Odds and ends

[Mark]

I rubberbanded the wine bottle holder to one of the car tire spinners after first bolting the spinner to the table to keep the apparatus from wobbling. Oddly the only thing that really wanted to run today was the elbowed 1/2 inch diameter snorkel on a 20 ounce tank. So if you can picture the wine bottle holder heavily rubberbanded to the spinner which was bolted to the table and a paintball tank with one of those foot-long elbowed pieces of plumbing pipe for a snorkel that was the arrangement - the height of laziness. Unfortunately I didn't video it but it reved up and started spinning at a remarkable rate and I thought for sure it would conk out from whatever the fuel was doing being spun-up like that. The Bottlemobile ran for about 30 seconds. It's still too hot and humid out which doesn't buy me a lot of time before the these snorkelers overheat. It must have been really out of balance too the way it had a big heavy weight on one side of the spinner fastened to two of the blades and nothing to counterbalance it on the opposite side. I chuckled to myself when it stopped, the sight of it chaotically spinning in tight circles being strangely dramatic.
One other noteworthy run was with another 20 ounce paintball tank and a 3/8 inch diameter straight snorkel. After it stopped I lit the tip of the snorkel, for the remaining fuel is so hot there is a woof sound when you light the fumes coming out of the hot engine. Then with this foot-long candle flame going, I held the snorkeler up high and leaned it over horizontally. This effect easily created a 10 foot long fireball and I was able to repeat that length a second time and to a lesser degree the third as the last of the fuel was flash ejected from the heat of very hot snorkel. It's a spectacular flame thrower effect. I'll video the "instant-on" jet of fire at a later date. Keep in mind the paintball tank bottle is too hot to even begin to hold directly with your hand after it stops. On a past occasion, it very much seems likely a jet of fire was thrown nearly 20 feet from flash vaporizing the fuel this way. It's something to behold. Like accidentally lighting my ceiling on fire with my fire ring thrower, that's how this flambe' discovery came about, by not wanting to breathe the evaporating methanol from the CO2 tank. I lit it to burn up the methanol and to visualize how fast the fuel was evaporating from the snorkel and then tilted the snorkeler to pour out the remainder, thus the discovery just by accident. If you have a short run there's a lot of fuel left and you can save it by pouring it slowly into a beaker if you don't light it and pour carefully so as not to entirely block the snorkel. Even so it creates a big methanol steam cloud at first as you would expect. If you don't pour out the fuel from a short run, much of it will evaporate away so I like to recover what I can because why waste fuel. Just hold your breath and walk away after the pour is what I sometimes do. Or you can douse the bottle with water to cool it down first, a better approach. That's one of the benefits if you are running a snorkeler in water. The other is the cooling which helps the engine run longer.
I may try putting the snorkelers on a long arm fastened to the spinner with a second tank on the opposite side for counterbalance. Maybe I could get better air cooling or have a lesser likelihood of flameouts if the circular motion weren't so tight.
This was the odd snorkel jet I put in the wine bottle holder attached to the spinner.

[Mark]

On the topic of the snorkeler flash vaporizing the remaining methanol when turned sideways in the paintball tank after a long hot run, this other video came to mind. I don't know what the expansion ratio of methanol is from liquid to gas but the long jet of fire is really impressive as the fuel burns so suddenly making a roar and a heat wave. It might be fun or a bit of showmanship to effortlessly start my piglet snorkeler sitting on the ground from 15 feet away using this extended ignition method. It's a big enough fireball that you probably wouldn't have to be too accurate. In addition you get the extra expansion from the methanol burning in air, heating the jet of hot gases even more. I remember one time when I was about 11 years old, putting about a tablespoon or so of homemade gunpower in a Coke can back when they weren't made of aluminum. I sprinkled a trail of gunpower for a fuse. But instead of going whoosh with what seemed like a plenty wide enough hole in the lid with so little powder, it detonated leaving a fine mist in the air. I heard the neighbor kid exclaim "What was that?" It was quite loud. Funny how even with a large pull-top hole in the lid and not that much gunpowder, there wasn't enough time for the expanding gases to escape or get out of the way.

