YouTube Small systems Builds

The modified jigsaw grate chain shaker is pretty slick i must say

Here is another video of it

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Hey Cody,
At minutes 10:45 in his second video he does show internals details, and a peek at his DVD/ memory-stick plans set:

This is a direct carry on into from that first video.
The beginning 10:45 has much relevant information too on overall system operations intents.

He said in the 1st video it was skid mounted for other uses.
Been in lightduty Parade service on this car for 9 years.
Good and Bad to that.
Heavy 4-6 hours contiously loaded stationary electrical generator usage and heā€™d learn he had to add more gas cooling capacity with some forced air flow.
And heā€™d of learned that you cannot flow still 500-650F gas through at best 350F rubber couplers. He would have learned to before the cooler convert to hard metals connectors.
And to not be tied to re-fueling every 45 minutes heā€™d of gone the big tall hopper route. THEN: the moistures from all of that fuel bulk loading would have been his real teacher finally.

He has a pleasant enough voice, and delivery pace to listen too.
You just have to get used to his own terminology. ā€œFlueā€ instead of more descriptive Flare Stack. Etc.

And realize he made and released these videos in 2020 COVID shut-down periods. He cares.
Regards
Steve Unruh

6 Likes

Time for a new update , i just came across this before heading off to bed so only watched it the once with heavy eyes but from the first view i love the skills of the build , as yet not had a chance to look at his channel but i will when morning comes, in the mean time take a look see what you guys think .
Dave.

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All the time I was watching I was thinking, " I seen this before" at the end I found out why. This guy has excellent fab skill. Really likes those little screws. Not me.

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Painful for me to watch this one Dave.

I to was admiring his fabrication skills in SS and his TIG welding . . .
Some valid design features. Other showing a lack of understanding just how gooey, dirty and corrosive the interior of a wood gasifier will get. TomHā€™s reference to all of those tiny plate separation screws once soots and tars embedded . . . it will be bad, bad.
Then at 19:16 he completly lost me.
Directly filling it all from the bottom up with with those too large of wood chunks.
No ash pre-filling.
No screened wood charcoal pre-filling up past the nozzles to especially his fixed point liting-up port.
His thin plate restriction looking down in, then obvious. And that fully perimeter welded. And mid-center ring welded. Itā€™s gonna be bad after heat differentials stressed. Has to be thick. Has to be a floating loose fit.
Then the many square cut corners in his cooler was like fingers on a chalk board to me . . . flow restrictions and building up deposits points.

His filtering can systems seemed familiar ? ? ?
At the end he give a shout out to Ben Petersons Builders Bible book as his inspirations.
So, dude can you did not read the details of pre-start layered pre-filling with ash and wood charcoal? It is there.
The importance of wood chunk bits sizing? You are off of his recommendation charts.
Cannot read about the zones of oxidization gases made? And then the wood char and heat thermal-chemical Reduction that must be achieved??

I do not believe he read any of this with understandings.
Just pictures and charts skimmed looking at how he could simplify his own spam-in-a-can design.

His finally achieved a flare at 5 minutes on those big raw wood chunks was buring smoke gas.

Over simplified short cuts thinking is what gets so many in trouble wood gasing for small engines.
They tar up and fail. Then fail again. Then fail again.
Quit woodgas, as a hoax.
Maybe later come back in drawn to charcoal gasifiers. Maybe.
Suburban location his background shows . . . well, good luck making the charcoal.

This is why I will only personally correspond and on-location visit with those who live rural doing first heating with wood. At least then there is the common languages sawdust, wood splitting and volume of wood fuels to be made.
Wood heater relevances of ashes, soots, and chimney creosotes.
I really wish Suburbans and Urbans would stick with Drones and robots and other such in their postage stamp yards, and attached garages activities.

ā€œBuy you books. Send you to school. And allā€™s you want to do is fool around and play games with the teachers.ā€ (not mine. the original is a very, very dirty, and frank, slap-down wake-up.)
Steve Unruh

11 Likes

Right on SteveU. I thought many of those same things but am not versed enough in wood gas theory to talk out loud about them. There are a few innovators among us and Iā€™m satisfied to follow their lead. I tried a few of my own ideas in my first gasifiers and regretted doing so. Now I stick to the tried and true and admire those who can venture into new areas. Thatā€™s why people on this site have more successes. A healthy number of smarty pants wood gassers to keep us from running into so many dead ends.

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Haha see i told you i was almost falling off my perch when i clicked onto that video , i have to admit i too was drawn in by his fab and weld skills but thatā€™s as far as my brain would allow that time of night .
Now time for me to re watch again and see the errors of his ways .
Dave

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Nice beautifull build for show.
To bad he tared it up when starting it up for the first time. He should use Charcoal up pass the nozzles first with wood or brands on top of that to establish a good Charcoal bed.

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Good morning All
Todd Reuschal in Daveā€™s highlighted YouTube video does have an electrical generator running on woodgas video now. Iā€™ll let you look that one up yourself. At ~7:00 minutes in, he shows visible made gas being fed to his engine tru a clear hose. Not good.
But give him points for persistence. Hurray for you man, for engine running.

Here is a new different info attempt video that I found:

Interesting fellow. He does live Rural and posts up about rural living things. He shows a fuel wood-pile!

Expand out that videoā€™s lower text description to be able to read ā€œmoreā€.
There is a use link into the DOW library.
And he also credits Flash001USA for his info video series.

The problems are he is first internal sizing too small. By anyones charts recommendations.
Second even with all of us saying ignore the blue flare staring now for years and years . . . Mike LaRosa/Wayne Keith and forwards . . . he probably will not hazard an engine until he can get that perfect flare gas others have convinced him that he needs. Sigh.

