Pan and Arch almost ready!

[DavyJones]

Thanks everyone who gave me advice on my pan questions. I had a friend who was able to make my pan and pre-heater. I've dropped it off at another friends who'll have it tig welded this week.

After last years expesnive learning experience in how much propane it takes to boil down sap in an old beer keg I decided to try and build my own arch for my new pan. I've posted some pictures of the construcion process here. I think I have just a couple more days of construction to go and should be done with this by the time my pan is done later this week. I'll be taping our
36+ trees after work this week and if all goes well I should be firing this up some time this weekend. I picked up all the steel at the local scrap yard for around $70 (20 cents a pound) and the stainless for my pan was $120. My buddy took the 3/8 arch front and had them cut out the vent and door on a water jet. The fire brick I got for 98 cents a piece and are half bricks. I've bought 80 of those but I might not need them all, they said they would take back whatever I don't use. So total for my arch and pan right now is about $275. I'm coming up on what I spent on propane last year but I think this flat pan is going to work allot better.


http://www.jonzilla.com/thebittners/dispphotos.asp?path=pictures/2008\Maple%20Syrup/

[Dennis H.]

That is a going to be a nice evap when it is done.

Keep us posted on your progress with it. :cool:

[Slatebelt*Pa*Tapper]

Hey Dave, hows it coming along for you??
was wondering if your ready yet...??

Charlie

[DavyJones]

The evaporator is all done and for once I think I built something right.

http://www.jonzilla.com/thebittners/dispphotos.asp?path=pictures/2008\Maple%20Syrup%20Evaporator%20Project/

It was a little touch and go there for a bit as I already tapped my trees and my pan hadn't been welded yet. It all worked out in the end. I can't believe how much of a difference this flat pan rig does better then my beer keg setup the past years. This was worth the investment. I fired this up after work on Thursday after we collected the sap and it got boilng in a little under an hour. I ran this for about 4 hours and I'm certain I went easily through half of the 50 gallons we collected give or take a gallon. When I got home friday I fired it up after work again and finished off the remaining 25 gallons. If this was my beer keg set up I'd still be boiling right now!! No more this is such a blessing. About 8:30 I was down to about an inch in the pan so I stopped feeding the fire and it wasn't to long after that I emptied into a smaller stock pot and did my finishing on the turkey fryer Saturday morning and that all worked out just perfect. I'm also surprised at how little wood I am going through. I got a nice stock pile ready earlier last year all dried out and I thought I would need more but now I'm pretty sure I'll have some left over. All the advice everyone gave was perfect and right on about everything. This is truly a nice crew of people here I am glad I am a member.

I did still use the turkey fryer to kind of preheat the liquid for my preheater pan only because I am working completely outdoors and it's kind of cold. I wasn't sure with the cold air and breeze going of my preheater pan was going to be all the effective sitting on top of my main pan. It worked perfect I would heat up a couple gallons and dump that into my preheater and just left the valve trickle in and it kept a nice roiling boil the entire time.

Once thing I noticed since I took everyones advice on how to line the stove with the fire blanket stuff and fire brick this thing would stay real hot for a long time even after the wood was burned down to almost nothing. A couple of times when I checked the wood was almost all burned up but I was still boiling allot so I had to start to make sure I checked every couple of minutes or so and throw in a coupld logs to keep the fire going nice and hot. I got one of those magnetic door thermometers and according to it around 600 degrees keeps my pan boiling pretty optimum a nice boil over the entire pan.

Thanks everyone for the advice and have a great season!