Odds and ends

[Mark]

I bought one of these for a dollar when buying gas the other day. It was the Margarita flavor which tasted horrible, but the little test tube shape aluminum container is kind of nice and might make a cute little putt-putt jam jar boat or some other craft item if you like to repurpose things. It measures ~1.175 inches in diameter and a little over 6 inches long. I just happened to notice them.
http://www.bevindustry.com/articles/86706-stout-21

This video was good for a laugh.
"A sleek metal design attorneys say caters to the responsible consumer."
"It allows the consumer to very appropriately regulate the quantity of alcohol that they consume."
http://www.wral.com/news/local/video/12248776/

"You can just keep drinking these and drinking these, and the next thing you know, it's going to hit you, and you're not going to realize how much alcohol you've had."
http://www.wral.com/plan-for-3-ounce-al ... /12247819/

Here's the new Bud Light aluminum bottle that came out in a 16 ounce design with a screw cap. I might make something out of them. In the past, I used the pry off cap aluminum bottles in the 16 ounce size for a putt-putt boat, but the screw cap bottles could be more convenient. It's the same tall height as the aluminum bottle in the clip below. but 1/3 lighter. The shoulders are a little different and the bottom of the new bottle is also more concave. A lighter bottle might be more zippy. ha
"Cool Twist" -- Bud Light 2014 Super Bowl XLVIII Commercial
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnmaEt2WH_I

Zippy Putt Putt Boat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChtLqS7tRyo

[Mark]

I drilled a hole in the round end of a Stout 21 cylindrical aluminum tube. A little methanol was added along with a hose clamp to weight down the capped end for floating in water. The drilled end angled up. The tube circled around in a bowl of water for about 30 seconds. It was kind of fussy and didn't do as well as I hoped, however it did run. Little boats suffer from balancing problems because the fuel weight and level are more critical. If the tube was a little shorter in length or partitioned off internally and fitted with a snorkel, it would probably go much faster.
http://www.bevindustry.com/articles/86706-stout-21

[Mark]

Today I was running 4 different configurations of CO2 paintball tanks with various length and diameter snorkels. It was rather sunny today so I stood under a tall fig tree for shade. After the tanks ran and stopped from overheating or reduced fuel levels, I relit the tip of the tanks which were hot enough to produce a constant stream of evaporating methanol vapor, turning the tanks into a strongly burning candle of sorts. Sometimes I then tilted them and made a flame thrower as the methanol flashed to "steam" in the very hot snorkel. But the really interesting thing was this mirage or heat wave effect of burning methanol. You couldn't see a flame in the bright sunlight, but the distortion made very good shadows on a sandy patch of ground as I stood in the shade of the tree holding the tip of the burning snorkel in the sunlight about 4 feet above the ground. It was really a pronounced effect to see such detail, how the air was swirling about in shadow forms. I couldn't get any image when the snorkel jets were running or mixing the air too quickly to get the distortion, but the shadows of the methanol burning in the air after I relit the hot tanks were quite nifty, very much like watching this old Schlieren video. The boiling mirages were about 2 to 2 1/2 feet in length. Again, this was brought about by holding a very hot CO2 tank with methanol at a ~30 degree angle above horizontal while fumes evaporated from the just previously run hot tank. I held the tanks wearing a thick leather glove and even then it sometimes became too hot so that I had to shift my grip at times.
Maybe with a slowly running jam jar or snorkeler you could get some shimmering effect or cast a roiling shadow of the heat waves. At night it's possible to see an intermittent flame from a snorkeler as seen here with this beer keg snorkeler, so perhaps if it were chuffing very slowly you could get some hint of a mirage shadow effect in sunlight. The sun was fair high above when I was experimenting - around noontime. I suppose the mirage effect of burning fuel is quite common, but today the heat wave images cast on the ground really impressed me, maybe the angle of the sun was close to optimum.

Jam Jar Pulse Jet Schlieren
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1LQ94pjUWE

Jam Jar Snorkeler at Night
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DV4qdmWblc

[Mark]

A fellow who saw one of my videos informed me about these interesting beer bottles made of stainless steel. And the 2 liter keg is kind of cute too. I think they would be a good addition to jam jar world. You could also make Helmholtz resonators out of them and drive the metal bottles with sound from a speaker making them spin in circles suspended from a string. Or imagine some other inventive use for them.
12 ounce bottles
http://deepwoodbrew.com/stainless-steel ... -12oz.html
The growler. ha
http://deepwoodbrew.com/stainless-steel ... i-keg.html

Another perspective
http://www.westcoastbrewer.com/BrewersB ... g-growler/

Growler history
http://www.bottless.net/The_History_of_ ... =10&page=1

For review.
How to Move Things with Sound/Acoustic Propulsion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5fVFA2sWt4#t=2m57s

In stainless steel you wouldn't have to worry about heat damage or discoloration and gradual degradation like an aluminum beer bottle. Aluminum bottles become very soft and are easily dented if subjected to a few bouts of snorkel jet heating. Also, aluminum beer bottles have a plastic/lacquer coating on the inside of the bottle which might make some smoke at first and a paint job on the outside that burns off ruining the presentation. However aluminum is much better at wicking heat away than stainless steel - see chart.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChtLqS7tRyo

http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/therm ... d_429.html

[Mark]

Here's a couple of other shapes that might be of some use for pulsating combustion experiments.
SS Growler 1 Liter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNjTwsOluGU

