sap seeker check this out

[Mac_Muz]

I wanted to run off apx 5 to 6 gallons an hour, and not spend any money. I did end up speding about 50 bucks for sheet steel to make a iron pan, from NAPA, including odds and ends of filtering items I wanted to improve some on my home made filters with. I bought some nuts and bolts too.

First I got a rusty old barrel, and cut it to fit the biggest pan it could take.

I used parts that I cut off the barrel to make other parts to make a stove of it.
http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll275/Mac_Muz/Maple_Sugarin/Stove_n_Grate.jpg

The door was cut out and put back on after it was made into a door. The top part I cut out was made into a grate, and I added (4) 4 inch legs to it. Then I cut slits in the grate to feed air. More of the top was turned into the damper at the rear of the stove. There IS a bottom in that damper 1/2 bucket like device. Flames must run over the top rim and down to escape into the smoke stack!

http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll275/Mac_Muz/Maple_Sugarin/Stove_grate_placed.jpg

Below is a shot with news papers and sticks showing the air gaps.

http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll275/Mac_Muz/Maple_Sugarin/stove_ready_to_light.jpg

Note the rear round end is taller than the front, and there is a scrap of angle iron the pan sits on.

The front was as high, but I made a 3/4" error measuring the pan, so I hammered the front 'retainer' down flat, and then bent it back up.

The front and rear high ends were folded back to get rid of the nasty edge as well.

The smoke stack is 6", and I made 'L' tabs to support the stack, and use a big hose clamp to keep the stack in place. This works ok for a no shed rig, but is wobbly in the wind. I bought as a part of that 60 bucks some light chain which is held with another big hose clamp.

http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll275/Mac_Muz/Maple_Sugarin/Sugar_n_Smoke2.jpg

[Mac_Muz]

Another view of the chain, as they are just hanging in the shot in the post above.
http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll275/Mac_Muz/Maple_Sugarin/Stove_side.jpg

Since I have no shack, I prefer to put the rig in skis and bring it to the wood pile, over bringing the wood to the stove. The frame is a simple 'sawbuck' made of angle iron. The skis were free from a local guy with kids that had out grwon these skis. Since the ground is never level, I made adjusters of common 1/2 inch carriage bolts.

http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll275/Mac_Muz/Maple_Sugarin/Height_adjuster_close.jpg

Detail showing 2 of 3 'L's holding the stack elbow, with the clamp.
http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll275/Mac_Muz/Maple_Sugarin/Chimney_supports.jpg

The pan is 33 3/4" by 21, and has 3 dividers. This is common mild steel, easy to weld and easy to solder. I used a hammer and a work bench with a steel top to form the pan. All the edges are folded back on themselves under the rim, all done cold with a hammer, 2 clamps, and tin snips.

I should have folded the pan dividers at their tops too, but didn't know any better, and it's too late now.

http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll275/Mac_Muz/Maple_Sugarin/Rig_top_front.jpg

When I pour 5 gallons or so from a joint compound bucket into this pan, it raises the level one inch. With a scribe I marked that, and added 5 gallons, and made another mark,and did so until there was 5 maybe 6 marks in all.

This rig will boil all three section at a rapid boil, using white pine split roughtly fine. With ease it will boil off 5 gallons an hour.

[Mac_Muz]

I made this bracket which is simply bent over to fit the pan, for holding a lobster pot, in an attempt to make a pre-heater.
http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll275/Mac_Muz/Maple_Sugarin/Preboiler_support.jpg

Here it is set up
http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll275/Mac_Muz/Maple_Sugarin/Preboiler_in_place.jpg

The first problem was the pan made water air born condensation, which dripped into the pan, so I made a bent sheet metal tray to run the water off the side of the stove.

The copper line is a problem too, in when you are done, it is difficult to get the copper off the smoke stack, while the stack is still hot, and you must or flood the pan with water, and aim the copper away from the pan.

This set up spits hot sap already boiling right into the pan, so it is worth the trouble to me.

