Woodgas encouragement. You CAN do it! (w/ practical steps to making it happen)

Hi everybody, some of you know me, some of you may not know me that well. To those who don’t know me I am Eric Cartier from SE Arizona. I typically hang out in the members only builders discussion forum and recently competed my first WK style gasifier. I really want to encourage everyone in the woodgas community today.

First to the Pioneers of the System:

Thanks for sharing all your work with us. You really really are doing life and world changing work. This is changing peoples lives. This will change peoples lives. Thanks for all your persistence. I recently got to hang out with the web site developer Chris Saenz at the Kentucky wood expo and he gave me a tid bit of information many people may not know: Wayne Keith experimented and built twelve different gasifiers before he came up with the current successful system. Talk about persistence.
Thanks Mr. Keith. God Bless you for sharing your discoveries with us.
Thanks to all the other woodgas builders and pioneers who kept the idea alive for half a century after it was cast aside.

Second to those who have yet to build their own system:

Let me say : YOU CAN DO IT! You CAN do it! If you want to do it, take action.
If you’re not a member yet I would highly recommend it. You can go it alone and engineer everything from the ground up. All the information is free license and common, but to research it and put it all together yourself will take thousands of hours of research. Believe me I had three years of research reading every night before I came across the Keith System, and I was still ten years away from building anything.
I just completed my first build. You can make it happen also. Working at a pace of a 40 hour week it took me under 2 months. That was me working full time specifically to build a gasifier. I took two semesters learning to weld at the community college over a year ago. This was the first time I welded other than those classes. I grew up in an urban environment with no practical experience in the shop, or on a farm. If I can do it so can you!
For those of you starting from scratch,
Practical steps to making it happen:

1.) Take a welding class at the community college. (4-5mos. one or two nights a week)
2.) Start saving for a welder and plasma cutter.
3.) Start walking around scrap yards and junk yards. Just see whats there. Get familiar with shapes and pieces.
4.) Read about woodgas. Don’t over do it. A couple hours a week. Focus on Waynes book. Read it cover to cover. Do it again. Watch the videos. Before you start the build you will have a mental picture of how each piece goes where and why its important.
5.) Do. Watching other people build and be successful will give you motivation to keep on building if you get discouraged. However it can just as easily give you the biochemical fix of success in your brain with out actually making anything happen for yourself. Don’t fall into that thought pattern.
6.) Don’t be afraid. Whats the worst that could happen? You could go totally broke and have to work at MCDonalds. They do offer health insurance at least :). It worked for millions of Europeans in WW2. It will work for you. And if you build a Keith System I guarantee it will work better then their systems did.
7.) Save the experiments and radical innovations until you build one by the book. No offence but you don’t know what your doing :). Don’t take offense I had one of the most highly respected European wood gassers tell me the same thing. http://www.driveonwood.com/forum/198

Third, to those still building:
Keep at it. You are changing the world. You really ARE changing bits and pieces of the world. Don’t look at what circumstances tell you. Your doing it. If the Brits looked and believed their circumstances in 1940 they would have lost the war. Don’t get 95% of the way and give up. Don’t be afraid to take the plunge and light that pile of steel up for the first time and see whats what! It could melt down and blow up, but more likely it will work just like many other peoples units have worked before. Every problem has an engineering solution.

One piece at a time one day at a time. Don’t fret about two weeks from now. Just take reasonable steps to have the next piece to work on for tomorrow.

Don’t give up before you’ve started.
Don’t give up after you’re finished.

God Bless you guys with safety and success in your endeavors. We ARE changing the world.
-ERIC

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Good post EricC. Well thought out, organized and well written.
Excellant, excellant advices and encouragements.

Congratulations on getting your WK system done, up and working now. Only things done in the real world count for anything useful.
Now the real woodgas understanding can begin.

Read a little. DO some. Read a little more. Then DO a lot more. Read less then. DO some more. Then write about what you have found from your DOing in real Life expereinces.
You point out the true proven road to success.

Best Regards
Steve Unruh

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Excellent! Eric, I don’t know how old you are, but it sounds as if you could have grown up in Steve U’s house. I wish I had . . .

Still saving for that GOOD (not cheap) MIG welder and plasma cutter . . . .

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Hello Eric,

Thanks for all the nice comments but I think you are giving me way too much credit. Theres folks on the web site that we just couldn’t do without . Steve , Carl and the list could go on and on but too numerous to try to name all.

I don’t know what to say except thanks again.

Wayne

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Great encouragement Eric, thank you. And excellent follow up Steve U. I’d say this would make a good introduction for the “WK Builders Companion Book”. Subtitle: “How to avoid Mistakes, Correct the OOPS!, and Overcome Obstacles to Your WK Build”.

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