Great stories Enzed Bill, from one of the most beautiful countries on the planet in my humble opinion.
Didn't get started on the "kiln frame" as expected because I discovered that I was short by several split tees, like these: I had used them up on my previous Engineering Disasters. I understand that in the States you can have steel pipe cut to length and threaded for fittings at the hardware store, but alas they don't offer that service here. These are an acceptable alternative. They're quick to fit, don't require a perfectly even butt end, and can even be added to an existing structure without having to dismantle it. There's a bolt on the other side to hold the two halves together. My new ones will be arriving tomorrow. Naturally I'll be putting out orange cones around the stove and will be wearing my hard hat and high-vis jacket before I start construction, as per current Health and Safety regulations. Actually the weather turned warm again, so it has been no ordeal to wait till May for a fire. In fact, looking at Auckland's typical monthly temperatures I see that May is usually warmer than September, so my ideas about the range of "Winter" might have been a bit off. If we nominally define its duration as three months, then it would be June/July/August. Certainly the NZ** sun was blazing hot today. I wandered out to the yard and I could just feel it wrenching water molecules out of the splits and flinging them into the atmosphere. (**The NZ sun is different to the American sun - ours is metric, which means it goes round the other way, but since we are in the Southern Hemisphere, everything is back-to-front, so it's conveniently reversed in orientation and therefore rises in the East and sets in the West just like yours.) So it was a nice hot day, and as a bonus it's a full moon tonight, which will of course dry the wood even more. (We also have a metric moon, and since there are 1.61 kms in a mile, it's much further away than yours, which is why we never put a man on the moon.)
Enzed Bill, you seriously don't have access to a pipe threader. The old manual ones are only a couple hundred bucks used here, heck I don't even have one because my neighbor does and comes and does it for me. How do plumbers install pipe?? I realize things are different down there and common items here are huge $$. The cost of living in a picturesque country.
Shocking, isn't it. And we call this a civilised country. Although I don't know any plumbers, I think I may know a place they hang out - I overheard someone talking about a "Crack House"; that sounds like it might be a pub frequented by tradesmen. Perhaps I could drop in there and strike up a conversation with one of them ("Come here often?"), then oh so casually steer the conversation round to pipe threaders ("Lovely day today ... an ideal day for pipe threading - if I had a pipe threader ... which I don't). No, I can't see that working. Anyway, my split tees arrived today. My split tees arrived today. Did you read that twice? Did you read that twice? I ordered six and six arrived. Then another six arrived. I checked the level on my whisky bottle - Nope. Too early in the day to be seeing double. Could I be trapped in Groundhog Day? I hope so. I love that movie. When does Andie MacDowell turn up? No such luck. It's just that they sent the order twice. And I only paid once. "Woohoo! Free stuff!" ... Who said that? Oh, it's a little devil sitting on my left shoulder. "It's not yours. You have to return it." - I knew without looking it was an angel on my right shoulder. Devil: Not your fault. Angel: Not your stuff. Devil: Probably cost them all of $5 to produce. They'd never miss it. Angel: So it's OK to take $5 that's not yours? Where are you going to draw the line? $50? $500? OK, OK, I'll send it back. "Let your conscience be your guide" - Hey! the Angel has turned into Jiminy Cricket. I brushed him off my shoulder and stepped on him. Darn crickets. When they get inside, they keep you up all night chirping. In the end I dropped them an email and offered to buy the other six without the freight charge since I probably could use them eventually and it would cost them more freight to get them back. Haven't had a reply yet.
Finally got a provisional frame up last night for my "kiln rack". For those of you new to the thread, this structure is intended to safely stack imperfectly seasoned softwood around/above the wood burner to "finish" it before chopping it for kindling. I'm just going to look at it like this for a couple of days before I start putting shelf racks and then wood on it, because I get really annoyed with myself if I see a better way of doing things when it's too late. Plus of course a City Council building inspector and engineer will have to inspect it. With the architect's plans and application fees it shouldn't cost more than about $2,000 to get planning approval and a code compliance certificate, so it'll be totally worth it to save buying a couple of sacks of seasoned kindling. It's kind of weird to look at it - I mean more weird than just the fact of having pipework in your living room. It's almost as if a team of pixies is going to refurbish the wood burner and they're setting up their scaffolding.
