Useful fun projects (charcoal, woodgas, glue, foundry)

Petros2015

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Been doing a few of these lately; I am not particularly prepping, but I figured people on these forums might find them of interest

charcoal and woodgas (also produces tar as a byproduct)

gluesticks (charcoal and pinesap)

mini metal foundry (more complex but definitely good to have something like this)
 

SavedByGrace3

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Wow... some interesting things here. Useful in a crunch.
I have seen the wood gasification thing before. Pretty amazing. I saw a guy turn a gas truck into a vehicle powered by wood gas. You basically cook the wood not allowing it to flame up. The fumes will burn! I thought that would be useful in the event that gas was no longer available.
We have a solar oven which seems to work pretty good. It will not fry or brown, but it will boil and bake. Figure on about 4 hours for some dried beans. We did some pork chops and that worked pretty good. Not like a BBQ, but it will get you fed with no fuel. I have seen videos where people even use it during the winter as long as the sun is high and direct.
Thanks for posting.
 
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Petros2015

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I have seen the wood gasification thing before. Pretty amazing. I saw a guy turn a gas truck into a vehicle powered by wood gas. You basically cook the wood not allowing it to flame up. The fumes will burn! I thought that would be useful in the event that gas was no longer available.
We have a solar oven which seems to work pretty good. It will not fry or brown, but it will boil and bake. Figure on about 4 hours for some dried beans.

Yeah I am trying to woodgas for fun, have used the process to make charcoal for some other things but am going to try and collect the gas in a balloon after passing it through some water. Fun project, did my first soldering with a propane torch today. I'm coating the inside of the burner can with Starlight, also very useful for getting the heat up quick.



I don't have a solar oven, but a while back I did a solar concentrator similar to this one

And if you want to get really crazy with it...
Definitely cook your beans a bit faster ;) ;)
 
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SavedByGrace3

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Yeah I am trying to woodgas for fun, have used the process to make charcoal for some other things but am going to try and collect the gas in a balloon after passing it through some water. Fun project, did my first soldering with a propane torch today. I'm coating the inside of the burner can with Starlight, also very useful for getting the heat up quick.



I don't have a solar oven, but a while back I did a solar concentrator similar to this one

And if you want to get really crazy with it...
Definitely cook your beans a bit faster ;) ;)
It is good to have such skills. They will be invaluable in the days that are surely ahead.
 
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Petros2015

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It is good to have such skills. They will be invaluable in the days that are surely ahead.

Absolutely, and there is joy in learning and acquiring them regardless. They can be pretty useful no matter the state of civilian infrastructure.

FEMA did a doc on a woodgas gasifier technology - even if I never needed one, I imagine building one would give some satisfaction and a lot of learning applicable to other things along the way.


And then I found THIS guy...

I was thinking about collecting the gas in a small balloon for starters. So I searched for "woodgas balloon" just to see what the safety concerns/experiences of other people had been (propane balloons make REALLY big fireballs if they go off, I wanted to know what I was getting into by comparison).

He's got the Hindenberg in his backyard lol

 
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Update I was able to get a small gassifier going based on Nighthawks gallon/pint setup. Had it piping out the gas through a water bottle for filter, but my seals started to melt. Not bad for round 2 though, I was happy to see it bubbling through the water before that happened. Balloon collection was a little problematic so I backed off from that on this run.

Permatex 80335 (muffler sealant) seems to be the way to go (just figured that out from this much more advanced vid below). Heat resistant to 2000 degrees.
 
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