Quick Fill, No Spill
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGPie3xigvQ

The Zythos Project Brauler Beer Growler
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItOpwNShMt0

[Mark]

Best Promotional Products for 2014: Stainless Steel Mason Jar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dS182Sc-03s
http://www.lazerdesigns.com/Merchant2/m ... e=shopping

[Mark]

Although this video illustrates heating from the bottom, it may provide a partial explanation to understanding the quirky fast, slow, fast effect of snorkelers. Not all go through these phases, but some do. For such a simple fueling method it seems a lot of possibilities to entertain.
Pool Boiling Heat Transfer - Dragonfly Education
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1yZwRcQSZw

Piglet Snorkeler Takes a Bath
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUYgTN1erJc

Space bubbles
"And indeed, they found some intriguing differences between what happens to boiling fluids on Earth and what happens to them in orbit. For example, a liquid boiling in weightlessness produces -- not thousands of effervescing bubbles -- but one giant undulating bubble that swallows up smaller ones!"
http://science1.nasa.gov/science-news/s ... st07sep_2/

[Mark]

I bought this little gizmo today which takes some 3/8 inch plumbing pipe. There are these two places to screw pipe into it. It's called a Seacurefill fuel spill device you would use for filling your gas tank on a boat. I thought it might make a cute tiny valveless pulsejet if I fiddled with it. Also if you unscrew the cap, you can screw a 1 1/2 inch diameter plumbing pipe into that end. It's also an NPT thread.

[Mark]

Double Wall Stainless Steel Mason Jar
http://www.positivepromotions.com/doubl ... p/osa5175/

[Mark]

I found a couple of blender blades from a thrift store that might be nice for jam jar experimenting. If you remove the blades and drill out the insert you are left with a stainless steel jam jar lid with built in snorkel stub. Recall Ball jars and other jam jars have the same thread as many blenders so that you may blend something in a jam jar by merely screwing it onto your blender.
While I wasn't in the mood for experimenting with them today, I did put together a few photos. You could sleeve some lengths of tubing over the nozzle part to increase the vitality of your jam jar. Nozzles with two steps in diameter could be drilled out to the larger diameter. Or you might find some use for a spinning blade atop a jam jar.
Mason Jar Blender Trick
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkluUf9z9-Y

[tufty]

hands off my jam!

[Mark]

Maybe with a U-bend snorkel and some partial flotation it would "appear" to be a fish swimming in water. The methanol fish could be wholly under water and the snorkel above.
http://www.amazon.com/Kikkerland-Fish-F ... B00FLSJ4CQ

Something like this with the fish flask instead of this tank. Or design and build your own fish.
download/file.php?id=14754&mode=view

http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/stainless-steel-flask
http://www.shopatdhp.com/dhpshop/pc/Fis ... sk-p42.htm
http://www.snow-home.co.uk/product/fish-flask/

[Mark]

I tried the blender lid with the staged down neck and a couple of different sized jars didn't want to sustain. If you are experimenting with snorkels, they often do not like any sort of variation, not even flared ends from what I have found. Straight snorkels are the only thing I have gotten to work with a single port breather. You can have some variation or widening if it's towards the opening of the jar end but for the most part life is easier if you keep it simple.
It was very hot and humid today so that was a factor. One jar sustained by drilling out the neck of a snorkel in the blender lid to the ~1/2 inch diameter and doing away with the staged diameter protrusion of sorts. Then I tried some ~1/2 diameter snorkels made of copper tubing type M wall thickness sleeved inside the snorkelette I drilled out. I couldn't get my two glass Mason jars with copper tubing snorkels to sustain however. It may be that the jars are not perfect cylinders and that contributes to them being fussy or it may be that it was too hot out or both. Summer/late spring is not really the time to be testing jam jars in a hot climate.
Here's a blender lid again. What I did was remove the smaller necked down region of the snorkel. The only good thing about the blender lid over a jam jar lid is that it's stainless steel and stiff enough so that it doesn't flex even though it's as thin as a jam jar lid. If you put a snorkel on a jam jar lid it tends to lean and with two lids the band doesn't screw on as well or secure. I've blow the lid off a jam jar before, so it doesn't hurt to have a lid that screws on entirely. Perhaps I would have done better today with a narrower snorkel, something closer to my 3/8 inch plumbing pipe nipples. Sometimes the slightest change in diameter is all it takes. Maybe the ~1/2 inch diameter K type tubing would have been enough reduction in diameter, but I've only seen L and M at the hardware stores.
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/astm- ... d_779.html

[Mark]

So I bought a used revolving clothes rack today for $30.00, sort of like this only only mine has a 42 inch rail diameter with chrome caster wheels and tabletop. It's rather substantial/industrial but to start it spinning requires a mere 1 ounce of force I would estimate, even with the 30 inch particle board tabletop that sits on the top of it. Inside the 2.5 inch diameter housing are some bearings and the solid steel pole can be elevated quite high although I haven't measured the height yet. I figure I can mount a variety of snorkelers and auxiliary toys to the rail and even set stuff on the tabletop without it being to heavy to allow the rail to spin with my very meager few ounces of snorkeler thrust from my paintball tanks. I suppose I could even mount and run my piglet snorkelers on it, or make the clothes rack a carrousel of quirky devices. The absurd possibilities are almost too much to imagine.
http://theshopcompany.com/chrome-round- ... -rail.html

[tufty]

That's a wonderful kinetic art concept. Do it. Video required.