[Jan. 18, 2005]
Building a steam generator

Dubbed "The Flux Capacitor", this baby cranks out the steam! Fun things you can do with 3" pipe, a 1500W hot water heater heating element, and a plastic bucket reservoir. The 1 1/2" pipe that houses the element turned out to be too long. When the water boiled, it allowed too much air to get in that area and burned out the first element. I shortened the pipe using a 6" one instead, and I might even shorten that again to 4". For other ideas on building a steam generator, check out the links section of this web site (under "Building/Wood Bending").

Here it is in action. In a bit of 'horse before the cart', I built this back in January and only now in May am I getting around to using it for the first time. Oh well, it was nice to be able to focus on the project and not on building another tool or jig.

I didn't like the steam box. Today's job will be to build another one - this time out of wood.

And here is the first bent wood to come out of bender. A washboard coaming. This was made from old fir, which is quite hard to bend, but this is not such a tight bend and it worked pretty well. The left side split where there was a nail hole, but it will be easily reparable.