Smokebelch II / Garden Gizmo / Layabout logs

[hirez]

As I may have opined before, not long after scarring myself for life with a medium-sized burn on my arm, the sort of garden equipment you can buy in shops is generally lacking in oomph.

This may be a good thing, since it would mean you'd have to deal with black-clad Germans lurking around the machinery department of B&Q, beating out industrial polyrhythms on whatever was to hand. "Oi! You! Yes, you with the haircut! Put them spanners down and back away from the dustbins. I've told you before about that!'

However, if you know people who keep supplies of spiral tube in their gardens, then you can make the kit run far better than expected. I believe the only way that would run better would be forced-air induction. Perhaps an old turbocharger and an electric drill? Certainly it shows that once the tinwork is up to operating temperature, piles of wet twigs and leaves will burn just fine.

Yesterday it was cobbles. The day before that, jolly nice Korean grub.

And a daft idea involving techno music that would seem to work without much in the way of hard sums or cutting up 80s consumer electronics. Crivvens!

Comments

[jarkman.livejournal.com]

If you'd like to visit the crate of old centrifugal blowers, you have only to say.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

YES.

[jarkman.livejournal.com]

Good. We'll need to find a tin box to put it in, and rivet some kind of inlet duct to your bin of holes.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

I note that the base of the incinerator has obligingly rotted out, so that can be replaced with mesh of some sort.

[inulro.livejournal.com]

Yes. They do that, annoyingly. I wasn't aware that incinerators were supposed to be disposables.

[jarkman.livejournal.com]

We can probably find something a lot studier to drop in in its place. Alternative fire with damp ash is going to be hard on many materials, but we can at least make it thicker.

[nojay.livejournal.com]

A useful firestarter/blower for barbeques and the like is an electric paint stripper. One of those might do for your purpose providing both forced-air and also a kilowatt plus of heat to get things started. Rivet, bolt or weld a short angled tube through the side of the bin near the bottom and push the nozzle of the paint stripper into that.