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Here are a few side projects I worked on as of 2005.  


Babington Oil Burner

I initially made a waste vegetable oil burner to heat a hot tub, but then found that there weren't any good references for how to build a Babington burner, so I wrote one.

How to build a Babington Oil Burner

Babington Oil Burner FAQ

Steel Observation Platform
I designed & built this tower for the top of a mountain in Lake County, CA:



The top level of the tower is 24 feet in the air, which puts eye level at about 29 feet.  This is about a foot above the tops of the trees on the mountain.  The biggest challenge was that there are no roads to the top of the mountain it will be installed on, hence, it had to be hand-portable and hand-raisable.

Tested at Burning Man in 2004, now all 2500 lbs of steel have been hot-dip galvanized, and it is on the mountain.

Fire Vortex
Here's a project I helped with that's very interesting: Nate Smith's fire vortex machine (the 2003 version):
 

Put 3 concentric rings of fans on a 35' diameter machine, make all fans adjustable angle, add one large 10 gallon/minute liquid propane source, and big fire is the result.