Actually, so far, NOT burning down the house!
I sealed the speaker-end of the tube properly (ruben's tube; fire and sound; see previous posts) so it didn't leak; discovered that I was getting bad connections to my sound sources (using the laptop works fine); and did another test fire last Tuesday.
Oooo, the pivot joint thingies in the OTHER end of the tube leak under pressure, too. I sealed them on the inside, but clearly not boldly enough.
So I smeared the OUTSIDE of the joints with silicon on Saturday wrapped that in duct tape, and then wrapped THAT in electrical tape (to hold down the duct tape, which has terrible glue; what a horrid brand).
Sunday, then, I did a THIRD test-fire.. no leaks! And I have LOTS of compression on the speaker; I can blow the flame out with a slight twist of the volume knob.
NEXT Saturday, then, I'll have some interested parties over and we will experiment with it more....
Fun!
This weekend I was able to add Fire to the Ruben's Tube!
It all started Saturday... but first, darn, I need to read about a zillion pages of World Civilizations. Interesting stuff, so it's hard to read fast.
By about 11:30pm Saturday, I decided I wasn't going to finish my chapters, so I put the book down and get ready to go to the Taiji graduation and new year's party... I promised, so I had to go.
That was fun, and I got the first food of the day into me. Home, and then I can go to the shop to assemble the Ruben's Tube. Oh, but first, we need to move that gravel.
So I shoveled and barrowed a cubic yard of gravel out into the back yard path, while Marla valiantly hacked the rose bushes down (er, trimmed them). Whew. And now I needed to finish the path with mulch -- so the pattern from the house to the fence is gravel, mulch, grass, mulch (and not gravel, gravel, grass, mulch). It's more artistic this way.
Oh goodness it's getting late now. NOW I get to assemble the Ruben's Tube. I test fit all the pieces, smear them with silicon, put them together again, and clamp. I assemble two four-inch clamps into an eight-inch clamp to hold the speaker assembly on.
And then I set it aside to dry.
Long day! We crash on the couch early and wake up on Sunday.
Ahh, I really have to finish that history reading. I still have 2/3 of a zillion pages to read.
Okay, by about 1 again, I have to stop. It's time to fire the tube up! Oh, but first, we need to move the rest of that mulch. I start forking up and barrowing mulch to the beds, while Marla valiantly weeds just ahead of me. That takes a few hours; all in all we moved nearly four cubic yards of material this weekend. There's just a tad more mulching to do for next weekend.
By about 3 I'm free to light things on fire! Fire! Oh, darn, there's this message -- fraud control on this unused credit card. Okay. Wiring harnesses, power, cables, soldering, come on already! A dry test of the power amplifier and speaker, oh, that's some powerful thumping coming from the tube there! Nice speaker.
Attach the propane, test the valves, blow the air out of everything. And. Fire! I can get a pretty satisfying high flame out of those teeny holes in the tube!
I wander over to the amplifier, once my fire seems stable, and notice flames licking around the speaker. Oh, that's not good. Turn off the tank, the flames die down. Hmm.
Re-test the speaker... nothing. The amplifier shows the "overload protection" light. Dammit. I cooked the speaker.
Oh and look at the time, have to go to Michelle's now!
And a few hours there, and then some very light shopping, and then home again. Tired, dispirited, and facing the ugly end of Monday soon.
But I have to know.
So I take the speaker off and am surprised that as soon as I loosened the clamp, the speaker assembly poppped right out. It seems that, while building the clamp, I had forgotten that I didn't add the silicon. That explains the leak, it wasn't sealed!
I look at the plastic barrier. Intact. The speaker looks fine. No visible heat damage. With the Ohmmeter, I test the coils... perfect, like new resistance. Okay, I have no idea why the amplifier was showing overload; maybe it was the weird mismatch between line-in and the headphone jack on the boombox I was using to power it.
A mystery for another time... I ended the weekend reading World Civilizations. And as of now, I still have 20 pages left to read. Tomorrow. Right after I test the audio system again.
I have all the pieces for my Ruben's Tube now EXCEPT for the quick-release hose that goes between the propane tank (dang, forgot to buy that today, too) and the tube. Ahh well, I don't need the propane until I have the hose for it.
Today I made a speaker mount for the speaker; I took an 8" end cap, drilled holes around the edge (using the speaker as a direct template), cut a hole from the center, and rolled the cut edge back with pliers.
I also took silicon caulk (good to 400 degrees F) and sealed up the fittings and whatnots that I will be using.
The hard part, which I didn't expect to be hard, was making the tube itself. It's 4" HVAC ducting, which is NOT sold assembled but as a slightly curled, yet also flat, piece. It has a clever interlocking system at the edge. Simple! Not so simple. After squeezing silicon caulk along the "female" edge, I undertook to slide the "male" adge into it.
No such luck.
I ended up putting hose clamps at the ends and force the pipe together at the ends by using the mighty pressure of the spiral inclined plane (e.g. screw). The rest of the tube remained resolutely agape, and I only had the two hose clamps! Hmmm.
I found one of my many webbing truck tie-down clamps. Not going to be able use it as a clamp, but the webbing might do the trick
Standing on one end of the strong ribbon, I wrapped it once around the tube and lifted up... hard. Yup, it made a flexible, circular clamp! With some effort, I was able to get the tube to mate with itself, one 6" section at a time.
Later, I went back and used the hose clamps to tighten it further; loosing the clamp, sliding it up, and re-tightening it until it could be tightened no more. Rinse, repeat!
Finally, I drilled a series of tiny (ummm, 3/32? I don't recall) holes at 1" spacings along the tube. I may enlarge them later. I may add more so they are at 1/2" spacing. We'll see.