QC#44 - Nitrogen Rocket
"Liquid Nitrogen blasts a water rocket over 100 feet away, and breaks my kitchen window."
"I was absolutely blown away by how quickly the reaction takes place, and by how much power is present."
"My friend had one bottle blow up in his hand while he was experimenting with different nozzle sizes, so needless to say, this experiment is potentially very dangerous, and is intended for demonstrational purposes only. "
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIWsfglG2uc


"Because the liquid-to-gas expansion ratio of nitrogen is 1:694 at 20 °C (68 °F), a tremendous amount of force can be generated if liquid nitrogen is rapidly vaporized."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_nitrogen

[Mark]

At first I tried mounting the car to the spinner, but decided that was too ungainly and kind of silly looking. Not that the wine bottle holder mounted on the spinner is anything other than strange, just less so. Maybe at a later date some other effects could be added like bubble blowing. If I had thought to relight the jet after it stopped running but while still spinning, a long flame from the remaining methanol in the tank vaporizing would have made for a good display. The candle flame is normally about a foot long at first as the tank is quite hot. I might try lighting the vapor with a propane torch as it spins down next time.
Jam Jar Jet Snorkeler Spin Test
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boKEWoQ ... e=youtu.be

In other news I bought a jolly roger pirate kite hoping it will fly in the exhaust of the fire extinguisher tank snorkeler. Even though the 2.5 and 4 inch hollow stainless steel gazing balls I put in the exhaust make it seem like there's hardly any thrust, there's a fair amount of air it's throwing out. For some reason the center of the exhaust has less pressure than on "either side" of it if you hold your hand over the exhaust. Maybe it's a donut thrust/torus I'm dealing with.
The kite in question. It's really kind of small, just that from tip to tip makes it seem larger. It was only $2.00. at a thrift store. What the heck.
http://www.amazon.com/In-Breeze-Jolly-R ... roger+kite

[Mark]

Jam Jar Snorkeler Spin on a Spinner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaf21Zw ... e=youtu.be

In other news I did the tilt test where you relight the snorkeler after it stops and flash vaporize the remaining methanol by tilting the CO2 bottle. Today I happened to feel a more impressive force as the vaporizing/sizzling methanol created a fair amount of thrust against my hand from the alcohol "leidenfrosting" in the very hot snorkel. Also I was changing out a snorkel length as you can see and hear here the higher frequency snorkel is a little shorter than in the previous video. At first I thought I was unscrewing the snorkel in the wrong direction, the CO2 tank in the vise and pipe wrench on the snorkel. The snorkel fought me so I tried the other direction and then back again which took a bit of force. It turns out at the bottom of the threads where the snorkel screws on the tank internally, some aluminum welded to the threads filling the region inbetween the threads with a shiny aluminum coating as well as the threads themselves. It was only on the last 1/4 inch of the threads but enough to make unscrewing it a hassle. I hadn't noticed this effect before but at any rate, aluminum snorkelers of this simple design are better for watercraft or only short jaunts out of the water.

[metiz]

If you mount the bottle like that, the g-forces will spread out the fuel puddle on the bottom. Does that cause the short run time, the bottle basically drowning itself?

[Mark]

That might be true Metiz. I had the butt end of the bottle biased slightly outward to try to get around that to some extent. When I mounted the bottle like you would normally want it or commonly think to mount it, it didn't matter if the snorkeler was spinning forward or backward, the alcohol still got slung out if the wheel spun in either direction when I gave it a spin with my hand - kind of a "strange" case of relativity, like untightening screws from the top or bottom of something, you seemingly turn the wrench a "different" direction - clockwise or counterclockwise. It's a bad analogy but you get the idea. It's just an impression you experience when in fact the fuel is merely pancaking as it starts to spin , the up angle of the bottle no longer effective as a container no matter which direction you spin it. It might be advantageous though to spread out the fuel to some extent exposing more or less surface area to the in/out air flow or modulate it as conditions change. I recall holding a paintball snorkeler in my gloved hand at an angle and gradually putting it upright as it got hotter and hotter thinking it needed less surface area because of boiling. Sometimes depending on length and diameter, a snorkeler will start or run angled somewhat sideways, but not straight up and down for example. Or if you were using different fuels with the change in fuel/air ratios. Or how hot or cold the bottle is, that also controls evaporation rates. And the alcohol probably starts boiling as time goes on. I've never had these paintball tanks last for more than 2 minutes even in water whatever the case. When methanol burns you get 1 C02 and 2 H2Os and the methanol probably becomes watery as the steam could be condensing to some extent over time. So eventually I might start trying external fueling to get around these problems. Imagine the variables if you were trying to run a jam jar in space.

