Berry watch craigslist it will take about a year but you will stumble across a deal for a bandsaw mill. There are just a ton of them hidden out there in the woods and people get older and sell them off. Took me almost 2 years to find a deal I couldn’t pass up and it was actually pointed out to me by a friend who knew I was giving up and starting to collect materials to build one.
But like Chris said you can build a mill for relatively little money. I am just starting to use my mill and the first repair job on my barns will pay for the mill.
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I agree with you Chris. My problem is not the researching and not building part.
My problem is that I work in the Alberta Oil Patch for 6 weeks at a time and then fly 3500 miles back home.
So since joining DOW I’ve been stuck in my truck with nothing to do but research. I can’t start building…
But I fly home on the 27th and let me tell you, the grinder will be sparking and the welder will be over heated…lol
I do see your point. You probably see it all the time. All talk no action.
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I do not feel this tread is a waste of time or discussion of this, because we have all started where you are right now. Time is the big factor here. Questions to ask oneself is this:
In my Daily time schedule that I have. Do I even have time to make fuel (wood chunks) for a gasifier truck?
Can I make time by giving up something else in my Daily, Weekly, or Monthly life schedule so I could make fuel for my truck.
I think I can speak from experience here. There were things we all did that we gave up to do the wood fuel preparation part of gasification.
If the answer is a defiantly no, I do not have the time. Then just keep buy gasoline for your vehicles.
Here is what everyone who has got in to gasification has done. They made a change in their lifestyle to make it work for them. It does not just happen all by it self, with out making a change in ones life.
Just in the building of a gasifier or wood prepation there is going to be using up time in your life. There is also maintenance on the gasifier truck that has to be done at times to keep it driving down the road.
I do not know of any one piece of equipment that will cut the wood from trees down to chunks ready to go into a gasifier. Greed wood will not work, it has to be dried down to around 18 percent moisture content to be used.
I being honest with you. I spend a fair amount of time cutting, chunking, drying, baging and storing my wood, just so I can drive my truck down the road. When I first started this wonderful world of gasification I had no idea how much time I would be reorganizing things in my life. It has been all good the changes that I have made, and will still be making in the future so I can Drive On Wood more in my life. If gasoline prices continue to rise I know they will it will be worth everything that I have changed in my life.
May be other members can share the positive points of their lifestyle changes when going into gasification.
And as Wayne has said " The Buck Stops Here". To ALL the oil lord bankers of the world.
So Splitting and chunking with the equipment that I have and the time I use by the sweat of my work to do it. It has been all good for my body, soul, spirit, health, and well being. I do not miss the other things I gave up.
One other thing I would like to mention is I spent 35 years working for the power industry making Hydrogenation power. What a rip off that some people have to pay for their power needs for their homes, and I live in the cheapest power rate area of the USA. I am looking forward to having a different way to power up my home for my basic needs and not see the power meter spin up my electric bill every month. More lifestyle changes for me.
Bob
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That was well written Robert.
And I agree completely.
My wife and I are making huge changes to our life. Hoping for a better quality of life.
We bought the off grid property / wood lot as a place to retreat from the modern life.
I am working in Alberta to pay off all our debt. This will be accomplished in the next year. When I return home I will pick up some local work and be home every night and every weekend.
We are building a cabin that will be comfortable yet simple. Yes we will have electricity via a water wheel generator but heat and cooking will be done on a wood stove.
I already have planned a fair amount of time processing wood and just being in the woods in general. That is my relaxation. Get up Saturday morning, put the coffee on. Sit by the river and drink my coffee and listen to nature.
Then off to the woods to cut and split wood. Trying to manage the wood lot so as to only cut standing dead. Love every minute of it. Come back for lunch and relax a bit in the hot afternoon. Do a little fishing, maybe harvest some fruit and veggies from the food forest we are going to plant. If your not familiar with permaculture and Food Forests…you should look it up.
The more back to the early 1900’s the better for me. Except vehicles. I like to drive.
And that’s where wood gas comes in. I want to be self reliant. So if I can chunk my own wood off my own property…Amazing!!!
Anyway, a bit long winded…Sorry …but now you know where I’m coming from.
The work doesn’t bother me, however I try to be efficient in everything I do.
Cheers
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I am so fortunate in this regard. I have the ability to make micro hydro power at both my house and my cabin.
I have 600 feet of head at the house to spin 2 turbines…love it.
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Just as an FYI my grandfather always said one cord of wood a month to cook on the old cook stove. When he was a kid they would move the spare (no longer here) cook stove out side on the front lawn to keep the heat out of the house. I have what was my great grandmother’s cookstoves here now and can tell you those old cook stoves need really small wood if you want to heat them up for your breakfast and if you want to heat with one leave the oven door open and expect to fill it often. I use a slightly more modern wood stove for heating. Those old cook stoves are not very energy efficient. I would seriously consider using a masonary heater style stove if I wanted to cook with wood. They are expensive to build but clean burning and will use far less wood. I have dreams of building a masonary heater with a cooking oven but there are too many other things that need doing.
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I know the feeling,
so many things to do and so little time
I eventually plan on building an outdoor kitchen for cooking in the finer weather so that the cabin does not get so hot.
