I have been looking for these videos since the thread started. A friend of mine moved to the big southern island of the Philippines. They know I have an interest in woodgas and were telling me about their boat ride. There was quite a bit of water in the hold when they got to looking at the gasifier. The boat was not in good shape but most of those around there look about the same. This boat ran a kind of semi-regular route from two points. The locals are pretty fearless. They take a changfa engine and attach about a 10 foot shaft to it with a propeller and just dip the propeller in the water and off they go. No shields, guards or anything. There are several videos of this boat on YouTube.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dj4OEN6HN-E&ab_channel=rolandraina
Paul—an interesting find. Thanks for sharing.
A little work done today.
Theses will be welded on the out side of the nozzle holes on the fire tube. Made up 16 of them. I decided to build to of these units at one time. Heck if @Matt can buil 20 or more at one time I can build two.
I am cutting the hole for the firetube small and will cut tabs in and bend them down. I will not slide fit it until the firetube is mostly completed. Once I fit it it might not come back out, The tabs will be welded to the firetube when finished. This gasifer design does not have a top plate. It has a mid plate just under the nozzle traps I built by cutting the old 2" pipe in half. By the way that old pipe I got out back in the old homestead orchard that is gone now. Pipe 70 + years old good black pipe they made back then.
It will slide down with a litte effort.
This is the bottom of the compressor tank. I powered bushed it and I am going have to do some welding here filling the corrosion and pitted metal.
Really thin in spots the other half the the tank does have a rusted through spot. This compressor was still working. I saved the motor and other parts. It was free.
I used up some scrap pieces from the top plate for the other Wk Gasifier build I am going. More New Holland bailer pieces weld together to make the heat shields. Why not. Right.
In order to get the curve in the flat plates I beat them cold metal inside this brake drum.
I put this handle on the back side of the drum to avoid doing this again. Blood blister pinch between two pieces of metals. OUCH!!!. God tried to warn me I heard this thought you should put a handle on this drum before something bad happens. I didn’t take heed. It could have been worst.
Bob
@Norman89 hey Marcus, thanks for the piviot on the back of the hand trick with a plazma cutter trick. This was my first try at it. It turned out with a nice line cut round hole. Easy to follow the line I made.
Bob
Hello Bob, if I understand the sketch correctly, you intend to have water in the lower part, which will evaporate and the steam will mix with fresh air, so this will be a charcoal gasifier. Have you thought about the fact that there could be too much steam and it would stifle your process? You are doing a great job, I am following your project with interest.
Tone, in theory, the gasification process produces just enaugh exess energy (heat) to boil off just about the right amount of water.
Never to old to learn new tricks! And learning keeps your brain active, good for your mental health. Seems I’m always learning new things about fabrication and gasification these days
Hi Tone, the steam will have a control valve. Yes it is a charcoal and char/wood gasifier be its design. Not quite a WK Gasifier in the interal parts of metal mass and air fins. This is because of it running mostly on charcoal but lets say 10% to 15% wood can be added. This is why it has the gutters and cooling hopper tubes. Of coruse condension water and tar/water tanks would have to be added if I plan to burn it in the Charcoal/wood mix. The nozzle design is a WK style and ash build up hearth. A shakeable grate can be installed if needed. It will be of thick rebar with wide spacing to let ash go through.
Bob
Welded up the bad pitted rusted areas. I burned through in a few spots so I welded on both sides.
It took a few welding passes and grinding about 100 to 130 spot welds to get it done. Slowly it got filled back in. Warp the firetube a little at the top beat back round with a dolly and hammer.
It is ready to get some heat shields welded in as soon as I beat them into the correct curves.
The heat has got to me. 105 °f . Time for something cool to drink.
I am beat Bob
Not that hot here, but hot enough for me in the sun on a steel conveyor truck bed to take a few breaks!
Yep, if we are going to have a wood gas meet up here in Centeral Washington, we are going to have to wait until it cools off like in september. Hint, hint. We should have a few more gasifier trucks and cars running on the road by then.
Wood Gas meet up at Bob’s place in East Wenatchee Washington 2022. September ??/??/2022
Maybe 5 possible members that could show from Washington State.
Mornin’ Bob Mack! Your plan makes me want to take a long drive!! 
Okay lack of finding the right parts for free I am changing the building plans and am going do what I call just build it from the junk you have on hand. So here’s what I am doing now. First thing is this gasifier is going to go on a vehicle for testing and not the back of a boat for now.
I am using a chipper feed housing for the transition from the round firetube and grate area to the square exit chamber going out of the lower part of the barrel that will be insulated but not air tight. This barrel area will preheating incoming air and will have a 2" or 2 1/2" control valve inside the barrel but the control knob on the out side for shut down the gasifier air inlet, more on that later.