I want to try putting the bottom of the bottle straight out and deal with the thrust by using an elbow. That way an artifical gravity could be created and if it got going fast enough I could lift and turn the entire table on its side and the fuel would still stay on the bottom of the bottle in any orientation.Then I wondered how it would do if I mounted the snorkeler straight across the wheel spinner where the snorkel and neck junction of the bottle are right in the center of the spinner, the region of least motion, like standing on the North Pole. The bottle half would have forces slinging the alcohol outward and the elbowed snorkel would have forces wanting to sling the exhaust out, making me wonder if there were any advantages to that scenario other than keeping the fuel in its place. I remember some Lockwood article where driving with it mounted to a truck 80 or 100 miles an hour with both intake and exhaust facing rearward was said to improved thrust. You would think the plus would be canceled by the minus, but maybe it got more fresh air or something or a greater relative spread between compression and rarefaction somehow, breathing better. But back to my scenario, might spinning aid in compression with an uneven divided gradient created by spinning, both bottle and snorkel experiencing modest outward forces and the middle of the bottle or neck region very little? I'm starting to bore myself with all my questions and suppositions so I better stop here and just try some things, stair-stepping along to see what comes about.

Sony a35 Sample HD Video - Some spinning rides at the local fair
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRFT0Ozab9c

[Mark]

Today I got around to trying another idea, that being combining a paintball tank with a different kind of snorkel rather than the typical plumbing pipe nipple. I wasn't sure if it would work because of the larger inside diameter of the new snorkel being .688ths instead of the half inch plumbing pipe. The new snorkel is the barrel off a paintball gun. It seemed amusing to combine a paintball tank with a paintball gun barrel, having a certain artistic continuity. One barrel had 20 tiny holes or ports near the tip and that proved to be a failure. But the other barrel worked just fine, sounding quite energetic for a snorkeler. I wasn't sure if the barrel would work because the largest diameter snorkel I have gotten to run on a paintball tank is 1/2 inch diameter. A 3/4 diameter snorkel doesn't build enough feedback or seem to have enough confinement to produce a starting impulse, as many times as I tried.
If I were to tap and thread a small spark plug into the paintball tank on the shoulder (probably a good spot) and load a paintball in the barrel, it might be possible to fire a paintball like a potato gun and then see it instantly transition to snorkel jet mode, sort of a double feature effect. Since I don't have a drill and tap for making the proper 22mm 1.5 pitch threads yet, the test instead consisted of the barrel with black tape to widen the diameter and crudely threading it into a 24 ounce tank with modified 3/4 inch pipe threads which worked fine for a prototype. It ran very loud for about 7 seconds. The black electrical tape became quite soft and gummy and the snorkel burned my hand when I touched it accidentally trying to separate it from the tank after the run with a hand towel "mostly" protecting my hand.
In other news, my jet "neighbors" were out flying today. Usually they fly over on Tuesdays, their practice day. As many times as they have flown low over the house, I haven't ever had my camera ready to get a good shot.
Blue Angels Pensacola 2014 USCGC Cypress
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6kgBqcTlh8

The silencer worked a little too well. ha
"Porting consists of the holes on the sides of a barrel near the tip. These holes serve primarily to reduce the sound of a gun firing by allowing air to gradually escape from the barrel rather than in one load burst at the tip. In general, more porting means a quieter barrel, but more porting also requires more air to fire the ball and decreases gunefficiency. Porting is sometimes spiraled or straight, though the differences I have found are pretty minimal."
http://paintball.about.com/od/markersgu ... basics.htm

[Mark]

I should say with the paintball gun snorkel with the 20 holes in the barrel is longer than the silver barrel that worked. Another thing that I tried is running the 20 hole ported barrel with masking tape around the ported region to block the holes from allowing air to come in from the sides. That didn't work either so perhaps it's just the longer length that defeated me here unless in some way the 20 tiny holes caused some sort of turbulence, roughing up the inside of the barrel to airflow. Another variable is the ported barrel has kind of a "sharp" edge at the very tip whereas the silver barrel has a very slight bevel or flare at the tip and the fluting also extends to very tip on the silver one if that makes a difference. It's hard to see that the flutes extend to very end in the photos but they do.

