What to do with the Grandkids

[onetrack]

I know quite a number of unfortunate people who could damage themselves with a rubber sword, so I think making crossbows might be out of the question for them. Besides, you have to apply to the Police to own or use a crossbow.

 

And then there's American clowns such as this, to provide us with worthy entertainment .....

 

https://www.military.com/video/operations-and-strategy/improvised-weapons/slingshot-guy-finally-owns-himself/2707741982001

[old man emu]

Besides, you have to apply to the Police to own or use a crossbow.

 

It's getting so bad nowadays that you need a Police permit to hurl abuse.

[old man emu]

OK. Gunpowder and flash paper are out. How about we still keep with fire and make something that keeps it contained?

 

If you like to enjoy the great outdoors, there comes a time when you need to heat water for a hot drink, or to make a meal from something dehydrated in a packet. Here's two ways to get your without plugging something into a wall.

 

1. The DIY Spirit Stove.

This is a proven design, patented in 1904, and is cheap and easy to make. Raw materials will cost 20 cents (deposit forfeited on two soft drink cans). One of these can boil 500 ml of water in 5 to 10 minutes.

[TABLE]

[TR]

[TD]

Fuel is poured into the stove and ignited,

burning in the center.[/TD]

[TD]

The flame heats the fuel and interior

of the stove, causing the fuel to vaporize.[/TD]

[TD]

When the temperature is high enough,

vapor pressure causes fuel jets and a ring of flame.[/TD]

[/TR]

[/TABLE]

 

This spirit stove is handy for making a brew when travelling light, and it can be used with precautions in a tinny while you are out fishing.

Here's a link to a video which shows you how to make one of these stoves:

 

2. The Hobo Stove

If you don't want to carry metho with you on a hike, or you want to heat up larger portions of canned food, then the Hobo Stove is for you. These stoves are made from larger tin cans. You may have to scrounge one from a caterer or take-away store. They fuel is wood, or bar-b-que beads, so they aren't any good on a boat. The design of the stove aims to produce a clean burn of the fuel so that the amount of smoke and cinders escaping from the fire is minimal.

 

Here's a link to a video which shows you how to make a Hobo stove:

[skippydiesel]

Great ideas - how do fit a grandchild capable rotisserie ??

[onetrack]

The Hobo stove and its builder have me puzzled.

 

1. He uses what appears to be a Dremel with a cutoff wheel to make a lot of neat cuts in the first can - then uses a pair of pliers on the second can to make a larger opening? - with a lot of ripping and tearing and generally jagged results?

2. I don't know how or where you acquire the size of the cans he's got hold of? The last time I saw any cans that size, was in the military.

3. He builds a fancy 3-piece wire support for the top of the can, to support the kettle/saucepan/billy - but those little pieces of wire are unattached, and have a nasty habit of getting lost.

Lose just one of those wires and your whole kettle/saucepan/billy support is useless.

4. He goes to exceptional trouble to build this Hobo stove - then doesn't show it working with a fire in it?? Seems like he got so entranced in fabricating it, he forgot what the end use was supposed to be.

5. I can buy a military surplus hexamine stove for a few bucks that is a proven design, which folds up, and is just as light as a couple of cans - and which boils and cooks all that a person ever needs.

Maybe he should've spent some time in the Green Machine, to find out about these marvellous military devices, that are extensively tested?

[spacesailor]

I thought far to complicated, for a Hobo to be bothered with.

I would have thought that a Stabbed hole will be enough to let air through, without finding a Dremel, laying about,

Then the power socket to fit a USA power tool.

spacesailor

[willedoo]

The can looks a similar size to the Golden Circle fruit juice cans. I don't know if Golden Circle still make the big tins; I used to use them for billys.

[pmccarthy]

We used to say a hobo was a gay guy with a blocked nose from a bad cold.

[facthunter]

It's OME's fault. It was like that when I got here, Boss.

Anyhow gelignite/dynamite in good condition is pretty safe It takes a proper detonator to set it off. . and a long drilled hole with small rocks packed in firmly to blast much rock out . If it's just lying there it doesn't do much. (relatively). Even just the detonator will blow a hole in steel waterpipe..Nev

PS I know this is out of sequence but you lot are clever enough to sort that out easily..

Edited April 14, 2020 by facthunter

[onetrack]

If it's just lying there it doesn't do much

Yes, gelignite is pretty safe, you can light it, and it will just burn - a stunt often pulled by those "in the know", and designed to frighten the wits out of newbies!

However, gelignite contained ammonium nitrate, and as AN is hygroscopic (absorbs moisture from the air), it needed to be kept in an airtight container to prevent deterioration.

 

If left open to the air, the AN in the gelly would absorb moisture, the stick would become wet to the point of dripping, and the gelly would become unreliable in its explosiveness.

So if your gelly started "sweating", it was time to get rid of it, it was regarded as, "past its use-by date".

 

Back to old Ted Garland and gelignite - when the brother worked for him, the operators often lived out of a caravan, dragged around from job to job with a KB-1 International truck.

And of course, Ted always ensured they had a case of gelignite stored in the 'van, for those situations such as encountering rock, or big mill stumps!

 

One time, when the brother and another of Teds operators were in the 'van one day, they had reason to take a look at the case of gelly under one of the beds. It was probably the increasing smell that made them do it.

The case had been there for possibly a couple of years - all through stinking, humid, hot Summer days, inside a stinking hot old metal caravan. There was less than full case, probably 8 or 10 sticks had been used.

To their great concern, the case of gelly was sweating like a kid in the headmasters office. At that time, with their limited knowledge, they thought it was the nitroglycerine leaking out of the wood pulp, and they thought it was becoming unstable.

 

They decided they had to get rid of it - fast. They were ready to move out of the job they were on, anyway, so they pulled the caravan out onto the road, and unloaded the gelly.