I bent it down a bit so sap would show in the picture.
http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll275/Mac_Muz/Maple_Sugarin/sugar_tube3.jpg

http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll275/Mac_Muz/Maple_Sugarin/sugar_rear_right.jpg

[Mac_Muz]

Yup in the last above 2 pics that is ice floating.

next to last shot
http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll275/Mac_Muz/Maple_Sugarin/sugarside.jpg

And this Mista' is why........

http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll275/Mac_Muz/Maple_Sugarin/3SugarBatches.jpg

Like you my needs are family needs. With 15 taps I make just over 3 gallons last year, and had wanted more, but the sap did not run well in Tamworth.

At this time, like Feb 1st i had none of this ready, and it was a royal scramble, so if you git ta' moving you can make a rig like this one.

On edit: Note there is no shack, no bricks, no insulation, and no blower. I wash and clean the pan in the pre season and never again till next season, leaving a coating of sugar in the pan. The only items with any stainless steel are that lobster pan and the 78 cents skimmer, which I drilled a hole in a stick to make the tool longer.

My filter is a wool bag comercial one which gets lined with commercial paper pre filters, and the stand for that is a tomatoe cage.

[Haynes Forest Products]

Do you get sap burning in the preheater? How does the syrup on the right taste? Looks GOOD.

[ericjeeper]

Looks like it ought to work.. I cracked up when I read the part about it being mounted on skis.. Then looked at the pic and I'll be darned they are skis..

[NH Maplemaker]

Mac Muz, You have came a long way in a short time!!! Good looking syrup too!! I know you were trying spend as little as possible. But if you would add fire brick you would well surpass the 5 gph ! Nice job though.

Jim L.

[Dennis H.]

You have done an excellant job with your evap, and getting 5gal/hr!

I spent a whole lot more than that on my barrel rig and I am running at 8gal/hr. So I have to say that your rig is running pretty darn good.

This year I finally bricked my evap and I have a preheater that uses the satck to heat the sap so I am excited to see how that will effect my gals/hr.

Again, Great job you did on your rig.

[TapME]

Mac, it did you well last year and with more time this year it will be even better. Nice to see it come all together isn't it.

[maple flats]

Mounted on ski's is handy. Be careful to heep the evaporator close to level while using for best results. What do you use between seasons to keep it from rusting?

[Mac_Muz]

Haynes Forest Products, No I didn't burn any sap at all, but I can see how one could. This is a gravity feed, and to spit sap out it has to boil in the copper line, and is replaced. The problems come when you are out of sap, and when i was i moved the copper and added water, so it stayed cool, but didn't spit into the pan. I plan to modify this, but haven't thought about it enough. The connection at the pot comes off too.

With out insite I am not sure what to do, but it won't wrap the pipe this year. With out better insight I may form the copper back and forth, and clamp some sort of retainer in such a way as I can slip out the copper and turn it away from the pipe. All the syrup tastes just fine. I add nothing to it, and didn't burn any. In all I made just over 3 gallons. I prefer the darker strong maple flavor too.
..........
ericjeeper and maple flats, With (1) 5 gallon pail in the pan, I can level this rig easy. This much sap covers the pan about 1 inch deep. You can safely bank on there isn't anything level to start, but this can be fixed pretty quick since each foot has 3 inches of play up and down. I start with the adjuster in the middle.

The pan is stored not cleaned and upside down on a steep angle in the fire box, under a covered shed not in use. Before I use it I will clean it. The sugar left in it seems to have coated the bare steel, and protected it. One day it will be come black no doubt, but maybe by then I can get my grubby mitts on money and some stainless steel. The only other thing I did was wipe a vegitable based cooking oil on the inside with a clean white rag. When the sun is out the pan is in it too.

There is no iron/steel taste either.

NH Maplemaker, Tell me more about bricks. I am sort of against them because they add work, and would make this portable rig harder to move. I might even need to add some sort of frame.

As it is I can stuff wood apx 3 feet long in the fire box, and pack it full. The deflector forces flames into the pan hard up before the flames are forced to turn down hill to escape. The pan meets fairly close to the barrel edges too, and I get good flame coverage. The wood is slab wood I wanted to use last year, but couldn't get out of the ice, plus more standing dead, still standing as otherwise total wasted wood, that needs to get cleaned up anyway.

On the other hand boiling more gallons in less time might be good, because I plan to add more buckets and taps this year. I think I had either 13 ot 15 buckets last year and was wanting more sap faster.