[Mark]

I saw this other wine bottle holder (kitsch) that would be a visual pun for the paintball tank snorkelers. You'd have to drill a small hole in the head though for the exhaust. With a U-shaped snorkel or thrust reverser and small amount of flotation, you could make him "swim" in the right direction nearly all underwater for a diorama effect. ha
But it's not really what I'm looking for.

[Mark]

Today's adventure was this cobbled together arrangement using the trigger start feature of the torch to fire the gun. Not much to it.
http://www.bernzomatic.com/item.html?id=19

Piezo Propane Pistol Popper Pulsejet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftq_jH1sqpQ

[Mark]

The barking dog ...
http://youtubedoubler.com/?video1=http% ... uthorName=

[Mark]

Artistic shape for a jam/honey jar jet.
http://i.imgur.com/Jt9374O.jpg
http://www.industry-files.com/food-pack ... ved-honey/

[Mark]

Well I finally got around to trying one of my fused quartz crucibles as a jam jar. If nothing else, it has a good chance of lasting a lot longer than soda glass jars or even borosilicate vessels. Recall thin sheets of fused quartz can be heated to a red heat and dipped in cold water without cracking. In the past, there was a time where a few sheets of aluminum foil were merely rubberbanded over the top of this crucible with a hole in the lid and it fluttered for a time but the flexing proved less stable than this run and it wasn't the best solution.
Not only did I have to press the heavy lid down to keep it from being pushed up but the crucible will vibrate and dance across the table and that can cause flameouts too. I learned this when hose-clamping the thick lid to a stand with a baby bottle nipple under the crucible to sponge it in place. Jam jars don't like to be jiggled. I used a blue plastic straw to air out the jar, it just barely fit through the tiny hole. Maybe the hole could be bigger and the top of the cap is a little over 1/4 inch thick, a ~!/4 inch long snorkel in effect instead of a typically thin jam jar lid. Humble beginnings again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUgGpxZ-4uY

[Mark]

Here's a funny lighter I bought for the heck of it standing in line at the grocery store, a last minute impulse buy. It seemed a perfect tool for lighting jam jars.
This first link from ebay only opens in a new tab for me.
http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/MTIwMFgxNjAw/ ... NE/$_1.JPG
http://inquisitivekat.tumblr.com/post/1 ... ickyourbic
https://s3.amazonaws.com/lowres.cartoon ... 76_low.jpg

[Mark]

So I bought a used high pressure air paintball tank for $10.00 and wondered how to take the top part off so as to use it for a snorkeler. There was this video that was very helpful. These tanks don't just have a simple valve like the others I have purchased that are for CO2.
How to remove HPA / SCUBA tank regulator off a paintball / diving cylinder - SIMPLEST DIY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VmTNAEoUWY

Because this tank is made to hold 3000 psi compared to a 20 ounce CO2 tanks which is ~850 psi this particular air tank uses a thicker walled aluminum tank. The high pressure air tank (48 cubic inches) has about a pound more aluminum than the 20 ounce CO2 tank. The high pressure air tank is about 1/4 to 1/3 of an inch wider and maybe an inch and a half shorter. I don't know how the internal diameters compare but the high pressure air tank ran really well yesterday with nothing more than the valve removed with a little methanol in the tank - just a tank running as a simple jam jar and no modifications. Today I tapped the tank with a 3/8 inch NPT pipe tap and screwed on a 6 inch snorkel (3/8 inch nipple 6 inches long). Recall the threads on a paintball tank are close to a 3/8 inch NPT but not a 3/8 NPT (national pipe thread) which makes cutting the threads easy because the NPT tap I use being tapered at the tip threads easily into the tank, making for a straight threading job. The actual thread on a paintball tank escapes me but I have some thread gauges and have looked it up in the past. I was just wondering how the extra pound of aluminum would affect the duration of the run. Certainly I could put it in deeper water to cool it without the buoyancy coming into play as quickly.


http://airowgunsales.com/tanks-tanks-ac ... -co2-tank/ 1.75 pounds empty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqN9Zw2wmmg ~3 pounds
http://www.ansgear.com/Empire_Aluminum_ ... 483khp.htm