Originally Posted by
Swingpure
I started my fourth and final boil test this morning at 8 am, the ambient temperature was 40° F (4° C) and there was a slight breeze. All went well, pans 1 and 2 (1 being closest to the door) boiled first and pan 3 was right behind and all 3 boiled vigorously throughout the test. Pan 4 was what the test was all about. It did come to a moderate boil, but it took an hour to do so. Near the end of the test I removed the pan and saw the two metal plates that were below it, that were designed to keep the flames from overheating the sides of the pans. Pan 4 was over the arch, so the fear of flames was very minimal, so I removed the two plates, stoked up the fire again and almost immediately pan 4 came to a vigorous boil. It did not boil quite as crazy as the other 3, but it had a good boil on it. Once I removed the plate, I could see flames running under pan 3 to under pan 4. The flames never went between the two pans.
LOL. Slowly eliminating the last few pieces of all that steel. Glad to hear it. Yeah, you want the hot gasses right on your pans - anything that gets in the way of that is going to reduce the heat transfer.
Some questions:
I had my gas powered leaf blower and running at idle speed, it turned the firebox into an inferno, however, some flames and sparks came out from under the door and the draft out the stovepipe completely stopped. As soon as I removed the blower, the draft up the chimney started immediately up again. Is this supposed to happen? What I ultimately did, was to fire up the leaf blower for about 15 seconds or so, about a minute before I would add wood again.
Makes no sense to me. If all that extra air wasn't going up the stovepipe, where was it going?
With pans 1 to 3 running equally as hot and pan 4 boiling well, but not as well, would I take the sap from preheat pan 5 and put into pan 1 and then to 2 then 3 then 4?
Exactly.
While this is going on, I will have 2, 5 quart pots boiling on an induction stove near by. It comes to a boil about every 20 minutes. Which pan should I dump the boiling sap into, pan 1?
What does that mean - "comes to a boil every 20 minutes"?
Gabe
2016: Homemade arch from old wood stove; 2 steam tray pans; 6 taps; 1.1 gal
2017: Same setup. 15 taps; 4.5 gal
2018: Same setup. Limited time. 12 taps and short season; 2.2 gal
2019: Very limited time. 7 taps and a short season; 1.8 gals
2020: New Mason 2x3 XL halfway through season; 9 taps 2 gals
2021: Same 2x3, 18 taps, 4.5 gals
2022: 23 taps, 5.9 gals
2023: 23 taps. Added AUF, 13.2 gals
2024: 17 taps
All on buckets