Got Questions about a W.F mason 2x4

[team40]

my questions how much wood does it burn with blower and with out blower what is the max taps. does anybody have pros and cons about this unit.

[sbingham]

I purchased a 2x6 w/blower from WF Mason last year, very pleased with the overall unit and would not consider having a future unit with out a blower.
You may go through a bit more wood, but it is much more efficient in terms of consistant evaporation rate and your days are more manageable, no more all night sessions for me.
With the blower I am getting 16-18 gph evaporation rate on the 2x6 - my last unit was a 2x4 GBM with a flat pan, 6-8 gph was typical. 150-200 gallons of sap makes for a good day of cooking.
Just my thoughts.

[Sandy]

We burned about 2 -3 cords last year with our mason 2X4, no blower, about 70 taps and made about 8 gallons of syrup. This year we have 130 taps so far, & will add another 20 taps this Thursday. We split our wood a bit too large last year, so we are going for smaller diameter now to get hotter and more even burn.

Pros we found: its a step up for us from boiling in a pot, or using a turkey fryer. Now we use the propane fryer to finish off. At 70 taps we boiled about 8 days last year. About a gallon of finished syrup per day.

Cons: (not really bad, just what we found touchy) We ranged from boiling 5 gallons of sap an hour when first learning, to 8-10 gallons of sap an hour by the end of the season. We tied a line onto the front bottom damper door to hold it open at different levels according to how hot our wood was burning. We also mixed cut up HW pallets into our burn to get real hot.
We should have had a thread tapped into the side of the pan near the draw-off for a thermometer. Also would have liked to have a second draw-off on the opposite side of the pan to alternate sides.
We have to keep wiping condensate off outside of pre-heat pan so it doesn't drip back into syrup pan. no big deal.

We are just starting our run (hopefully) this year and appreciate any advice others may have. Maybe we will look into adding a blower next year, but being on solar, we have to budget for electricity use. I'm leaning to upgrade to larger evaporator first as we have many more maples to tap.

[team40]

i would like to thank you for posting why should you reverse the draw off? and i hope more people post about this

thank you

derek

[wcproctor]

I don't have a W.F , but I add a blower to my 2x6 drop flu this year and holy S@*T what a difference.I went from 11-16 GPM to 22-25GPM. I love it and who cares about the wood at that point.

[SPILEDRIVER]

16 to 25 gph on a 2x6 with flues and blowers sure seems low to me.what kind of wood are you burning??im getting 20 gph on a 2x5 with a 3 foot drop flue pan and blower.i can get as high as 25-28gph on low pressure days.

[GramaCindy]

I love my Mason 2x4! Last year, my first, I placed a fan in front of the ash pan door. WOW. Big difference. This year I added a blower to the back of the ash pan and closed off the front with some arch blanket insulation. I bricked and archboarded the interiour this year, and it keeps a LOT more of the heat inside. My pan DOES have a thermometer port on both the draw off end and sap inlet end to reverse for alternating drawoff sides. The reason folks do this is that if the pan starts to get a bit gunked up with niter, they can start adding the raw sap to the alternated side and draw off from the other side, helps to keep the pan clean.

[team40]

grama cindy how much wood did you end up burning i need to know how much to stock pile and do i need to stock pile any wood in side or no and how much syrup did you end up making for the season.

thank you

derek

[Dave Lister]

I absolutely loved my W.F. Mason Raised flue 2x4 evaporator. We never put a blower on it, but with dry pine slab wood and no door for the ash pan, we usually boiled between 12 and 16 gph, with a max of about 18 one day.
As far as wood consumption, I would say for a whole season, maybe two cords, give or take.
I think if you had the ability to boil every other day or so and do smaller batches of sap, it would do 100-120 taps just fine.
I have 125 taps and it just wasn't fast enough, as I only really have Saturday and part of Sunday. Last year, we decided it wasn't cutting it any more when I came home to my parents place where the sugar bush and evaporator are, and had 225 gallons of sap waiting for us.
That was a long weekend.

Hope the info helps.
We upgraded to a W.F. Mason 2.6 drop tube with a float and a blower.
I'd highly recommend either.

[team40]

thanks everyone now i want the w.f mason 2x4 more then ever befor

thank you

[MapleME]

I cannot speak for the 2x4 but I can speak to Bills craftsmanship and producing quality product way lower than the competition. Bill is also just a nice guy. He's just one dude, in a shop in his basement who is super talented. I had a 2x6 done by bill. I sold it to upgrade to a 2x6 drop flu with dual pans. I essentially had a 2x6 version of the 2x4. Same arch, just 2 feet longer. Was a great rig and I would recommend his stuff any day. For the price of a 50 dollar blower its worth the extra wood to massively increase your boil rate. I think thats the general thought on it.

[team40]

does anyone know how long it take w.f mason to make an arch or when should i order it by

thanks

[Mike Wacker]

Bill has comments right on his WEB site about how early to order for the next season. His work is in such demand, he is more than 3 months out. I'd order in September at the latest.

[bowtie]

i have a mason 2x4 hobby with blower, that i bought new last year and i really like it but it is too small for my amount of taps. i will probably be selling it soon. i will be getting a mason 2x8 or bigger if he will make it. for the money i don't think you can beat a mason, i get between 10-16 gph depending on if i keep up on firing it and how dry wood is. it does seem to use a lot of wood but thats what makes it boil faster. i have made about 15 gallons so far and will boil tonight and tomorrow and hopefully finish with about 20-25 gallons for the year. i think that if you have up to about 75 taps and can boil every couple days it is perfect but if you get over that you will have some long boils. i boiled down about 250 gallons to about 10 gallons over the weekened and it took about 17 start to finish. that can make for long days.

[Sandy]

Have to agree with "Bowtie" about a 2X4 being too small for so many taps. It was good for our 75 taps last year, but now at 150 taps, we can't seem to get ahead of the sap flow. It really all depends on how many gallons per day/per tap you can harvest; some of our taps are giving us 3-4 gallons of sap a day this week, and some are only at 1/2 gall or less per day.

And the other factor is how much storage do you have for sap before you can begin boiling? We've been boiling, but have topped the 210 gallon storage tank, and are now filling the 55 gall drum, 26 gall ATV tank, and smaller 7 gallon jugs just to keep ahead.

So, our lesson learned is this: when you tap around or over 100, get as large an evaporator/arch as you can afford and jus' keep addin' more split wood to the pile, 'cause addin' mo-n-mo taps is addictin'!!
happy tappin' folks!

[team40]

ok well thank you sandy i see you have a 8x10 sugar house is that big enough for the 2x4 mason i am thinking about
building 10x12 i think that will be enough and i will have a 165 gallon or a 275 gallon storage tank for about 30-50 taps
does that seem like enough storage for my sap?

[team40]

well just ordered my mason 2x4 hope to start building my sugarhouse in a month or 2 and i just picked up 2 250 gallon poley tanks for 50.00 each score
stuff is starting to come together

[GramaCindy]

ok well thank you sandy i see you have a 8x10 sugar house is that big enough for the 2x4 mason i am thinking about
building 10x12 i think that will be enough and i will have a 165 gallon or a 275 gallon storage tank for about 30-50 taps
does that seem like enough storage for my sap?

Hello Team 40. I have a Mason 2x4 and my shack is 14x14. Perfect for me, but if there are any visitors, it could get tight…..https://picasaweb.google.com/103968764779354846524/TheMangyMooseConstruction?authuser=0&feat=directlink