[q]How do you all organize your seeds? Purely alphabetically and have a calendar handy with planting dates? Do you use a special type of calendar with notations on it? Do you run a spreadsheet of what goes in/out when? I’d really appreciate some input and help on this. I have so many seeds – old […]
Category: Do It Yourself
Multi-wood Stoves?
[q]Have you noticed that when you drill some woods with a power drill, that the wood dust from the hole often binds up into little helical strips under the action of heat and pressure? I guess that this is attributed to the natural resins – particularly in pines and coniferous woods. I still think, however, […]
Product & Size Contemplations
[q]Operating a microenterprise in a sector dominated by billion dollar multinationals (wood flooring), I have been thinking about the state of micro-industry for a while now, and I need to bounce some observations about opportunities & trends off the wise members of this list. Forgive me if I become philosophical. It seems to me that […]
Wood-fired Pottery Kiln
[q]I’m now told that wood-fired kilns regularly achieve temperatures to cone 12 and above: 2500F! Considering that a direct-fire method is used, rather than a gasification scheme, how is this possible? Merely stoking every 2 minutes with small size fuel? Apparently slab waste is sometimes preferred because of the fast burn and the bark contributes […]
Cyclone Wood Gasifier
[q]Here are a couple of ideas concerning the mechanical processing of wood waste or biomass into a finely divided powder form suitable for an efficient gasifier. Many of you will be familiar with the cyclone type vacuum cleaners which separate out the various sizes of dust into separate containers using a pair of concentrically arranged […]
Cyclone Wood Gasifier
[q]Re-reading the article on the Kalle gasifier and his method of filtering only the very fine particles of charcoal into the reaction zone in order to get a high rate of gasification gave me an idea. As I have said on many occasions, it is the fuel handling process which need the most thought, when […]
Top Efficiency Wood Heat
[q]I’ve got this idea running around in my mind about building a very small, but total (100%) efficient wood stove. The idea would be to use a small firebox like a 10 gal drum, then use 4″ or even smaller pipe for the draft, and just run the pipe all over a wall (this is […]
Buying Starter Plants
[q]It’s about time to put some plants in the ground here in Chapel Hill, NC and I am wondering about buying plants that have already been started using chemical fertilizers (specifically tomato and pepper plants). Unfortunatly I don’t have access to organic starter plants, and wondered if it would be OK to use these in […]
Electricity Generation from Diesel
[q]I know that fuels are only part of the issue here but a used multifuel diesel engine from an army 2.5 ton truck can be bought for $3500. In fact that price buys the entire truck. My neighbor just bought one and I am very envious. 3 axles and they all pull, I think. Anyway, […]
Affordable Energy with Windmills
[q]In my research on windmills, I found that in most cases, they would not be economical to build for electricity supply depending on use. For example, to produce electricity for home use and or putting it in a grid, the cost of the equipment is more then the power produced. You add the cost of […]