dustinanderson
03-12-2012, 09:43 PM
Hello. I saw a video on youtube from "3fires" miwilderness and he got me hooked. A guy was trying to get rid of a fuel tank at work... so I took it home and got to tinkering.
I can't find firebrick of the right size, and even if I did I can't afford it at $6 a brick around here. I used some extra sheet metal from an old stove to reflect and keep some of the heat into the fire area and under the pans.
The pans came from katom.com and were only $16 each, they are full size Polarware model VX116 24 qt Value series steam table Pans. They are 6 inches deep.
After working out a few kinks, I added another 5 feet of stove pipe for a better draft, it was working pretty well with 10 feet. Once the fire is burning hot, there is actually no smoke from the stack at all. The pans don't seat too well as the tank is not perfectly flat, so if the fire is not hot enough, the smoke leaks a little bit by the pans. This goes away when the fire gets hot. Adding more stove pipe also stopped flames from shooting out the front of the door.
I tapped 20 trees last week but have no sap yet. The weather is too warm and it's going to be really warm for the next few weeks, so I don't know if I can even make syrup this year. Darn!!!
We did a few practice runs, to burn the old paint off the tank and to test it out. We used snow and melted it down. with 5 gallons in each pan, almost to the top, we boiled about 3 to 4 gallons out of each in about an hour. I figure that might do 10 or more gallons per hour, and that is perfectly acceptable to me. I know I could do more if I kept adding wood. I have about 20~ full cords stacked, split and dried from the last few years of clearing our land. I know having fire brick and a better design would be more efficient, but this is my first attempt and making a big batch outside of using my kitchen stove, and I am just seeing if the work is going to be worth the while for us.
Total price into this is about $75, including extras such as sawzall blades and bandaids.
Ok, enough with the yapping, here are the pictures!
Dustin (in Carlton MN, 20 miles south of duluth, 100 miles north of Minneapolis)
56395638563756365635
I can't find firebrick of the right size, and even if I did I can't afford it at $6 a brick around here. I used some extra sheet metal from an old stove to reflect and keep some of the heat into the fire area and under the pans.
The pans came from katom.com and were only $16 each, they are full size Polarware model VX116 24 qt Value series steam table Pans. They are 6 inches deep.
After working out a few kinks, I added another 5 feet of stove pipe for a better draft, it was working pretty well with 10 feet. Once the fire is burning hot, there is actually no smoke from the stack at all. The pans don't seat too well as the tank is not perfectly flat, so if the fire is not hot enough, the smoke leaks a little bit by the pans. This goes away when the fire gets hot. Adding more stove pipe also stopped flames from shooting out the front of the door.
I tapped 20 trees last week but have no sap yet. The weather is too warm and it's going to be really warm for the next few weeks, so I don't know if I can even make syrup this year. Darn!!!
We did a few practice runs, to burn the old paint off the tank and to test it out. We used snow and melted it down. with 5 gallons in each pan, almost to the top, we boiled about 3 to 4 gallons out of each in about an hour. I figure that might do 10 or more gallons per hour, and that is perfectly acceptable to me. I know I could do more if I kept adding wood. I have about 20~ full cords stacked, split and dried from the last few years of clearing our land. I know having fire brick and a better design would be more efficient, but this is my first attempt and making a big batch outside of using my kitchen stove, and I am just seeing if the work is going to be worth the while for us.
Total price into this is about $75, including extras such as sawzall blades and bandaids.
Ok, enough with the yapping, here are the pictures!
Dustin (in Carlton MN, 20 miles south of duluth, 100 miles north of Minneapolis)
56395638563756365635