Our penultimate scythe for grass. This is the fifth version in a row. The very first one had wooden handles.
The next version will be already on this UAZ:
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I like your grass cutter. Why is there a propane bottle strapped to chassis
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Oh boy, another power outage thanks to a tornado/severe storm. This time itās the whole area.
I really wish my job was a lot closer to home. Driving 21 miles through defunct traffic lights and dodging tree limbs is working my blood pressure.
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Winter rains have begun and my mountain stream is flowing full again. Iāve been experimenting with hydro power to be a backup. There isnāt enough flow to handle everything unless I get a large battery bank, but initially Iām just wanting to create an uninterruptible power supply for the office computers.
I bought some pelton spoons a while back and finally got around to making a wheel and attaching it to an alternator. I ran it straight out for the first time for several days and ended up with this:
The spoons were supposedly good for 150 psi. My stream produces 65 psi at the turbine, soon to be increased to 94 psi at a lower location. Obviously, plastic spoons will not do. I am going to try to cast some aluminum ones. Zamak is another choice and could be a better than aluminum in strength and ability to achieve better detail, but I have had no experience with it and I donāt know where I could source some.
So itās on to creating a mold and using some of my engine charcoal to melt some metal.
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Zamak is used in a lot of die cast stuff. Itās slightly heavier than aluminum so it could carry a sort of flywheel effect.
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Iām wondering if balance would be a issue at the speeds that wheel could turn in a stream, I would guess not but if so then casting identical weight spoons would be a problem. Also Iām wondering if you could not carve out a wooden form and hammer out that shape from sheet aluminum or copper. If this goes much farther please do an individual thread. Very interesting. You could look through the site. I think Oregon Dave did something like this in a seasonal stream.
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Balance will be an issue as I expect to be running at about 3500 rpm. I figured I would weigh and adjust the weight of each spoon and/or locate them in pairs across from each other on the wheel. Then after assembly I will run the wheel and balance with a vibration analyzer. I did this once with a fan rotor using an app available for a phone. It worked well and I was able to balance a really out of balance rotor well.
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Propane is on the right because the cabin reclines to the passenger side. On the left there will be a horizontal wood gas generator with screw feed. There will be a pair of electric filters inside the frame, and a pure wood gas cooler will be on the back of the car, also inside the frame, along with an engine antifreeze cooling radiator.
While the car is running on propane. She wonāt see any liquid fuels anymore.
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Martin, although I think static balance is enough, I am really curious about your vibration analyzer.
I do my turbine balancing on a wheel balancer. It works good enough and a ā¬50.000 balancer doesnt do a better job.
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Sun is shining. Everybody is crawling out of his cave again. I thought you guys would like this. I wont bother you with the Porsche, BMW or Ferrari clubs 
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Marty,
Well, there is plastic, and then there is plastic. Some fiber-reinforced Nylon would hold up better. Good reason to get a suitable 3D printer. Also, is there a chance that any semi-larger debris is getting in your supply line??? Just a thought from a flat-lands dweller. 
I wish there was a chance here for water power besides filling and draining a swimming pool. 
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Ha! Ha! I have another video I am still debating putting up in the woodgas-on-youtube topic MikeR.
Now it has as much, even more about flatlander wind power.
And Iād say looking at others results only invest the time and efforts into small scale DIY wind IF you can make the stand up tall, lay-down onto the ground.
35-46 MPH big wide North Pacific frontal change edge came though yesterday. Lots of limb debris now to pick up.
And Iād say DIY water power systems need to be seasonally removable. We go 100-to-1 here overnight to weeks in streams flows. Most places do.
S.U.
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Mike,
I didnāt know you could 3D print fiber reinforced nylon. A printer is on my wish list, but is probably out of my budget, certainly my wifeās. 
Hartvigsen Hydro offers fiber filled nylon composite turgo spoons that they say are good to 300 ft or 130 psi. The plastic used in the spoons I have is HDPE and is why they probably failed, given that nylon is twice as strong as HDPE (even without the reinforcement). How the seller of the HDPE spoons could say they would be good to 150 psi is beyond me.
As far as cleanliness of the water is concerned, it is first filtered through a coanda filter, then into a large settling tank. So at least debris is not a concern.
Joep,
I use the app Balancer on my phone. It is easy to use and free to download:
It uses the phoneās accelerometers to measure the vibrations. Quite amazing actually.
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That is a neat app. 
I think it probably gets close, but at the speeds you are going, you are going to have to fine tune it.
The plastic may have broken because it can oxidize and get brittle over time, especially in sunlight. I would have a ābackupā plan to create more especially if you are going to rely on it for energy production. I also suspect there might be a way to improve the design to make the system more efficient especially at the pressures you are talking about, but i personally donāt want to jump in that rabbit hole.
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Tone, thatās not fair. I put my potatoes down today.
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Tone, like everygood magician, you also have a nice female asistant! Secret to the sucsess huh?
Is this plow made specialy for hilling? It seems like it furrows on both sides
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JO, your early! I havent even plowed the feald yet 
Well early potatoes are Tones size to be frank, but l learned not to rush wither potatoes. Late May seems to be best for planting, probably our higher elevaton mught have something to do with it too. 1th of may used to be the traditional planting date here thugh
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Youāre right Kristijan. Potatoes donāt take off until the soil is warm enough anyway, but the forcast says 25C upcoming week, so I thought Iād take the oppertunity. My father told me April 20st is the earliest recorded potato planting here, but if you wait until June they will still catch up.
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i planted them yesterday and planted rather deep.
i like to go over the field with net harrow a couple of times before potatoes come up.
helps to reduce weeds.
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