After getting educated by someone here on DOW about Tamarack last year, My friend and I went to the swamp yesterday to get some dry wood.
I will mix this Tamarack With some Birch in the evaporator. Woke up to -16 F this AM so I’m glad we got it done. It’s supposed to warm up to 50 Monday.
I think I may have mentioned this before, but I would suggest this as a project. A log arch will allow hauling much greater loads, and keep the logs clean if hauling over dirt.
I built one years ago. The one thing I would do differently today would be to use standard 15" tires, a larger diameter tire handles rough ground far better, less rolling resistance.
Your last post didn’t load up.
Maybe you did mention it but I certainly don’t remember this picture.
Wow, this is cool! I have everything needed for this project except the part that hooks into the log.
There must be some issue with the site, or network. I want to load the photo for the public record, but will pm also…
Logging arches are handy. I use a tractor bucket to do the same thing with my big tractor but the smaller one doesn’t like all that weight on the front as you back up.
My grandfather always said you log in the winter because the snow doesn’t hurt the saw but dirt will kill it.
The log tongs are a cheapo item, probably available through your Harbour Freight. I used a strap winch on my copy, which basically does the whole job. Now I have log tongs on its also.
Now that I managed to upload a pic of acceptable resolution, I should mention for the public record that the photo shows the manual extension attached, replaceable by the short hitching / pulling attachment.
Garry by the looks of the trees dying you really too get gassing with wood, i see.
Do I ever. Just the annual growth is too much for one person to ever keep up with. I have about 120 acres of bush. Wood gas, biochar, charcoal, lumber, enough to do it all. I want to start producing char in quantities for soil amendment in fields, both to see if it lives up to claims, I suspect should at least give some benefit, and more importantly perhaps take some carbon out of circulation for a few thousand years.
Use a “sap sucker” it is essentially a vacuum pump, but you can pull sap up hills and you get more sap. I know some people that used to tap at like 12ft for their tubes and that gave them a good slope but it also kept the deer from breaking the lines at night.
I will say walking through the woods checking the lines everyday, is a lot easier and more peaceful then collecting sap and hauling it in buckets. 
I wanted to get some of those big plastic containers and build them into trailers for sap season then just drive out and swap trailers everyday but I never have had the time and money to setup for sugaring. Given how the season is now I am not sure it would pay for itself here. I remember as a very small kid first grader I think the neighbors ran an maple syrup setup I remember how much I enjoyed just watching it amazed me to no end.
Hi Garry when you get a small wk or the tractor gasifier model on your datson you will be one surly surprized of the quallity of the fuel and the speed it is ready too drive with. With me i am getting ready too re test drive, and weighing my wood in 5 gallon pail, it seems 9.5 too 10 pounds may be dry enough from weighing for water percents. Most of the Pine seems too be about same weight as cotton wood dryed out. After deducting the pail weight 2 # and takes about 2 too 5 days too dry the chunks by the wood stove. Happy camping. My brother had a b210 datson back in the 80’s, wood like too find a deal on one around this area of MI. That might have been thecar he had but those datson pickups were the best runni g gas mizers of ther time.
I have the evaporator a test run this evening. I was very pleased with how it ran with the fan on. When the fan is off, smoke starts coming from the chimney. Granted, I only had one load of wood in it so no coals were established.
I welded up the evaporator pan and only found one leak and it was at the stainless steel nipple. I did a test run anyway.
My question is the fan is mounted over a 2" hole. If I want this to run without the fan, do I cut more holes in for the primary air?
Also, do I want to put a damper on this?
Did it smoke after you shut off the blower, or before you started it? You probably had it going too well to switch back to natural draft.
Think about a gasifier… it smokes a lot more after a long pull on the highway than it does idling around.
It was after I shut the blower off. So, are you saying to give it some time for the natural draft to kick in? Do you think a 2" primary air is enough?
If it is smoking I think you need more air on the secondary to burn the smoke off. Can you easily add a blower there and let the primary run on a natural draft? It is probably a pretty big fire but I would think 2 inches with the chimney height you have there would pull a good draft on its own.
Why wouldn’t it draft on it’s own? Does it mean I need to increase the height of the chimney?
Maybe it’s loosing too much heat to the sides for secondary burn? Any plans on insulating the sides of the burn box?
My two guesses and only guessing here.
