Confessions of a putterholic

Hi, my name is Bob and I'm a putterholic. (Hi Bob) What am I talking about? Well, I use the term putterholic to describe the extreme do it yourself attitude that I seem to exhibit on a regular basis. This isn't just the usual change out light bulb, change car oil and filter kind of DIY. I'm talking about hardcore, like learn how to use a welding torch to fix a boat hoist variety of DIY. I kid you not, I've done that! And really, I'm not ashamed that I did. The general purpose of this blog will be to relate the trials and tribulations of my current and former projects, and maybe give some insight into the mindset that drives them.

Lately my projects have shifted more toward the experimental. It's probably not quite the right word because the things I'm doing have been accomplished by others before me. The experimental part is can I replicate the results with what I have on hand or can acquire cheaply. The following video is something I am working on right now.
Bob's Babington Burner
Do a search on Youtube on Babington burner and you will find plenty of successful examples. I'm not exactly breaking new ground. I am however figuring out uses for a lot of materials that have been gathering dust in my workshop.

What is interesting, is that this project has spawned other projects. I put out a call for used oil to run this thing. The one person that came through so far gave me six 5-gallon jugs worth. That's the cool part. The not cool part is I poured one of them in the holding tank and discovered there was a large quantity of water in it. That's no good. Water is not typically flammable unless you live in Cleveland.:) So now I need to set up a separator. I was thinking of doing it to get some of the crud out of the oil anyway to cut down ash buildup in the burner, but now it is necessary. The body of the separator is the tub out of a broken dishwasher. The centrifuge inside is an old stock pot with a lip attached. It is going to be powered by a motor from a squirrel cage furnace fan. I am seriously channeling the MacGyver spirit on this one! Another problem I am trying to overcome with the project is getting the oil into the main holding tank. The furnace will be gravity fed, so I have mounted a plastic 55 gallon barrel in the rafters of the shop. Carrying gallon jugs up the ladder is no fun after the first 10 trips. Right now the pumps that I have are having difficulty moving the oil up about 15' to the top of the barrel, even after heating it to thin it out. I have some options lined up so I'll see how that goes. The other problem with the project you may have noticed in the video, the pre-heating of the oil via the mini crock pot is not good enough. Well, I've gone all Tim Taylor on the thing and have re-wired it to up the power by a factor of about ten. I'll show it off on future posts.

That's good enough for a start. Thanks for reading and good luck to all the other putterholics out there. :)