No, I don't really believe in pixies. It's probably more likely that elves would be working on wood burners anyway.
Good stuff down there. You're a better man than I for offering to pay for their mistake. My email would've went "you doubled my order, I'll send half back, you pick up shipping." They would of course decline, then my conscience is clear. And please, in the name of all that is good, don't mention crickets in the house. I was ready to tear down an internal wall because of one of those little psychological terrorists. I can't tell you how many hours of sleep I lost due to that thing. I even thought of drilling a hole and inserting a snake, but how to get the snake back out? At least snakes are quiet, but dead ones stink, and wife wasn't too keen on the idea either.
I made some progress on the kiln rack today. Can you spot the differences? Answers below. Most important, I put a diagonal cross brace at the back to improve the rigidity. Second most important, I made some under-feet pads. The base is textured flagstones, and flat steel against uneven stone is a recipe for disaster once the load goes on, so there's some cardboard first, cut to compensate for the dips, then some thin plywood (3-ply) then some squares of tough flooring vinyl. Used two "thru" cross bars at the top with tees instead of elbows. The tees really "square up" the angles and are much stronger than the elbows, which just use a set screw to tighten rather than a bolt to clamp both pipes across most of their circumference. Each side piece had a matching pair of feet: circular on one and oval on the other. Swapped them so that the fronts were circular and the backs were oval, with the flange facing outward for additional lateral stability. Added two extra cross bars for the first shelf (not made yet), which also stiffened the structure. Added a metal mesh 'shelf' with a cutout for the flue and small pipes under it for support. You probably have some questions, so here's a quick Q&A Is this the greatest feat of engineering since the pyramids? The pyramids were basically just one block of stone on top of another, so I don't think there's really much comparison. And, no, I don't consider myself a "genius". Who said anything about "genius". It was implied. Can I have one of these for myself? I'm hoping to make the plans available, but first let me ask you: Would you expect to pay $500 for them? Would you expect to pay $300? Well I say that price is Too High. For three easy payments of only $99.99 this Industrial Chic statement of good taste and engineering skill can be all yours**. (**Terms and conditions apply. Void where prohibited. May contain nuts. Objects in mirror are closer than they appear. You must be at least this tall to build this rack. May cause injury, dizziness, shortness of breath, and halitosis. Not to be used as a rack for drying or storing firewood.) I'm very happy with it. It's extremely solid now and strong. One thing I wonder is this: having cut many of these pipes, then having filed and chamfered the edges, there's a fair bit of steel showing that's no longer galvanized. So do any of you metal workers out there dress these surfaces with anything to minimize rust? Preferably some ordinary household product since this is a quick'n'dirty structure and I don't want to spend too much extra.
Got my lower shelf in, and I'm now ready to start stacking. My intended methodology for recording the water loss is very simple: Since I'll be going slowly and stacking only a couple of dozen splits, I see no problem in weighing every one. I'll give it some ID (prob. letters, then numbers, i.e. A-Z, 0-9 then double digits if I get that many) and mark it with a sharpie. They'll all be going on the racks the same day so I don't need to date mark them. Then as I need to use them, I'll weigh them again before splitting into kindling and write down the ID, start & end weight and end date. With a known start date the duration will be easy to calculate. I don't think I need to mark where they are in the racks: only a few splits can occupy whatever the prime position is, so an average water loss will be more informative I think - i.e. the overall performance of the system. The splits will all be from a similar cut date and they have been stacked together, so the starting moisture level should be uniform. Any ideas, criticisms or advice are welcome before I get started.
I think it will work great! However I think you will burn wood faster than you dry it. But no doubt you realize that. It will also come in handy for drying laundry, apples, and whatnot. I hope your wood doesn't outgas bad smells.
reminds me of an old friend who made a simple frame from fencing wire and used a wire oven tray on top of the wire frame he used it to dry orange skins which make great kindling when dry
Apples ... oranges. Good idea I'll do both and record the results, then compare them. Oh wait - I don't think you're supposed to do that.
Hmmmm.... I question the criteria. I'll take apple pie over orange pie. Sent from my SM-T280 using Tapatalk
That's because you're in the USA. You probably like your mom too. Other countries have different quintessential relatives and foodstuffs. For instance here in NZ we say "As Kiwi as cousin Susie and pavlova" (the cake not the ballerina, though it's named after the ballerina).
