I have control over the fire now

As I mentioned in my last post about setting up a waste oil burner I have got an extra needle valve for controlling the air to the nozzle separate to the air going into the tank. You can see the new valve on the left of the tank above, at the base of the handle. It's a bit easier to control than what I was doing before:

I managed to run out of Kerosene for the blowtorch so to light the burner I was experimenting with using a little methylated spirit burner just below the intake so the flame was getting sucked into the pipe. It worked, however there is a leak in the burner so I'll have to make another one or find another way to get this working as the burner goes out almost as soon as the flame is removed from the intake.



The next thing I will probably try is to make a low pressure high volume burner. Using my reversible shop-vac as an air supply. Another thing I may try is to get a Delavan burner nozzle which have removable jets and can be configured with different spray patterns. This would give me quite a bit of flexability in terms of what I do with the burner.

Cheers,
Rex

I've discovered fire!!

That's right, with compressed air, waste oil and a blowtorch I have made fire at home.
Starting with this beast of a thing on the right:

And a bunch of fittings:

And some Pipe:

I managed to make an oil burner. I put an outlet in the bottom of the tank, blocked off one of the ports and put a T-piece on one of the other ports so I could let air into the tank.

I put the air in through a regulator I got from the hardware store. I'm not sure if it's because it was a cheap one, or it's designed to operate at higher pressure, or the setup was just wrong but I found that by clamping down on the plastic air hose going to the nozzle I could get the burner to run reliably. I had put a needle valve in the fuel flow so I had control of air and fuel. But I think the control of air was still too coarse. Before next weekend I will get another needle valve for the air and use that to control it, rather than a set of multi-grips:

While setting this up I did manage to tidy things up with a bit of cotton twine and parceled the fuel and air hoses together a bit to help control the tangle before reaching the mixer.

Hopefully this weekend I will get some more fittings and then will be able to get a video of this beast of a thing running. I used the blowtorch we saw here to light up the burner, but I had to keep it on hand as it was very prone to flameout which I think was because there was too much air coming through because the fuel is too viscous at the cooler winter temperatures.

Now that it is starting to cool down I have got some Metho for lighting up this burner. Unfortunately I haven't quite got the amount that I need right so starting it gets a little exciting. If anyone is interested I will do a video of me setting it on fire. Erm, lighting it...

Anyway that's all for tonight

Cheers,

Rex

Warm deal from the markets.

As I mentioned previously I picked up a neat little item for the markets on Sunday.

It's a little kerosene blow torch. I've been keeping an eye out for something like this as I like the idea of having tools that will work with a wider range of inputs than what we often see. Ie. a propane torch will only really run on propane without a lot of work. This will run on any liquid that has similar volatility to kero.

When I bought it my biggest concern was if the leather in the pump was going to be shot. I pulled out the pump and had a look, it was dry as a bone but there weren't any cracks and it seemed like a good fit.

As it seemed to be at least likely to work I decided to just pour some fuel straight down the pump to help moisten the leather and not have to worry about trying to get it back in the body of the pump without damaging it.

After filling it up and pumping it a little, it fired up pretty much straight away without making to much of a mess or smoking too much. I think this was largely due to the fact that the nozzle had some spider webs in it which helped catch on fire before the kerosene started to really flow out the nozzle and did a sort of pre-heat. There is a little cup for putting pre-heating spirit into, but I don't have any and it did start without any today; however it did set most of the top of the thing on fire at the same time.

This was after it had lit and was fully warmed up. You can just see the flame coming out of the end of the burner. I wanted to include this photo to show just how cleanly these can burn.

This photo had a bit less lighting, making the flame stand out more. You can fairly easily see the yellow tongue of flame, but also around that the is also blue flame. Older fuels will still give a clean burn, just not right away.

The beeswax I ordered hasn't been used yet. But keep an eye out and I'll be putting something up about that soonish.

Cheers,
Rex