Hoginator II
December 10th, 2011Rise of the Machinists
The Holy Spirit has been teaching my friends and me about the importance of love and mutual support, so we are trying to spend more time together. We decided to try to get together on Noche Buena (Christmas Eve) for a pig roast. I’m hosting. I decided to built a roaster.
I found an unbelievable $380 motor on Ebay for $78 plus shipping. It has 250 inch-lbs. of torque, and it turns at 4 RPM, so it’s a dream come true. I’m making the spit from a length of 1 5/8″ galvanized fencepost. I machined a hub for one end, with a socket for the motor shaft. I found cheap pillow bearings on Ebay, so I’ll have one at each end of the shaft. I still have to make the second hub.
Today I drilled and tapped three holes in the hub, and I bolted it to the spit. Check this out. It’s gorgeous. I somehow messed up the 120-degree angles between the holes, but it won’t affect the function.
Out of the blue, my buddy Val Prieto offered to let me use two “burros” his dad quit using. These are amazing devices. Each one is a car wheel. They have steel tubing welded to them, standing upright in the centers of the hubs. The tubing has smaller tubing inside it, so it telescopes at the top. The smaller tubing has crossmembers welded to the top, with steel rollers. I won’t need the roller things, but I can use the bases to hold up the motor and pillow bearings. Take a look.
This is going to be wonderful. Those burros will allow me to make very small attachments for pig roasts, and they won’t take up much room. All I need now is a piece of galvanized sheetmetal for the charcoal.
December 13th, 2011 at 12:03 AM
Want to make those steel wheels look purty with almost no effort? make an electrolysis pot. Get a plastic bushel tub a piece of scrap iron, not nicad, and a battery charger. Put the wheel into the tub with water to cover. Attach the negative of the battery charger to it. Hang a piece of sacrificial scrap iron into the tub attached to the battery charger positive. Keep the battery charger clamps dry, or they’ll get ucky. turn on the charger. If you don’t see bubbles put in a cup of baking soda. After a day, pull out the wheel and scrub the black ferrous oxide off with soapy water and a bristle brush. Paint immediately or it will rust again (red ferric oxide). When you are done, pour the rusty water onto your lawn, it will appreciate that. Do this in a well ventelated area, cause you are going to release a stream of rocket fuel (2H2 + O2) which burns real bright. If you use nicad or other metals for the sacrificial metal, you will release toxic cadmium or some other bad stuff. If you were livin’ out in the country like you should be, you’d have a lot of horse shoes etc. for the sacrificial iron.
December 13th, 2011 at 8:59 AM
Will that have any effect on the mystery globs?
.
I don’t know if Val would want these cleaned up. He may want them just the way his dad left them.
December 15th, 2011 at 11:18 PM
Careful using galvanized steel at high temperatures…especially around food.
In another life my welding operators would stick their heads inside ductwork made of galvanized steel to make internal welds and get “sick” from the fumes.
That experience alerted me to the hazards of using galvanized for cooking over wood or charcoal when you mentioned your current project:
http://www.barbecuenews.com/forum/topic.asp?ARCHIVE=true&TOPIC_ID=13805
I’m risking being wrong because I’ve never built anything to grill with using the finish/material but I think you should look into it before you cook.