apples

Well I have made a rocket stove and am working on getting a car heater motor fan for a blower. Then I can get it red hot. Btw I did make a froe quickly, you will have to find the thread in the axe forum. Called "my froe is a no go" I think. Did not work, going to need a spring I think.

Yes this was a quick knock up job to see how easy or hard it would work for splitting some firewood. Yeah the pine timber pallets I use for kindling some of them I can split into match stick size thickness if I want. Yet the hardwoods here (Australia) the gain is not as straight as the pine. But it did split a heavy chunk of timber so I am pretty impressed so far. Well if I can find a straight leaf spring that will be the go, or a 1/4" thick mower blade maybe too. There might be an old leaf spring lying around at work (trailers) I can get, otherwise a might go to a scrap yard. Will I be right to mig weld using normal wire the leaf spring to a metal handle? I think what most do is burn out the bushings and the stick.the handle in there.

So I quickly made up a Froe using a bit of 5mm flat bar 40mm wide and about 1 foot long. I welded on a pipe for a handle and went to try it out. The darn thing bent like a banana, and the handle ripped off. I read online that some guy makes his froe out of normal mild steel stock, which is what I did. I guess I'm going to have to use some harder stuff hey. What should I use? I will want to arc or mig weld it to a metal pipe for a handle as well.

I wouldn't mind having a froe to use from chopping up wood as kindling. As I have no forge and want to make something easy I was wondering if I could just use a bit of flat bar, say 12" long and 3" high and 1/2" thick. I was thinking on the cutting edge I could run a bead or too of some hardfacing rods. Then this would keep a hardened edge. The other idea I had was to maybe weld on a strip of tool steel blank and then grind that to a cutting edge. Any ideas? Yes a car spring would be good but it has a bend in it and I don't have a forge to bend it out. Maybe a mower blade might work?

Yep I just want more flames out of the top. And I notice that I get a pile up of coals which limit the air flow through the system. If I had a longer section of pipe on top it would draw a lot more air, but then I would not get the flames out in the open. The simple thing is that I need more air flow. Yes the car heater blower fans would be easy to work with.

I have a rocket stove that I want to make air forced using a fan/blower. The trick is, that I want it to be quiet at the same time as powerful. I think that a squirrel cage fan is the ticket for this??? I see you can get centrifugal fans that have heaps of air flow but they are very loud. The best setup for me would be a motor thar runs on 12v as I would like to run it hooked up to a car battery. I see a few car heater fans/blowers on ebay but I wonder if they would have enough pressure and cfm for my application? Any ideas people have are appreciated. BTW I am in Australia, we use 240v AC. And I would want a motor speed control too, which I think is easy using a dc motor. Maybe I could get a car heater and swap out the standard motor for a higher speed motor? Peter

I am looking into making my own lathe and mill. It would be made from plate steel that I can weld into shape. Once welding is finished it needs to be stress relieved which can be done by heating it to a dull red which is apparently somewhere around 650 degree's Celsius. Now I'm thinking that this might be possible to do in the backyard instead of paying hundreds of dollars sending it to a proper heat treating mob. It might still cost the same amount to set up, but at least then I will have the equipment to make a smaller forge, right. Two main issues I can think of are. 1. The size of it and keeping the heat evenly spread across the part. 2. Keeping the temperature at a constant 650 deg. C for 2 hrs. The size of the oven/forge will need to hold a part that is any where up to say 1500mm long (about 60", or 5ft) and then about 600mm wide (24" or 2ft) and lets say 3-4ft high. These are rough figures to give an idea on the size of the oven I would need to make. Having said all this I would also need to run it for about 2hrs, I wonder how many gas burners I'd need to get an even heat and how many bottles of BBQ size gas bottles it would burn up? 9kg ones ( 20lbs) The other cheaper fuel option would be oil or diesel powered as opposed to gas. Any ideas or thoughts on this? Of should I maybe just find a heat treating mob and get them to do it? Peter Australia

