Waste oil burner. This time with videos.

Last weekend I fired up the oil burner again. This time I prepared a reasonable amount of fuel for pre-heating. I even tried to light it without accelerants. Unfortunately everything was wet and the kerosene was so close to hand. So I did cheat a little.

Here I am, with the pile of wood just starting things happening.

Maybe a little quick. But I didn't quite kill it.

Starting to burn down nicely.

Starting to get a bit excited with a little oil and air added.

I managed to turn the oil down too far without realizing it as the fire got a little too smokey. It was taking off but it didn't feel quite right so I fiddle with the oil and lo and behold. It starts to take off.

Lets see if I can make stuff hot with it.

A little hard to see here, but the bar certainly did get forging hot.

Lets see if we can make something a little more substantial properly hot.

The end of the camshaft needed a little support to keep it in the hottest zone.

While it probably would've looked much better at night it did get hot enough to move some metal around a little. I think the white coating is fine ash from the wood getting blown around by the blast from the burner and coating everything.

Just before I shut it down.

And here we are cooling down. When I came back an hour or 2 later there was still a fair bit of heat radiating out from the bricks. They were definately hotter than you would want to touch.

Here is a quick shot of me pre-heating the fire pit before anything got too exciting.

Here we are with the burner running and adjusting the air/oil mix a little.

I'm hoping to get some more shots of interesting stuff getting done this weekend so keep an eye out for those next week.

Cheers,
Rex

I can make stuff hot again

So in my experiments with waste oil burning I have reached a new milestone. On Friday night I managed to make something hot using waste oil and compressed air alone.

I can also still break hammers. I think I trimmed too much off when I fitted the head on last time so it has just slid over the taper the wedges put in the wood. I have a few plans on how to fix this so it doesn't happen again. I'll be bringing you along for my experimentation there as well.

It took me a little while to get the fire going this good. To start with what I was trying was dripping the oil into a stream of air from my shop-vac on blow, atomizing(?) it then carrying it through into a fire that I'd already lit to get some heat into the fireplace. Unfortunately that didn't work.

I had some charcoal in the bottom of the fire to help get a decent bed of hot ashes to be spraying the oil onto. Unfortunately with any kind of draft, even from the hairdryer. The charcoal turned into embers which were getting picked up by the wind a little and heading towards the neighbors yards. Not so good.

The next thing I tried was to just jamb the nozzle from my previous test(here) through a gap in the bricks and backfill with dirt. Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of that as well.

This was the result:

A nice big ball of flame, with relatively few sparks as there is much less air moving. I put a spring in the fire as this is something I have been toying with a bit recently and it did get hot.

It did take a fir while so there is plenty of room to improve but a good proof of concept. It will burn when feeding into a smallish, pre-heated chamber.

Here I was deliberately running rich to get the big fat flame to come out of the fireplace and shed some light on the surrounding area so I could see what I'm doing.

It's impressive the amount of control I have over this, for a pretty crude piece of engineering.

After I turned off the burner this is what it looked like inside the fireplace. I put some bricks on top as it was spitting a little and I was hoping to stop the bricks surrounding the fireplace from cooling too quick and cracking. The glow is what's left of the fire I was using to get everything started, scraps of wood and charcoal mainly.

This is what was left a few days later. The burner is over on the left and can't quite be seen.

I took a little video of this and I will share that as soon as I have it edited together. I am going to play with this fireplace as it is for a while and see if I can get a bit more heat out of it, then I have a small gas bottle that will probably become my new forge. I will probably be lining that with some kind of fireproof material to help stop the steel from burning out.

Cheers,
Rex

I'm not trying to start a collection.

Honest...
It might be better if you stop here Mum.

So these followed me home from the Junktion on the weekend. 2 x 40L Air compressors with solid tanks. One of the compressor heads seems to be seized up but it doesn't have a fan on it so that could just be a lack of leverage. The other one can be spun by hand and makes the right sort of whooshing noises so I think it works.

Unfortunately neither of them have any regulators or power plugs on them so I will need to buy some, probably off eBay or AliExpress.

The plan for these is to turn one into an extra resevoir to increase the capacity of my compressor from 20L to 60L. And if I get an extra compressor head or 2 out of it, all the better.
The other one will be turned into a fuel tank for an oil burner I am planning on building for the forge. Similar to the one in this video:


I'm planning on getting that done in the next few weeks or so.

So keep an eye out for an improved forge in the coming months.

Cheers,
Rex

Have Hammer, Will forge

I broke the last handle I had on a decent hammer, so now that it's cooling down it is not as crazy to have a fire going and there is no point having a fire without red hot meal is there? I just bought a new handle from the hardware store. I'm quite happy with it. It wasn't varnished which is the biggest problem I've found with most new handles you can buy.

Hmmm, good starting point, but difficult to work metal like this.

Still some shaping to go. Lets get to it then.

I started off trying to be sensible and gave the plane a go. Unfortunately it wasn't really that useful. Because of the relatively radical shape of the handle it didn't really cut on the end of the handle. A Spokeshave or Drawknife would've been better tools.

Seeing as the plane didn't work I figured I'd give the rough old hatchet that we've had lying around for ages a go. Unfortunately it is the epitome of not sharpness and would be vastly improved with an hour or so of work. But this did remove material fairly well and though it was a bit rough in the end it worked.

I thought I should probably take a little care of what's left of the edge on this and put a piece of an old pallet on the anvil I was working on. Eventually I will get around to sharpening it properly. But until then I don't need to worry too much about the edge.

This is what the handle ended up needing to fit the head of the hammer. I didn't realise the eye was so small. If I end up making a hammer then this is something I will have to be careful of to ensure that the eye is a reasonable size so that an off the shelf handle will work.

Nearly there. Can you spot what still needs doing?

Wedges!! though perhaps not with sweet chili sauce or sour cream. But still one of the many useful things that make this much easier.

And here it is all finished.

Of course I had to test it. However there wasn't much to see past this point. Particularly after I started to try some charcoal Briquettes. They looked like they were getting hot, but there was no heat in the body of the fire and it died as painful death. Perhaps something to do with this?



Anyway, it could also be that I'm using a dodgy forge design and it's blocked up with ash and dirt. A very distinct possibility.

Now that I have a working hammer however, all that I will need to do is light a fire, get a draft and I can get to it. So look out for more forging posts over the next few months.

Cheers,
Rex