DOW Driving Habits

I will leave the DOW to youse for now. Been bagging blocks for Jakub. Looks like I better crank up the old H and buzzrig. I am finding a lot maple fuel in the bush. Tomorrow, I will go bring a load up to the saw.
I like all the videos…it’s interesting. I don’t drive enough to warrant building a producer for a vehicle. Tractor yes. Bulldozer yes. Generator yes.
My big moment, today, has been digging a pond, burning B100 biodiesel.

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I don’t drive a hundred miles a month Bruce and that’s just for supplies for my various projects. I’ve decided to stick a gasifier on one of my junkers and get it running just to say I did.

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Making the wood burner earn it’s keep :slightly_smiling_face:

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Lol Wayne,
Even I am starting to recognize that scenery!
10 years tho, that kind of hours was what Greg Manning always talked about.
B

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it’s a weed. we use it for firewood when we HAVE TO and when we don’t have to split it. I cut some into lumber years ago and ended up getting boards that resembled a cork screw. I imagine it would gasify like poplar. don’t remember it being any differnt than other soft woods.

I think it was you that was looking for the serial number. :grin:

CowPatty is a great song

That’s funny.

Good tip.

I just drive up to the pump and start pumping, usually with the truck running on wood.

What about being in the good ole USA during WWIII or civil war II. You May just get the same chance.

I feel ya. But our foreign friends are ALL reading our American posts saying, “They’re so spoiled and they don’t even know it.” LOL

Yep.

Should be seeing him here soon aye?

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Thanks much for letting us ride :blush:

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At about 200° f in the hopper you are about out of wood. That is the same for my hopper. When you see the hopper temperature going up it can be bridging of the wood in the hopper or you are running low on wood in the hopper. If you have traveled your known distance on your hopper load of wood it is time to pull over to refuel with wood. But if you just refueled and you know your hopper should be half full, you need to pull over and check for bridging in the hopper.
I have had bridging in my hopper and temperature has gone up to 200 °f very fast. Switch over to dino fuel and look for a place to pull over to check the hopper. What fun you are going to be having learning all the other 75 % of gasification.
Bob

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I was really surprised when it happened I had only gone about 2 miles when I saw the temp had come up since last looking at it, happens pretty quickly

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I forgot, what species of wood are you using right now?

On that drive I was running mostly Douglas fir with a little random hardwoods mixed in but maybe 5% total hardwood. I expect the char bed is not yet fully established like jo said. I also discovered yesterday I can MUCH more easily switch from gasoline to woodgas while in motion. Leave it in gear and let the higher vacuum of the motor pull the gas up to the motor and set a mixture and tune it on the fly. Takes maybe a quarter mile to do this and have it running well on 100% wood

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Hey Marcus part of your fast-wood-used-up: and disappearing char bed will be that Douglas Fir wood.
Only 100+ year DF limb wood and high altitude 10 rings per inch DF will give the range and char beds like a hardwood.
DF is great for quick starting and power-energy releasing.
Using mainly DF you may need a larger hopper.
And have to watch the char bed consumption like a hawk.
S.U.

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Marcus, I’m somewhere between 12-1500 miles on my new gasifier and I still notice improvment. Less hesitation at acceleration, better idle and so on.
Of course it can sometimes be hard to tell what’s what, since you constantly learn new things on how to handle a different setup, but I do belive it takes quite some time to build a proper crust on the internal insulating ash cone. Especially if you run a deep, relativly cool charbed where the lower part really heat up and bake only occationally.
I still struggle getting rid of the bulky spruce slab chunks from springtime. I notice, if I happen to grab bags containing more than 50% of them, I get higher consumption and a loose charbed - borderline tar making. I would guess our spruce is similar to your DF.

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Our spruce we have here is similar to Doug fir, but tighter growth rings, a slower growing tree but is extremely pitchy, susceptible to wind damage and giant pitch pockets in the wood when splitting. I assumed it would take a very hot char bed to consume all that pitch. Doug fir can be pitchy too but so far I have been using kiln dried lumber from pallets at work, lots of 2x4 and 2x6 chunked up. Some of it is loose grain some tight

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I think it is comparable to my tall wind break poplar trees. Soft wood lots of bark, likes to constipate my charcoal bed with ash. Yuk!
I have to mix it with hard cherry wood so I do not lose my char bed and to keep it stable and not get to loose.
Bob

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I’m curious about why hardwood trees do not grow in the northwest or is that just on the east side of the Cascades?

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We do have hard wood trees but they are planted in people’s yards and properties. Wenatchee area is 10 to 15 % rain fall yearly. That means irragtion to grow crops, fruit trees. We do have dry land wheat growing in central Washington State. As you move West to the Cascade Mountains then you will start seeing more hard wood trees. Our forests around here have different species of Evergreen Fur, pine trees, also the Western Larch Tree, the needle turn yellow in the fall and drop off. Back East they have the Tamrack Tree that does the same.
We have Alder, Aspen, Birch, Willow.
We have a Vine Maple hard wood not a tree.
Our forests are turning Red, Orange, Yellow in the fall right now with the Ever Green trees contrasts. It is Beautiful with snow now on the upper mountains.
Bob

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Don’t forget big leaf maple and red alder which if your in the right area can be fairly dominant and the sparse bit of oaks and balsam (madrona) we have. We do have hard wood they are just a small percentage of our species compared to the needle varieties

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Yeah. Hardwoods west of the Cascade Mountains divide out to the coast are low, low percentages available.
Like Filet Minion meat cuts (back strap); cured bacon from a hog; butter and ice cream from a cows whole milk. Low, low percentages of the whole resource.
Treats occasionally. And always expensive to buy.
Any of us needs to learn to use the local cheap, common, available, ground meats type woods. Even Oak. Poplar. Willows. Cotton woods.
Know how to make and apricate nail-soup, rock-soup, farmers soup, fisherman’s soup and you’ll never go hungry.
Steve Unruh

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