I want to make a small rocket stove. I 'd like to make my own fire bricks but I'm not 100% sure what to make it out of. I see that vermiculite and perlite are very good insulators. I think bentonite clay can be use as well but I'm not sure. I'm thinking along the lines of cat litter (bentonite) and then mix in vermiculite or perlite and make then in molds to form bricks..... Any one else got any idea's on this? Peter

Okay I have my gas pit going. It is making a fair bit of black soot as it burns. Looks like I will need to make an air mixer or venture to suck air in. Right now all I have is a few fittings that are connected so that it goes from the 5/8" UNF gas thread to the BSP water pipe threads. How would I make a venturi for it? I don't think that I can just drill a few holes in the fittings? I think I need to constrict the gas flow into a high speed jet then somewhere around there drill a hole? Any ideas guys? Here is a pic of it going.

I wanted to try the fire on water effect. I have attached a pic of my fire pit I made which should make it easy to see what i mean, lol. I think I need more gas holes.

Well I fired her up tonight. Filled up the fire pit with water and had it bubbling through. The gas burned like gas I guess. It was very bubbly, too bubbly actually. This was with only the one gas jet/outlet. The flame went to about 3-4ft. Tomorrow when I have time I will try to add a heap more holes to the setup. Most fire rings have a heap of holes that are spaced about 1" apart. Where as I only had the one hole. They also mention using a air/fuel mixer adapter thing, otherwise you get black soot from the flame not burning with not enough air. But my flame seemed okay, no soot at all that I could see.

Thanks for all the comments guys. Yeah I guess I will have to fire her up and see. I will post some pictures later on. I get my regulator, hose and flashback today.

How long does a bottle of gas last? Can you calculate it? I know my pressure will be anything from 0-60psi, my bottle of gas is 9kg. What else do you need to know to calculate how long the gas will flow out of it at a set pressure? Nozzle/jet size and volume of gas tank/cylinder? What about just roughly. What psi do you guys run at and how long will that make a 9kg (20lb) bottle last for? Peter

Well here is my fire pit. It's had about 3 wood fires in it so far, so she ain't that clean anymore. I am going to get a lpg welding regulator so that is good for about 60psi probably. Then I will make up a pipe setup and drill holes for the gas to escape. The venturi part I guess can go under it, I will also buy about 10meters of hose (33ft) and a flashback to be safe. Was thinking to fill the pan up with either water and have it bubble up, or vermiculite. So the flames have gotta be at least 3ft tall, it's coming on to winter down here in OZ and we are going to need to keep warm around that fire. Looking forward to the gas, not having the smoke smell and stinking clothes, and I won't have to go looking for wood. Rolled over a log just two days ago and there was a brown snake there, crikey.

I am working on making a gas (propane) fire pit. I have read that you gotta buy or make an air mixer valve / venturi. Otherwise the flame will be yellow and very sooty. I assume you guys have make your own venturi things, how hard is it to do? I don't need a hot flame to melt stuff, just don't want the sooty black stuff coming off. Also how long does a 9kg / 20lb gas bottle last in a forge? I'm just trying to work out how long my fire pit will burn for. I might need two bottles for the night. I guess it is all about pressure and how big a hose/ nozzle/jet you are using. I'm after flames about 3-4ft high, like flames in a good sized wood campfire. Looks like the 0.8mm mig tips are good for the forges from about 0.1psi to 15psi. Will be using an LPG welding regulator, not a pissy little BBQ regulator. My BBQ reg is about 2.8kPa which is only 0.4psi. That isn't much hey. Any way I'd appreciate some help. And you can buy the air mixer valve things but I'm in Australaia and I think our gas fittings have a different thread so it may be harder for me to just buy a air mixer thing? Our LPG bottles have a 5/8 UNF Left hand thread. So I guess the other fittings are also UNF? Peter