steam burner

For my steam engine I soldered up the meths (methylated spirits) canister and tried it with 1/6 water + 5/6 meths. It did about what the unsoldered one did (look down at an older post for my other tests) which meant it could not produce enough steam to power the engine and the flame was on the verge of getting out of control.


So I have just tried wood. This wood is a dense wood that we cut into little twigs.


I dunked one in meths and stuck it in the firebox with a few not methed sticks on top. I lit the methed one. When at last the others lit the engine went at quite a reasonable speed; I think it needs to be run in for it to go at a high speed. It ran for quite a while but I couldn't keep it going as, when the sticks had burnt out, there was no time to put more sticks in. It took quite a while to get the non methed sticks lit but when they were alight they perfect. The methed sticks only were alight for the time that they still had meths on them meaning they did not catch themselves alight. Nothing unsoldered which is a change of the normal routine.

Notice at the end of the film the bits of charcoal that came out of the fire box. This is what I mean when I say "when the sticks had burnt out there was no time to put more sticks in"

(If you notice that some bits of the film don't fit together right that's because I had to cut out the bits where I was blocking the camera so blame it on the camera. If you don't notice that, I will take credit for the skilled (yeah right) editing.)