Next up, the !@#$% hose and a tank of propane! Oh, and wire. And maybe an inline fuse. And I do need to assemble the bits. And fasten the hose end thingy to the other end cap. Okay, so there's lots to do still.
Next weekend, Fire! Unless, of course, my hose doesn't come in. In which case I'll have some serious words with the place that sold it to me.
Cats are tidy creatures. They like to keep their fur clean and tidy. Licking and polishing, their specialized tongue hooks do an amazing job.
But sometimes the tongue just isn't enough.
So there was Papa, scritching around in the catbox like cats do, doing his...business. But he's got a hairy back-end, quite the fuzzy breaches on that cat, and today the business did not make a clean...exit. What's a cat to do in such a situation?
There's the toilet paper roll right there, but without opposable thumbs it might as well be on the moon. What's a neat cat to do?
Ahhh! Of course! Right outside the potty room is this LOVELY butt-cleaning surface. Just a little... skootching... and it will be all better. The napping humans won't even notice...
::skootch::
::skootch::
-----
So there I was, napping on the couch, and I hear an odd popping sound like claws in the carpet, but not like the usual popping sound (yeah; we're getting wood floors this year). I looked blearily over the arm of the couch to see what it was, only to find Papa in the booty-scoot position. If you have a pet you know what I mean. Okay, if your pet is a snake or iguana, you might not know. But the rest of you have seen this before!
There's a streak behind him, and he knows it, since once he's heard me stirring he dashes off into the other room. Cats and their guilty consciences.
Dear god, and now the smell comes... I poke the napping Marla and she awakens to the horror.
We sit there struck dumb by the stench for a moment, and then spring into action.
First, Marla locks the cat into the bathroom, sealing it away from what is still clean in the house. She then goes to clean up the briches... a joyous task, you might imagine.
I get the carpet spray and clean the new decorations away. I’m also hoping for a quick resolution to this… I have to leave for Taiji soon!
Once done, I visit them in the bathroom... no, the tissue isn’t doing the job. Marla cajoles him to clean himself... “lick your butt cat! Come on, do your job!” But to no avail. He goes to tidy up, but recoils from his own scent. It certainly does NOT smell of roses.
I hold the cat and the scissors come into play, snipping away at the unclean fur. Snip! Snip! Papa is not happy.
The smell nearly does us in; what has he been eating! Ugh! Cat! Snip! Wipe! Unhappy sounds leak out from the cat, along with smell that has flies spinning dizzily in the corners of the room.
It’s no use. I have to run the bath. Papa recognizes the sound and cowers in the corner as best he can. It’s been years since we’ve put him in water, but he’s not forgotten. He’s good, though, only hooking one claw in my arm when I get careless, but otherwise submitting the terrible humiliation of having his back end washed.
Wiped, trimmed, and bathed, dried, the Papacat is not happy... but he’s clean.
Now he licks himself.
And I just make it out to Taiji in time.
It's Sunday morning, late morning, and I'm here in my 'jammies cruising the 'net on Marla's 'puter. My laptop is in the shop... Big Shop, the Great Manufacturer's Place of All Fixing... because it has power issues.
It's not the battery. It's not the power plug. It's not the power control circuitry on the motherboard. So it must be the cabling? Which is integral to the laptop's case, and not a "part" that the local repair place has easy access to.
I hope I get it back next week, because school is starting again!
I ordered parts yesterday for the Ruben's Tube experiments, and shopped around Lowe's to see what was available locally for it (darned little, actually). I found a nice 4-channel amplifier, 500watts per channel, that will run on 12 volts (car audio, yayy!) for fairly cheap. I hope to run 4 tubes.
Then there is the car subwoofer, actually a mid-range woofer, with what looks like should be good Xmax throw, a high power and Db rating, and a lovely blue color! Plus, it was cheap.
That covers the audio side of things.
On the fire side, I ordered a valve and quick-release hose set from a cajun supply shop in LA, much cheaper than from the more technical stores.
Now, at home, I'll buy a tank, some tubes some fittings, some this and that, and assemble the tube itself. Today, I think, I'll start this. Once the other bits come in, maybe next weekend! I'll fit it together, fire it up, and see if I can keep my eyebrows.
There are only a few variables to explore in my experiment.
I want BIG DRAMATIC FLAMES -- not like the wimpy little flames in the standard physics experiment. This is, after all, to be a dancing-flame backdrop to dancers (or something) around the effigy burn at Flipside! To get these flames, and to keep them doing something with the music, without blowing themselves out, I need to experiment with the sound pressure (volume) of the feed (of which, I have a lot of upper end to work with); the frequency tuning, if any (I want to favor bass, for best effect); the gas pressure (as high as I can get it without totally damping the audio signal); and the spacing and diameter of the holes in the tube. Oh, and the diameter of the tube (a binary choice of 4" or 6").
The question of hole size has me puzzling the most... big holes for a lower pressure but higher volume? Or small holes for a higher pressure, but cutting back the volume?
I'm thinking that a higher pressure in the tube will provide for stronger coupling to the audio signal, as long as I can still create pressure waves in the gas with the speaker. Too much pressure and the speaker will "stall".
So I think I'll start with very tiny holes and I can increase their diameter as needed, during the experiment. Fortunately, the HVAC sheet-metal tubing is dirt cheap.
I think I'll also stick to 4" tubing. I have an 8" speaker and I will be funneling it down to a 4" tube. This will have the effect of decreasing the pressure of the sound-wave, but increasing the velocity in the tube; I'm thinking it will amplify the change in the flame height.
We'll see soon enough!
As for the rest of today... I think I need to do more writing. I've been slacking something terrible lately.