Tamworth was NOT the place to be last year. I am not alone in the want of more sap. I found 6 more trees I can access and the snow isn't 6 feet deep, right now anyway.
............

Dennis H. How are you using the stack to pre heat? You made a typo there and it took a moment to figger, but I get it now.
.................................................. .................................................. .

I was considering making another like rig, but with no fire box and it would feed heat from the fire barrel into the next barrel before the smoke stack took the heat out, but I haven't the time, and think it would be better to come by a junk 275 oil drum, that might take wood 5 feet long or how ever long a drum like that is, other than I might not have enough sap to run a rig that big.

So with a 2nd barrel acting as a pre-heater, I could adjust for more and less sap. The trees I have access to are scattered to the 4 winds, and so no plastic lines are possible what so ever.

I might spill on bacon grease as a black finish to the barrel it self this time.

Times are tight again, which isn't much fun, but if you guys can improve this rig with nothing in costs much I might be able to get it done before the time is upon me.

All 3 sections come to a mad boil and stay there with 5 inches of sap in the pan. I can add maple ice and the boil won't go down. I had a buddy watching last year and he got laughin at the blue flame coming out the stack and the stack was glowing red in day light. At one point I thought the stack might fail, as it was making noises something like two trees rubbing each other in the wind..

[sap seeker]

Wow - I really love the "yankee ingenuity" and more importantly, because you took the time to show in such detail. Guess I better get busy!:)

[SeanD]

Mac, I remember you putting all that together in a really short time last year. That's a really good set-up for the short prep time you had for the season!

The bricks will not only help with throwing heat up toward your pan, but they will deflect it from the barrel which can only take those high temps for so long before you start burning holes through. So a little more money now will definitely save you more money and time later.

There was a preheater posted last year (or at least I read it last year) where the guy had the copper wrapped around the stack in long, wide loops or ovals. He had springs inside the coils that pulled the copper against the stack. When things got too hot or at shut down time, he just unhooked the springs and the coils popped out/away from the stack and cooled things down.

He said it worked really well and he had really good pics posted. I wish I could give someone a shout-out here, but I don't remember who posted it.

Finally, I have to admit I got a good chuckle out of the visual of your evaporator heading down hill on the skis when you turn to grab more wood. Of course you'd be chasing it with the flames and smoke pouring out. Funny stuff! Good thing it didn't really happen.

Sean

[maplesyrupstove]

Check out Johnny Cuervo preheater,he a member here. He has a wrap around preheater. Darrell

[SeanD]

That's the one I remember.

[Mac_Muz]

Ok. I'll go dig out some tired red brick I could turn into sand, and not miss ... much.

I can lay that on the grate, and maybe under to at least mid way.

The thing is I get full coverage in FIRE on the pan as it is, right to the edges, and I don't want to loose that effect.

Also this stove takes wood as long as it is inside, and I have all this junk dead white pine to get rid of.

When this rig begins to blow and huff the way it does I just add more wood. I don't care if it melts so long as the sugar is ok.

When I have 21 x 33 3/4 x 5" deep all boiling like mad it makes me giggle!

SeanD, You Sir have a rather large imagination, probably on par with mine.. But in my day the only hot items I ever chased was wimin's.. And yuh, Last feb sometime with in 3 weeks of March 1st, I ran for parts to build with.

I didn't have 1 tap or a bucket, no wood, no barrel and no pan. Then it turned out I had nearly no sap, and that might happen again. No tellin???

The pre heater idea I have so far is too make to coat hangar hooks and clamp them with a 6 inch clamp to the pipe, and sort of hang a copper winding on it. This way it won't go all the way around the stack, just 1/2 way, and with another hook made of a little bigger wire I can move the copper away.

I'll look up the info given before, but springs sounds complicated, and if thar's anything I don't need in life, it is more complicated fussissyKated crap and bull.

On edit:

I checked out johnny's pre-heater and that is just about what mine will be, other than it will fit a regular 6 inch pipe, and hang on 2 hooks. I want it to boil and spit. That way it will be hot, and repace by graviety what ever is spit into the pan. The best part is I can get it away from the pipe with less danger of being burned.

