sure if it is secure enough but it is perfect to thread in a standoff to mount it to the bottom bowl. For peace of mind I'd make the standoff large enough in diameter and add 2 countersunk head stainless screws and put some furnace cement between the standoff and the lid for a seal.

quote:

Originally posted by Tim c cook:
Pot lid -- Might work - I would like something a bit heavier but it may not be that nescicary ?

It's not the cost of a small piece of 90-100 thousanths thick stainless sheet so much as it is the unavailability locally, especially something that has a slight bowl shape, farmers don't use it much. I will keep my eye out at the local salvage yard for something stainless that I can use to make up a burner bowl but it is not too likely.

Any idea how thick the stainless is in a beer keg, salvage yard has several of these, I think the ends are dished a bit ?

Some other thoughts..

Even thin low grade stainless is some pretty tough stuff..

I'd like to see an experiment done in that pot burner that does the following:
1. Burn veg oil for 10 hours straight.
2. Burn motor oil for 10 hours straight.
3. Burn a 50/50 mix for same.
4. Record difference in pot maintenance.

I've noticed a 50/50 mix seems to burn cleaner and hotter than either does alone. As I understand it, veggy oil contains lots of oxygen where as motor oil contains none. The two seem to act like oxygen and acteylene together.

And the final thought,
GET A CAMERA TIM !!!

The retention head or diffuser I use in my wvo burner is made of thin stainless. It has around 32 fins and is very difficult to clean the crud buildup in the nooks with a brush and solvent. I use a propane torch and heat it up to red hot and everything just magically burns off and comes out like new and spotless. Stainless is good stuff!

You made want to try firing the pot burner on high till red hot and see if the buildup will just burn off.

The windshield washer pump DIED after four 12 hour stints -- Bummer.

I opened it up and found that the flexable rotor had lost 5 of it's 8 flexable paddles. I was affraid that might happen, seems to be the problem with all flex-blade pumps, they eventually shed the blades. This was a well-used pump so a new one might last a bit longer but probably not a lot longer.

After trying a couple of other wierd hobby-type pumps with no success (I am always looking for small pumps so buy whatever is available from surplus sales sites for testing) I am now running an identical pump to this one now listed on Ebay, $39.00 plus shipping is a bit more than I like but if it turns out to be reliable it will be a fair price. This sale page says "5 available" but He has listed these pumps for quite a while so may have more ?. I think I bought mine from surpluscenter.com a couple years ago but these same pumps are sometimes available from verious military surplus sale sites, some are 24 volt, some are 12 volt, they look the same. The wierd military connector can be removed and you can wire directly to the motor. the cover that is over the motor is also holding the power connector, 2 screws removes the cover.
The 24 volt pump is listed as "intermittent duty", I don't see that anywhere on the 12 volt pump but I don't think there will be any problem as long as it is being powered with less than the full 12 volts.

The 24 volt pump was used as the fuel pump for an intake manifold "flame heater" used on some older diesel 6 X 6 military trucks, they used a fuel nozzle and either a glow plug or a spark plug to spray and ignite diesel into the intake manifold for cold weather starting, Yep, a fire in the intake manifold, the fire was maintained while the engine idled until it was thoroughly up to temp.

This pump is a bit overkill as it has an internal pressure regulator but it is a true gear pump using two approx 3/8 diameter gears about 1/16 inch thick, one gear is directly connected to the motor shaft, each gear has 5 or 6 teeth (forget) so the space between the teeth is big enough to allow a good bit of crud to be pumped. I used a 24 volt version of this pump for a couple winters pumping veg onto the top of my wood fire in this same wood stove. The 24 volt version did not run reliably at less than about 8 volts, this still pumped more oil than the wood fire could burn so I was pulsing the motor on/off for from 1/4 sec up to about 2 sec. This worked ok but was not ideal. The only problem I had with the 24 volt version pump was that after setting unused all summer, and having last pumped vegoil, the gears were stuck solid so I had to open up the pump and give it a good cleaning, ran fine after that (luckily it is openable-uppable)

The 12 volt version is running nicely at 3 volts just now and judging from the amount of fire it is pumping a bit less than a quart/hour, looks promissing, at 12 volts it moves more oil than I think I will need but It will take a few days running to be sure how well it works.

Stainless -- Wandered around my local salvage yard today and found a stainless beer keg, looks like it's dished end will work nicely and it is heavy enough metal to weld on, the diameter of tha keg is about 14 inches so it could make a BIG bowl, I only want a 7 inch one. Testing has shown that even the current 6 3/4 inch upper bowl never holds any more than a small pool of oil maybe 1 1/2 inch in diameter, if the bowl is not level, mostly just an 1/8 to a 1/4 inch strip around the center air passage tube, the fuel is vaporized almost instantly even when feeding LOTS of fuel to the up-to-temp bowl.

It takes maybe 3 minutes for the upper bowl to self-ignite when first firing up the cold burner, roaring away nicely within 5 minutes of lighting.

It will take a bit more work to shape the bowl out of the tougher stainless, lots more time to grind things into shape, but it should last, testing will procede.

10 gauge stainless bottom bowl!! will this work Tim?? I pressed it in hyd press...have simular piece only cut like a washer I will press and put 1 1/2" stainless tube in for upper burner Tigman

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just another pict

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Tigman
I currently use the bottom section of a 20 # propane tank for my burn pot But would like to move to something Stainless like you have made, Any way to get it a bit deeper? I am going to look for a Stainless mixing bowl and then cut it down to height.


I have thought about useing a propane pilot under my bowl to keep it hot.