Going to have a single burner rocket stove for doing one pot or making coffee or tea.
A rocket stove cooktop.
And a rocket stove oven. (Still in the design stages)
With plenty of room for preparing and canning the Harvest.
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Barry,
Part of the strategy is to get someone else to do some of the pre-processing for you. That is why some use cut-offs, long sawmill scraps (slabs with some bark on them), Bob’s air-dried cherry orchard prunings, Wayne’s fencerow sapling eradications, storm-downed trees, J.O.'s power-line easement saplings, scrap pallet wood (already dry), furniture and bed frame factory rejects, etc. Everything done to the wood-stock takes time and energy. I hear you have a wood-lot, so lots of prunings, storm damage, etc. You don’t have to cut it into uniform firewood-sized pieces first!
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Yes that’s right Mike I don’t. And if I have material that is the right size and can just be chunked I will for sure.
Also if I can find somewhere that has extra wood or waste wood that I could park a trailer there and they just fill it up and I hauled away I will for sure.
time management and efficiency are number one
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Hmmm.
Actually BarryB. I had to go back to your beginning posting compared to the response comments to see the problem.
There are actually m-a-n-y topic on the DOW and across the Net about self-made wood processors for woodgasifiers.
You wanted to do the two step into one step.
Can be done.
Has been done.
Takes a lot of processor up-sizeing, weight, power inputs, and even automation.
And even once making this huge time/build investment I assure you it will choke stall out on a single wye crotch; twisted knot section; a single round of not debarked cherry-type wood.
With wood-by-hand steps any of these can be made into gasifer fuel chunks.
Takes-all, whole log, anything wood, processors exist alright. Some even make woodgasifer fuel chips. A fuel grade wood chip gasifer is it’s own special beast. Demands that those fuel chips be screened out for no fines, and no strands. The fuel chips need to be size sorted classified.
The “good” wood is what all lot owners turn into $'s generating woods.
Pay the taxes. And other “you-musts” others WILL demand of you…
Your hard worning oil patch days will soon be behind you man.
No matter how much $'s investments you stack up, they will get depleted, and run dry. The Lotto-Winner effect.
Micro turbine projects flood damage, silt up, or just simply wear out. That’s ok when you are still flush with outside earned money. Pay-out to fix it.
The real trick of it is to build up a living system that your property can $'s maintenance sustain.
You serious about going Rural, living Rural?
Sell the hole in the water boat to finance some of your real will-needs.
Just saying man.
I refused to 50hp modern 4-stroke PNW lakes/reservoirs-legal upgrade the family fishing/sking boat. It can sit and turn mold-green.
Spent that equivalent “water-fun-money” on woodgasification developments to power lights, refrigerators&freezers. And if ever comes, needs-must, wood-fuel the actual wood-getting-needed working tractor; the woodslplitter; gardens rototiller.
AND still had the money to buy us a nice used Winonna two person canoe. Model is the “Fisherman”.
Steve unruh
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I hear ya Steve. Once the big investments are paid for itll just be little stuff . The DC generator is only a couple hundred bucks so ill have a spare.
I’ll be keeping the hole in the water boat. Lol Nothing like being on the ocean on a hot sunny day.
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Oh…i already have a tractor but it’s a diesel. To bad or I would DOW with that too.lol
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Did you see this style of of chunker?
It is basically two rotating wheels with blades on each that pinch. They are common in europe. Then you could probably run the wood through the 8-way splitter, then through that thing, or something similar with the correct spacing for the chunk size you want. Or you can probably blow through a pile of tops, and barely have to run the saw. They are fast. The one caveat to them is they are really designed for birch, which is a softwood.
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Has anyone got Herb Hartman’s video of his chunker. Youtube has some set ups using a chain saw to cut paddies and then chunk them while the saw is cutting the next. TomC ( wonder how Herb is doing!)
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at 6:33 of this video is a bandsaw cutter.
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Some good inventions. Some take more work than the traditional way and some are just dangerous lol
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Hi Barry here are a few rocket stoves we have built. My Dad (Billy) and Dr. Larry invented the oven back in 09. It is made from 3 1/2 barrels the chimney inside the bottom barrel is made from lightweight stainless pipe surrounded by mud/straw mixture for insulation. The Heat/smoke goes up the chimney into the lower manifold between the split barrel and the inner barrel and collects in the top manifold and goes out the exhaust chimney. The two orange stoves are just rocket stoves designed by a man named Raphael. They are built out of bricks and they are stacked in a certain way to line up with the principles. They are called a 16 brick stove, we used more that that for the platform to build them on. We mostly use these for canning. The flat plate cook top can second as an oven if you build a box for it. It is made to cook directly on the plate or put a pot on it. Two of the most overlooked principles of the rocket stove is un-insulated fire boxes/chimneys and creating a choke point or a bottle neck. The second is extremely easy to do in the flat placha cook top stoves, just as a heads up. Jakob
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I love them Billy. Very rustic and simplistic. Great for an outdoor kitchen.
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600 ft of head! Yikkes! That would make hydro very reasonable. How much volume?
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I haven’t measured it but its 2 or 3 hundred gallons a minute I would say.
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