[Haynes Forest Products]

Dont do what a plumbing buddy and I did. We were looking for something to wrap the 1/2 soft copper around that was solid and woulnt move and we found a perfectly round tree out back behind the shop and around and around we went. Job well done worked great...................yep you got it Im a dumb ***

[lpakiz]

What the H*LL Haynes--wouldn't the CHAINSAW start???

[KenWP]

What I am wondering is if you have a tree out back with copper tubing wraped around it still.

[TapME]

Haynes; that is just as bad as putting a 2x4 through a ladder rug to hold it up while you nail it in place. I never did that but I did watch as it happened.

[Haynes Forest Products]

I can say that we had a good laugh stood there for a time shaking our heads like it would change things and then got the saw out. Cut the tree hoping it woul'nt hang up and have the butt slide down and wipe out the copper.
Talk about stupid ladder tricks Watched a buddy put a extension ladder up against a tree limb about 12 feet up had about 4" on the branch....big guy climbs up and yup about to the top the ladder starts to sink in the ground dang I laugh at his misfortune every time I tell it.

[Mac_Muz]

Ah so lemme get this straight. You wound copper to form it around a tree, and then you couldn't get it off, so then you tried to cut the tree, but the ladderman fell, and so instead you set the tree on fire to pre-heat the sap inside the copper line? ok if you say so...

I used the pipe itself in place last year and made the spiral wrap kinda open and wound the copper coil on and off, but found it to be a pain.

I make a hook to hang a caintuckay long rifle inside a tee pee, on the tee pee liner, when the rope that holds the liner is on and so is the liner.

So you spin the hook to wind the steel onto the rope, which is already pulled tight. To try that quickly tie packing twine to something and mess about with getting a cork screw on the twine.

And NO I am not going to do that this time. The plan is to anneal that same copper, and then bend it with a bender, to be something that weaves back and forth, but never circumnavigates all the way around the bloomin' pipe! It will wrap 1/2 the pipe, after the weave is made. To do that i might use 1/2 a tree and a raw hide mallet. Better yet this junk muffler off a truck that I ain't tossed out yet.

Been thinkin' 'bout bricks and I just don't like the idea in a light weight stove set up. Not too sure what the bricks do since they ain't fuel anyway, but if the idea is to save an other wise junk barrel, I can add removable 'curtains' to the fire box, made of more junk steel sheet.

I don't know how high the sides are on the barrel from the grate, but that distance can be covered in steel sheet easy enough, and to hold them a hammer lip out towards the grater would retain the bottom well enough, and hammer the length of the sheet at the top so it fits over the edge of the barrel will hang it.
That would keep heat off the barrel and direct flame at the pan maybe a little bit more.
Used beat up barrels are pretty easy to come by for free, so I don't care how long it lasts, and I think it is pretty funny to see the thing glowing in dim light anyway.

Makes me wonder what the Govt thinks when they look down with their satilites, and see little hot spots all over sugar country at the same time.

My bet is they have no clue, just like that NYC couple I over heard a few years ago, saying they planned to move up here and make sugar all the year round, adding commentary 'bout us hick farmers being too lazy to to do other wise, and getting it all done in about 3 weeks time.

I say fine if you wanna work that hard to make sugarin a full time job, just go fer it! ;)

[Mac_Muz]

Waaaa waaa waaa no one came back to read the post above this one!

I have been thinking about bricks, and for this rig i don't think so.. I won't rule it out, but....

The grate already comes up a fair way on the sides as it is... go see...

There is just a couple of inches it doesn't cover, so I wonder if I add steel shields, wouldn't that be almost as good as brick?

That grate is just the top part of the barrel i cut out, flipped over and added 4 inch feet too, so making shields would be easy, and not have weight.

It is very airy under that grate with a large gap just past that so called door.

There are slots in the grate, and the high side ends add more air feeding the top of the kindling wood this burns.

I don't fiddle around with short wood for a wood box either, and pack that stove with wood till I can't jan another stick in there.

This is pretty close to a bomb with pipe and hemlock as fuel.

[Mac_Muz]

bump for purely selfish reasons, unless anyone wants to answer the above questions.

[OGDENS SUGAR BUSH]

its alwful when you have to answer your own posts

[Mac_Muz]

I'm married, so pretty well used to it...