I could easily press it into a bowl if needed, but I have been under the assumetion that a taper was what we were using?? seems like I recall on the "sanders adapted men" heater something like 3/4" deep tapered out to nothing in a 6" dish worked great, no rough edge or ridge for ash to catch on... but then again pictures would be great... Tigman

Tigman -- I would think 10 guage stainless would be fine if not a bit overkill for thickness, it will take a bit longer to heat to ignition temps (tens of seconds more) but surely would never burn up. I don't see any metal in your first picture and I can't tell the depth or diameter from the second.

Bowl verses taper - I suspect the 12 degrees taper mentioned in the Sander's artical is from a calculation that somehow has to do with fuel pool diameter verses fuel feed or some-such, I don't find this to be relevent with the 2-bowl design as the upper bowl vaporizes all the fuel fed to it no matter the amount, there is never actually a pool formed except for a small ring around the base of the center air passthrough tube. The lower bowl's fuel pool is deturmined by the size of the drip hole in the upper bowl's fuel shoot, using the 3/32 hole this pool never gets bigger than about 4 inches no matter the amount of fuel being fed into the fuel shoot as the bulk of the fuel is vaporized in the upper bowl.

The main thing I like about using a shallow bowl or taper is that it allows the center vertical draft air to make the horizontal flow shift out across the bowl surface easily so a lot of fuel surface gets fed the air, it also makes it very easy to clean the bowls by scraping or even if some chipping is needed. Haven't had any problem cleaning the bowls when burning veg, mainly the loose dry breadcrumb stuff simply dumps out of the bowls, and the soot layer that accumulates on the under side of the upper bowl can be wiped away with a paper towl although it is less messy if I scrape it away with a dull knife blade as there is no black smearing.

The soft fluffy soot buildup that I thought was reaching an equilibrium of burning-VS-buildup seems to actually be mostly going up the chimney as postage stamp sized thin black soot flakes (these detach cleanly from the bowl's surface and float upwards). I noticed some of these coming out the top of the chimney, they weren't burning or even glowing so they don't seem to be a fire hazard.

I do make a bit of smoke even with veg, not a lot but a visable amount, about like a well-lit and up-to-temp wood fire. The smoke is black so I guess that is why I could not see it at night even using a flashlite ?

I checked at my local salvage yard again today, found a SS beer keg but the owner was not around, hope to pick the keg up tomorrow, both ends can be used for burner bowls and will be about 1/2 - 5/8 inch deep when using the 7 center inches of the ends, the metal thickness looks to be about 1/16 inch thick, about 16 guage. The upper end has the keg fitting in the center so this will be removed for the upper bowl's air passage.

How do you cut stainless ? My past experiance is limited but I found it very hard on cutting devices, I ruined a hole saw trying to make the very first hole. I will try abrasive cutoff wheels first but also have found stainless very slow to grind using standard abrasives, are the abrasive wheels that are designated for stainless worth the extra cost ?

Glad you jumped in Tim, first I can send you diff. picts if it helps second the disc was 6" diameter and I found center pressed it down 3/4" exactly which makes a taper"slightly flat in the very center" from edge of 6" to center.. Cutting, I guess I'm spoiled plasma cam machine in shop, but most steel yards now have them also. So if I follow your discriptions I think we are on the same page, but I have become concerned that I need a bowl shape or something that actually nee's a lip around it rather than going to infinaty, am I on the right page here? I'm about to buy you and send you a christmas present NEW CAMERAwith shock protection LOL Tigman

I don't think a lip is nescicary, my bowls are pretty shallow and don't actually have a lip, they just rise up in a slightly rounded manner rather than being flat like the sides of a funnel.

One thing that the slight bowl shape allows is that you don't have to get the bowls nearly as close to level as I suspect is needed with a really shallow taper, the bowl simply pools the oil to one side a bit but still burns just fine.

A 6 inch burner will make a lot of heat so I dought you will ever run that large of a fuel pool. I accidently filled both bowls full of fuel at startup once, it initially flamed out and filled the bowls with veg. I poured in a bit of diesel and lit it up, once the upper bowl self-ignited and started vaporizing fuel I had the first 3 feet of the flue pipe glowing a very very bright red, got a bit scarry as it was about to melt-through temps - I finally realized I could close down the flue damper and reduce the forced draft, this brought everything down to a dull red heat - WHEEW.

Cutting stainless -- I might try using a sharp chisel against a iron backing block, slow and raggid but doesn't cost anything and should work on this thin material, I will find out ?

Camera -- I have a wierd webcam thing but the cord won't reach out to the garage or even the stove.

Tim,
Best way to cut stainless is with a plasma cutter or abrasive cut-off wheel..
As for grinding, they do make grinding wheels that are made for stainless steel but they are not any faster than a normal 4 1/2 inch angle grinder wheel.. I use my angle grinder with a 6 inch cut-off wheel to make many cuts on things.. Next to a plasma, the cut-off works best.

I sort of suspected that the cutoff wheels labled for SS were not realy nescicary. I use 4 1/2 inch by 1/16 or 1/8 inch thick (prefered) cutoff disks (1/32 thick disks disintigrate instantly) to cut open the propane tanks when making up the big collection funnels so I will give these a try first, thanks.

With the appropriate adapter for the hand held 4 1/2 inch angle grinder I can also use the small 5 inch or so diameter "stub" disks left from my 14 inch abrasive chop saw.

took a few minutes to push the top burner into cone, can ya see this one "TIM" I hope to put a little fire into it next week or so if I can get some spare moments Tigman

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