The other operator walked about 300 metres out into the nearby paddock, and found a huge old jarrah mill stump. He gingerly placed the sweaty gelly case on top of the stump, lit a long fuse, and retreated to the truck and van.

 

They drove off up the road about 800-900 metres, and sat and watched. There was an almighty explosion, the mill stump disappeared in a massive sheet of flame - and debris went about 100M skywards, and to about a 300 metre radius!

They walked back to inspect the result. They were stunned to find a crater about 3 metres deep, and not a trace of the mill stump to be found, apart from a few shattered roots surrounding the crater!

 

That led them to appreciate the full explosive power of two-thirds of a case of gelignite!

[willedoo]

Back in the early 80's, a company we were contracting for had some stuff past it's use by date. I'm only relating this second hand, but I was told it was 12 rolls of redcord or the thicker green stuff (geoflex?), can't remember which. They told the pre-loader to take it out on the flat somewhere and get rid of it. Anyway, he let the whole lot off at once and it was said that it rattled the windows at the station homestead about three kilometres away.

[old man emu]

The Hobo stove and its builder have me puzzled.

 

1. He uses what appears to be a Dremel with a cutoff wheel to make a lot of neat cuts in the first can - then uses a pair of pliers on the second can to make a larger opening? - with a lot of ripping and tearing and generally jagged results?

2. I don't know how or where you acquire the size of the cans he's got hold of? The last time I saw any cans that size, was in the military.

3. He builds a fancy 3-piece wire support for the top of the can, to support the kettle/saucepan/billy - but those little pieces of wire are unattached, and have a nasty habit of getting lost.

Lose just one of those wires and your whole kettle/saucepan/billy support is useless.

4. He goes to exceptional trouble to build this Hobo stove - then doesn't show it working with a fire in it?? Seems like he got so entranced in fabricating it, he forgot what the end use was supposed to be.

5. I can buy a military surplus hexamine stove for a few bucks that is a proven design, which folds up, and is just as light as a couple of cans - and which boils and cooks all that a person ever needs.

Maybe he should've spent some time in the Green Machine, to find out about these marvellous military devices, that are extensively tested?

 

ANSWERS:

 

1. You weren't paying attention. First he makes a flash one using the Dremel. That one, he says, you make at home and take it with you. The second one, made using a Leatherman tool, is the one you make when you are humping your bluey and fire bans come into force. The second one is a roughy, but it still works.

2. The can he is using is about a 1 kg size. I'm using a 1 kg hot chocolate tin for my stove. Restaurants and other take-aways buy their beetroot and tomato paste in tins this size.

3. The beauty of this design is that if you think you can make a part better, then do it. I'm going to put three sets of holes across the upper end of mine and slide some high tensile fence wire through to make a pot stand.

4. Yeah, I was disappointed about that, but there's heaps of similar videos showing the stove working. I must admit, I'm keen to see the air current vortex spinning the flame.

5. So far my stove has cost me the price of one Dremel cutting wheel, but I've had some enjoyment out of making something myself.

 

Too complicated for a hobo to bother with? How do you think the object got the name "hobo stove"?

Edited April 14, 2020 by old man emu

[old man emu]

How about we still keep with fire and make something that keeps it contained?

 

Well, I made the Hobo Stove and it worked pretty well. I didn't have good eucalyptus sticks to burn in it, so used some twigs from some type of conifer.

 

I also made a metho stove, but didn't use the same idea as in the video I posted above. I didn't cut out the top of the can. I only had a few small pin holes in the centre of the top. That was another bloke's design. I put 50 ml of metho in and lit it. The metho outside the stove soon burnt off, but the flame must have gone into the can. The next thing that happened was that there was a soft "bang" and the can blew apart, spreading burning metho about. Luckily I had the stove on my bar-b-que, so I closed the bar-b-que's lid to contain the flames. I was lucky that none of the burning metho landed on me.

 

I'll have another go at making the stove and test it in the middle of the back yard.

[willedoo]

Here's a fire tip for camping, back yard or otherwise, that most probably already know. Smokless fire vs smokey fire. It's no great bushcraft, only common sense; some of the worst offenders for making smokey fires are people who have lived in the bush all their lives.

 

The theory is basic: the smoke is caused by incomplete, inefficient combustion. If the burning ends of the logs are facing into the wind, the wind will blow flame up the rest of the log, causing it to smoulder and smoke. Just burn the end of the log with the wind behind it. The wind prevents weak flame spreading back up the log and smouldering, and the log end burns only at the actual fire, much hotter and cleaner. You can test this by setting up a good burning fire and then turning a log around into the wind to see how much smoke it generates.

 

It works well and you just keep stoking the burning ends into the fire while keeping the wind behind them. The goal is to get mostly complete combustion happening. The other thing people often do is to chuck the centre of a big log on the fire to burn it in half. Same principle; it causes a lot of smoke. When only the ends are burning, the rest of the logs/sticks are cool enough to handle, so in the case of a wind shift, it's easy to just grab them and swing them around for an adjustment.

 

Apologies for the rather dismal digital graphic. A six year old kid could probably draw better.

 

 

Edited April 18, 2020 by Guest

[onetrack]

Willedo, that may be all well and good, when you have a steady wind blowing one direction. My experience with fires is that, as soon as you pick the direction the wind is moving in, it promptly changes.

So you then move things around to take advantage of the new direction, and the wind promptly blows from another direction! It's the age-old story of "the smoke follows you", around a fire!

[willedoo]

It does follow you. I think it's designed that way to keep us on our toes.

 

Very entertaining things, fires. I remember a mate used to get hollow coolibah branches and make smoke chimneys with them. Probably some poor budgie's house going up in flames.

Edited April 18, 2020 by Guest