It will have some of the WK Gasifier inside workings on this unit but it build will be shown when built it on the prem. Membership side the rest of the build will be here on the free side of the site.
Here some pictures of todays work of this build.
This is how it will be welded up. Cutting 8" hole cut out of the bottom of the fire tube to support the brake drum for the restriction opening. The next level down is where the grate will sit on this plateform, this is the chipper housing, and next is the ash area that is square. All of this will be welded together going from a round firetube to a rectangle box to the drop box cross over and clean out hatch. I willbe able the clean out both areas from one hatch opening. Well that the plan.
I will need to get the grate built and then start welding the nozzles and heat shields in place.
This fire tube is a thin walled firetube from a air compressor tank will it work? I hope so.
A lot of WK firetube work needs to be done. I am designing it so if it does need welding done on it after completion and running. It will be able to do the work on it for repairs.
Bob
How thin is it? I’d say if it’s less than 3/16" I’d add some open sized nozzles to get some of the heat off the walls. No jetting just a straight pipe nozzle, maybe an inch long. Keep the heat shields though to strengthen it up.
I am using some big nuts welded to the firetube on the inside and then the heat shields will go around the nuts and be weld in place around the nuts the heat shields will be welded on top also and at the bottom and the sides. Then on the outside I have some pipe cut in half for air to enter at the top and keep the ash from entering. The shields are 1/8" or so in thickness. The firetube is 1/16" thickness. Just below the shields will be ash insulation ring. I am doing some things that have been talked about in the pass but have not been done as off yet.
Bob
Making some last minute measurments and checks before cutting and welding on the firetube, nozzles heat shields.
This is the old grate off of Jakob’s gasifier when he did his 2020 again in 2021 drive across the USA and back home again. I felt it was worth rebuilding it stronger and a honor to use it in this gasifier build. Heck I think it would of made it back home, but did not want to chance it. It made it across the the USA from the East coast to the West coast so I am going to reuse it. Thank you @JocundJake Jakob.
From the top of the firetube to the grate will be 17" and about 4" below the grate for ash and char.
I want to make it so it can be a 6 1/4" or a 5" or a 4" restriction opening. Under the 2" tall opening it will expand to 10" down to the grate, a total 6" from the opening to the grate.
The 6" pipe will be cut off at 2 at the bottom but I put some of the measurements on the pipe for where the top of the firetube, heat shields, and nozzle heigths will be for references.
The heavy duty brake drum might have to be cut in half like I did on my other gasifier because of the heat shields. No problem because there will be a round plate for the 2" restriction opening to sit on and ash under it to seal it up. From the bottom of the heat shields down will be ash to the bottom to protect the lower firetube area.
Like I said before I will keep this build on the open site side but will not be showing the inter working parts of the building of this WK Gasifier. It is what really makes this gasifier work so well. It is worth every dollar for the book on how to build it.
Bob
I got all set up to weld my nuts on to nozzle holes of the firetube 10 nuts check. And then the heat shield 8 no check, I am missing 2. And have looked all over the shop , hum… Maybe I only made 8 and didn’t finish the other 2?
That sounds like me alright so I been making 2 heat shields to match the other 8. Hum… had to piece some metals together and welded them up for 2 more shields, I ran out of that thickness of metal.
Get It Done. I hope I find the other 2 heat shields then I will only have to make 8 on the next build.
Dana had to take Millie to the ER to get some stitches in her hand from a deep cut.
Okay 4 hours later after picking her up and having dinner. She only had three stitches, thank God for that.
Will be starting up a WK Firetube thread for “The Interals Of This Firetube Build” under this title when I start wellding it up. Just getting the parts cut out I am using a 55 gallon barrel for all the parts. Stay tune for this new thread on the WK premium side.
Well it dark outside so back to work inside where it is warm. But first check out whats going on DOW site.
Bob
Lots of work done on the gasifier and redesigning the whole gasifier system, I am back to pretty much a down draft 8 nozzles, with heatshields. With a lighter weight firetube. Charcoal gasifier that will be able to burn wood too.
Top plate welded to the firetube, nozzles nuts, and heatshields welded into place. You will notice there is a air gap behind the heat shields this is more protection for the thin wall firetube. The nuts will have thick washer around them weld to the heat shields.
Yes, my restriction housing does comes out hope it stays that way.
I have been putting alot of thinking into how to get the needed 21" of the lower gasifier housing barrel built. And then have the top plate housing seal to the top of the barrel. These barrels are not the heavier barrels that have a clamp ring lid seal. Just plane old barrels that you can find a lot of for free. On the next group of pictures I am showing how to make a regular barrel to have a seal to put these barrel together. Also how to slice the top part of a barrel to the bottom, removing the middle part of the barrel. I will use the same design in making the hopper by just removing the the middle section of the barrel to the height I want. I think on the hopper part, it can be pop riveted together and using red high temp silicone. More on that later.
