Materials (WARNING novice question/potential stupidity)

Two quick ones to start out

Would a large old propane tank which has been retired due to something like light external rust or stripped fitings excetera be an apropriate "Bell" if cut in half and stood on end?

something like one of these? Like does the dome top make it not work? harder to cook on...

http://fixr.pictures.s3.amazonaws.com/17780156114a376f8d7b3985.86835974.jpg

also

It would totally be possible to just like build a bench box frame with a flip open lid around your exhaust run, fill that with cob and use a tile or something exterior right?

Perfectly doable.



This one is made with a water tank. But gas tanks, wine containers, gas bottles, honey maturators etc. Plenty of things have been used for the barrel or bells.

Tho, cooking on a round barrel top is impossible! Or nearly.

No problem with the dome, runs just fine, but for cooking its useless, theres minimal surface area conncting between the frying pan/saucepan and the top of the bottle.
I had a look at the tank you posted up, its a big one compared to the small 49kg portable ones that are usually used. It would give a lot of heat out around it.

I found a piece of thick plate and cut the dome off on my latest bottle. Really good for cooking sausages or shine.
This is mine running a pot still.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueKBHIto03k

Wow...that's a 500 gallon tank (!). Would make a hell of a bell if you had room for it...if you had room for it lol. I made a bell out of an old 50 gallon water heater (seen behind the barrel). The one you posted would have 10 times the internal volume. Cut it in half, and you've still got five time the volume. I would think the biggest problem would run into would just be moving it around and working on it...those things are usually set into place with a small crane mounted to a big flatbed truck.



The rounded top shouldn't have any effect on function I wouldn't think. The gasses inside should still stratify as they would if it was flat.

Hey, so I have some fire brick and some clay and some ash.

Like I can set up a little I_I tube burn chamber in a configuration like the shippable core and just rub it down with a clay/ash slurry to seal the bricks a bit and start playing around right?

I've built campfires. I don't see anyway this could boom squish on me. It's about as soaking wet as it gets around here. What do ya think? Sounds stupid?

The probable worst danger would be if you were to look down the open top of the riser since you don't see any smoke coming out while the fire is roaring away... watch your eyebrows & hair

Ah dammit, I'm back

And this is actually almost a soils question. BUT

I have two different clays to play with. One is almost slate grey and smooth like a deeper colored moddling clay. The other is a fawn color and is dry and flakes in sheets but is also very slick when rubbed. I think (just a guess) it has volcanic ash or some other fine particulate mixed in. Anyone played around with bluff clay in the the Maritime West? I mean, I'll just experiment with it but short cuts are nice and I'm trying to learn about this stuff along with everyone else here so why not over think it.

While I am not familiar with your local clays, "flakes in sheets" says to me that it has a large proportion of silt and may not be so good for cob. But by all means test it!

And the other one sounds like some schist containing clay. I can't find the proper translation for the stuff, but it's along the lines of a mixture of clay, schist and limestone.

Well, found a translation, seemingly the stuff i'm talking about is shale.

So I spent the last 45 minutes or so playing with this. Just shuffling fire-brick so far. I've got about 30 of them for this test project and probably twice that total and another dozen or two red bricks. I started out by laying out 6 bricks flat long side to long side to longside to make a 8ish by 30ish? base. Built two little mostly symmetrical boxes at the ends. Left a place in the top near the riser end where I can slide out a brick and toss the primer almost directly under the riser. I lit it and then watched it and then shuffled some bricks around and watched again. I think the initial design was the best but that my burn tunnel (the horizontal) is too long between my feed and exhaust. No bell just a chimney. I got it to do some cool little sideways flame tongue stuff for me but never really got it roaring until I changed the design up - but that change made for a more standard smokey fire. Anyway I'll keep playing and try to get some pictures.

Oh, the thing I like most about this so far is that even though it was windy it only took me one flic of the bic (tm) to start and then I played with it for almost an hour shuffling stuff around and feeding fuel in various ways (from the top, from the side) and I never needed to relight it, which leads me to think its a pretty robust design. Like I said, I'm playing now. On it.

So, Anyone got some rough ratio's for 30 bricks offhand?

I'll give another go in the next day or two. Try to get some pics of that clay too.

The Wisners' standard build for an 8" system starts with a 7" wide x 25" long interior space, 1 1/2 firebricks high (4 1/2 + 2 1/2 = 7"). Run the bricks around with all corner overlaps heading in one direction, then for the next course run them with the overlaps going in the other direction. Four firebricks on edge for the burn tunnel roof gives 7 1/2" feed tube, 10" roof and 7 1/2" riser.

I'm still playing with this one. I found that a the larger dimensions are actually working less well for me. But again, I'm just shuffling bricks around and there isn't a good seal with mortar or anything. I once again found a L shaped burn tunnel to work really really well and I'm kinda wondering a bit about playing with this. But I was also watching as I was fooling around and it seems like trying to start a controlled chimney fire the way I'm thinking may be really successful and I'm not sure if I'm prepared for that. It's totally possible to have a re-burn on a horizontal feed L though right?

It's pretty simple and seems like it would work well, but perhaps dangerously well, and I'm not sure about from an efficiency standpoint. Anyway playing with fire is fun.

I wish I could describe what I'm doing better. I may be able to hack it though in MS paint.

Batch!