If he does not quit; ToddR., with hard trial and errors, will achieve working results much, much sooner.

Iā€™ll say again and again; the very best teacher, how not to make tarring gas; but fully converted woodgas is to tar up an engine repeatedly.
Woodgas rewards over-thinkers poorly.
Woodgas rewards hands-on, Doer-User guys instead.
Regards
Steve Unruh

8 Likes

Ok Steve i came across someone i had watched a few times before but he has moved on a way since the last time i visited his site just in case you have not see his latest machines one of which is certainly not a small YouTube build and he also shows off one of Matts charcoal machines running his generator superbly .

Dave

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Couldnā€™t make heads or tails out of the first video. Too bad he didnā€™t talk about the gasifier much on the second one or where it came from. That would have been a huge boon to Matt to see how easy it was to operate. Didnā€™t understand what the ratios were that he was citing. Didnā€™t sound like wood gas stoich. Over 14 to 1 on gasoline would put you pretty close to piston melting lean.

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Hey Dave, Iā€™ve seen his feed come up on my YouTube recommended side bar but never watched him.
Thanks for pointing this out.
On the first video if you accept that this was a college trainer system emulating big industrial sized units then the forced air cooler exchanger; the durable cast sections and thick internal SS ring levels makes sense. The use of a gas forced thru water washer makes sense then too.
Industrial large; they add external water reclaimer systems.

For DIY interest use of this system skip ahead to exactly 18:15 minutes where he shows his new Harbor Freight Predator 9500/7600 single phase generator powering up the whole works.

Ha! Betchaā€™ that was bought for his Matt Ryder charcoal gasifier. For this big one heā€™s said he was going to fuel a four cylinder water cooled Ford engined WINCO 20 KW electric generator.
Be at least a 15-20 pounds an hour wood fuel gobbler.
As he is very aware a must-atternd carefully when use in below water freezing conditions.
Why I, and others quickly went away from pumped water washering gas cleaning/cooling systems.
Yeah you will always with raw woods have to deal with condensates. Using hot gas flow bypassing and pocket traps religiously drained.
S.U.

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Hey TomH if you read his description section on the second YouTube he does give lots of direct credit to Matt Rider. Even more in that videos comments and responses section. ALWAYS read these!
Kinddaā€™ frustrating video to me as I have to puzzle out the gas fueled running IC engine; charging system; and loads distribution.
Ha! That all gets highlighted, clarified and explained; and even better Matt Ryder charcoal system close detailed, in this month earlier video:

Matt Ryder does detailed answers a lot in that videos comment section. Read.
Anyhow: a Harbor Freight 420cc single cylinder engine. My ear says ~2700-3000 RPM. Belt driving a 12vdc automotive alternator. DC charging a battery bank. AC loads supplied by a stand alone inverter.
The engine exhaust heat routed up through a big SS wood ā€œchunksā€ (actually wood chips - see the spilled pictures) tub drier.
The time stamps to see all of this is at from 10:59 thru 12:00 minutes.

TomH at exactly 11:00 you see a less than half second sweep by his engine exhaust system O2 sensor.
ā€œI thinkā€ his read out for this is calibrated not just rich-lean lights; but in assumed gasoline exhaust remaining oxygen A/F ratios numbers. Confusing stated as such. Yes.
S.U.

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Hi Tom,
Flame temperatures for woodgas or chargas are much lower. You can run very lean and not burn pistons. Gasoline is nasty stuff.
Rindert

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The YouTube algorithm must be working tonns better for them these days as nearly everytime i open up its showing a gasifier i had not seen before .

This one to me is a little disappointing as no real mention of what type other than he says its a wood gas , so i will guess it is just that and not a charcoal/wood mix type , its a very clean build ,but his channel says ā€¦" How to build a wood gasifier and make wood gas " i think thatā€™s just click bait as no mention of his build is shown or mentioned that i could find .

PS donā€™t you just hate the sound of them old generators screaming there heads off !

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Well, it works and thatā€™s all that really matters. I didnā€™t look but he must have made some kind of build video earlier. I totally agree about the noise. I hope to get some kind of automotive engine hooked to a gen head one of these days. In certain situations that noise could bring you a lot of trouble.

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Hi Tom , i checked out his other videoā€™s , he has 5 wood gas ones on his channel and its just him trying to get it to run a engine or flaring off .
Dave

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I just run across this guyā€™s videos (Todd Reuschel on youtube) and checked to see if he was a member. This thread was the only thing I could find about his build but he did just post a newer video with some dimensions.

The one that got my attention was the one where he run his Tahoe vehicle on the woodgas.

It didnā€™t show him turning the blower off to see if it still run without it and he didnā€™t do anything except run that engine but is it really that simple to prove that it could run a vehicle?

I didnā€™t want to drill any holes in my truck but I did try feeding it some charcoal gas from my Simple Fire charcoal gasifier but never got it to even idle. That gasifier probably isnā€™t big enough to use on a vehicle but it would have been nice to prove that charcoal gas would run it.

Watching that video it looks like I just needed to block the stock air filter inlet (or make it adjustable) and feed the wood/charcoal gas in after pulling the fuel pump fuse.

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I will like to see him drive his vehicle down the road and see if his gasifier can supply enough wood gas for his engine. Also if his car computer will adjust the timing too under load of the engine driving.

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Well this guy is a heck of a fabricator and welder. Didnā€™t see much obtanium so I have to take away points for that. Burring out the grate slots was a little anal but big thumbs up on the build. Iā€™m wondering what the biggest engine someone has run on a Ben Peterson.

5 Likes