This is how the bottom of the barrel will be spliced together. I am not using the bottom barrel it still needs to be cut to correct height. I used the top plate ring to show it will fit works great.
The ribbing around the barrel needs to be cut in 1" spacing and then you can bend the ribbing down and straighten it to fit inside the barrel.
Here I starting to make the barrel seal. First cut a 1" space around the barrel top or you can use the bottom part of the barrel. I use a wooden spacer and use the spacer to push behind the cutting blade, this helps to make the turn in this tight zone. I use a anglegrinder cutting disk to cutt by the bungen hole caps. This is where I start my cut also.
I just start working around and bend the edge up a little at a time until I have a nice curved edge all the way around. You can see them in the pictures above with the barrel that has the word green on it, nice curved seal. I will need to cut the barrel spacer and make it smaller to fit into the seal grove
I should be able to use stove rope and red high temp silicone to make a good tight seal. And clamp it with the WK side bolt clamps. More on this later.
Here is a video on cutting the top of a barrel.
I went down today the Narco Gas Supply to get some more welding gas. Yikes the price has more then double here. So i thought I will buy other bottle so I will have 2 bottles, double Yikes the bottles have gone up three times the price when I bought my first bottle. But I did get my gas at half the price which is now much more higher in price. I surely didn’t save any monies but now when I am welding and run out of gas, I can which bottles and keep welding. Boy, welding is getting to be very expensive craft. Might have to switch over to pop rivets and hot glue to build these gasifiers. Lol hummm… glues?
Bob
I did some more work today In the nice warm shop, doing metal working. But when it came to welding the garage door open up and that freezing cold came in. I welded and fitted the barrel ring into the barrel seal gutter of the lower top barrel.
I cut 2" out of the seal ring to make it fit in the gutter seal of the Barrel.
When welding very thin metals like this make sure you clamp it down every time you are welding. You also need to take your time welding and move around on the spaces you are welding on. It took me a some time to get the wire speed right and also had to turned up my gas on the welder. I used the lowest amps #1 setting that I could. This is where a 110 voltage welder would shine. Mine is a 220 volt. I use .025 wire when welding, if you can get .023 wire it would be better in this type of thin thin metals.
To maker the ring to bend into a smaller diameter I cut every 3" . Placed in the gutter seal I made and clamped it down and welded the cuts back up and the splice cut. Turned it over clamped it down and welded the other side. Make sure when you are welding your metals they are nice clean and shiny no paint or rust, or other stuff that might be left in the barrel.
I put a green carpet for a back ground so you can see how the 2" piece I cut out of the barrel lines up when I finish making the other ring coupler top. But first the firetube top plate will need to be put in place. It barely fits into the bottom ring. Just happen to cut it out to that size diameter. I like it when a unplanned designing comes together like you planned it that way.
I ground the welds all down to keep it smooth as possible for the top plate mounting.
These parts are finished with a great fit and no warps in the metals pieces.
Bob
I cut the other barrel off for the bottom part of the gasifier. It still had a little compressor oil in it. Oops I thought I drained it all out. Got that mess cleaned up. More pictures of what I did.
The upper barrel and lower barrel fitted up great.
With it put together I could now put the upper housing on top and the firetube top plate in the housing a goodtight fit that I did not plan, nice.
The rest of the barrel will become the hopper. Where I cut it off below the barrel it was flared out a little with some gentle bending I bent it to the inside of the barrel. And it slipped into place on top of the upper fire tube housing. I didn’t plann this ether, just happen to fit. Double nice.
The gasifier height is at 44" with out the filler lid put on.
Now as you know who have messed with thin oil barrels very hard to weld on. So the hopper cutters are going to be cemented and pop riveted together with silicone sealent. With a down draft it is not that bid of a deal if you have a small tiny air leaks.
The lower top plate can not have any leaks so stove rope and sealent will be used it also welded and pop riveted. Before all of this being done the fire tube will be finished that I will not be showing here on this thread but on the WK Gasifier premium side.
I found some stainless tube smooth bend hand rails that can be bolted on for the hopper coolers a new design I am planning here is coming up.
It looks like with the grate hanging down 1 1/2" I will only have 4 " or so below the grate. If I can keep the charcoal from slipping out the grate it will be fine. So this grate will need to be larger to hold char better and still pass the ashes and gases through it. More thinking on this. Still thinking on a manual hand shaker for the grate.
Bob