OP
LetsRoll
Gold Member
Had an idea this weekend and decided to give it a try. I removed the grate from the stove and put the cast iron skillet in the bottom of the stove and put the conical on two pieces of flat steel. The flat steel laid across the brackets that hold the grate. I set the conical on the flat steel and put the piece of my flue pipe around the conical. The conical is 6 inchs in diameter and the piece of flue pipe is 8 inchs in diameter. That is 1 inch of clearence between the two. What I did was put 4 ounces of kerosene in the skillet and lit it and turned the oil on. After about two minutes of the flame hitting the conical, the oil started boiling that was on it and started burning pretty good. What I did was turn the oil up so that some of it was dripping off the edge of the conical and falling into the skillet. This was helping the conical to have a higher temperture. At this time, I'm was still doing the down draft method. Which has a pipe right over the conical. This worked pretty good, but still had some smoke inside the stove and soot was forming on the skin of the stove inside surface. After about 10 minutes of doing this, I turned the oil down so that it wouldn't drip off the conical. I stuck a hair dryer inside of the draft down pipe that is right over the conical. This worked rather well (believe me, I was surprised it burned so well). I was able to turn the hair dryer up on high and also increase the oil flow. I was able to substain a clean burn (my jaw hit the floor with disbelief). I have a few pictures to show you guys. The only problem I had, was smoke, when I opened the door to take some pictures. Once the door was closed, the smoke cleared up inside the stove. Even though I had smoke while the door was open, no soot could be seen. I do have a furnace squirrel cage blower motor. But, here is the problem with it. It turns 3400 rpm's and when I put it inside of the draft pipe. It would blow the flame out. So, I looked into making it variable speed. Its a AC motor and it has magnets inside instead of brushs (most DC's motors have brushs). The way to regulate a magnetic motor is by using a invertor which is not cheap. It changes the frequency which allows you to vary the speed. There's more problems with variable speed AC motors that uses magnets, but I wont get into that. So, that is the reason I used a hair dryer. I wanted to do this before I go with the method of atomizing the oil with compressed air. So, before I start getting ideas of using compressed air (fitting and valves and all and setting it up for that), I'm going to start looking for a low amperage 115 volt DC motor that has a squirrel cage with it. And get a 100% variable speed controler (rotary switch). In the mean time, I would like to do another test using the AC blower motor. I'll put the blower back inside of the down draft pipe and I need to compress the air before it passes out of the pipe. One idea is making a funnel that will slip over the end of the down draft pipe that is inside of the stove (its over the conical). I think if I make the end of the funnel small enough (3/8" or 1/2"). The air coming out of the funnel will hopefully atomize the oil and allow it to burn cleaner. If this works like I think it will, this will give me an idea of how big of a 115Volt DC squirrel cage motor I will need. If my funnel idea doesn't work, I'm going to bite the bullet and move on to compressed air.
I guess the switch I used before was not heavy enough. The switch that I put back into the wall in the house is rated to 15 amps and 600w. I'm going to locate another dimmer switch that I just tried out. Pat and BigE, you guys just saved me allot of time and money trying to locate a DC motor that has brushes in it. 
