Synchronicity wins: Hot pots 2.

A continuation of the older Hot pots post which can be seen here -.http://synchronicitywins.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/hot-pots.html

April 2016.

The final solution.

New pot heaters, cooker and wick configuration..

The glass dome is a 24 cm Pyrex mixing bowl and it gets far hotter and much faster than Terra cotta.

The bell on the top of the first one is the handle, I have insulated the top part of it as it gets VERY hot.

It is used to safely remove the bowl .

Heater with knob handle.

Wicks with rings.

The wick in the tin showing wick spout, weight, tiny air vent and the wick protector ring.
.

Holds a month's worth of wick (or maybe even two or three) and burns like a dream with no smell thanks to the rings.

They keep fresh unburnt wick feeding the flame and when eventually they need perked up a bit (and I mean EVENTUALLY compared to how it used to be), you just cut off the burnt end, remove the ring and pull the wick up a bit by the fresh wick under the ring, put the ring back on and relight.

They burn very constantly for hours and hours and if you blow them out at night you can more often than not just relight them without adjustment in the morning.

You don't even have to remove them from the heater or take off the Pyrex bowl to adjust the wicks, you just need a pair of longish scissors to cut off the wick top (being careful not to drop it in the oil, blunt the first half inch of the scissor blades for better grip when using them to also take off and put the ring back on (after the wick adjustment) and a cutlery fork to hold the tin down while pulling a little bit of wick up (I use one with the two central prongs removed) the gap between the oil reservoir and the bowl rim enables this to be done with ease and no oily fingers..
There can sometimes be a little build up of oil residue appearing on the top of a ring, it is very easily cleaned off if necessary.

The washer acts as a weight to prevent the wick tins from floating a bit when first put in the oil reservoir dry.

These wicks burn splendidly for many hours without requiring attention and they do not make any soot while burning as long as the wick is not too long.

The wick holders are perforated at the bottom and have a tiny air hole on the top of the side to allow them to fill quickly.

You can make the same thing out of a wine bottle top and a washer for a base crimped inside the cap with two little bits of the rim of the cap to hold the wick in.

Seven of them sit neatly in the 11 cm flower pot saucer, one in the center and a ring of six as seen in the knob handled pot photo above.

The hole in the saucer is to allow the oil in from the bigger saucer that it sits in.

They are easily refillable with new wick when the time comes and will last indefinitely.

The flower pot saucers are treated with a water based matt finish sealant that prevents them from getting dirty, it gives them a silken appearance , keeps the natural colour and prevents oil soak up which can get very messy otherwise.

You can use water based clear enamel paint if you want a glazed finish.

The wick tins burning in the Pyrex and Terracotta pot (see below).

Since this photo was taken on May 31 I have changed the little kitten bowl that the wicks are in and now use a similar size stainless steel bowl with a perforated base, this allows me to increase the size of the oil reservoir to the bigger flower pot saucer that the kitten bowl sat in, it now holds eight wicks,not all of which need to be lit at one time to keep the Pyrex hot..

The golden bell reflection in the pot not caused by the brass bell on the top, it's like a floating hologram...

Copper wire golden shine later in the day.

This picture doesn't do it justice, it looks lovely.

'Everlasting Tealight.

In this picture and the cooker one below the oil reservoir bowl is bigger and higher up, you can still alter the wicks in situe through the gap even though it is smaller but the larger gap with a lower placed saucer allows you to easily remove a wick tin if necessary by picking it up by the clean wick under the ring with your scissors..

The cooker.

Pork joint being cooked to perfection in the Pyrex Tagine.

Chilli.

This excellent cooker cooks anything from curries to roast meat joints, it's like having a glass Tagine in the middle of your table, it gently simmers your curry or Chilli or whatever and will even cook the rice in another casserole dish on top of the main one.

The casserole dishes can be used the other way up to be more like a Tagine or you can use the main mixing bowl heater dome as the lid..

19 April 2016.
Three days ago I made a tealight holder stand by fixing a little glass dish to the top of a little Edradour whisky bottle that had been brought to the house by a visitor a couple of days before.

Then I did an experiment to see if I could improve the performance of the wick I use and found that it was immensely successful, I lit it in the holder at 8 PM on Sunday, it is now 8 AM on Tuesday and it is still burning really well.

I have done nothing except add a few oil top ups to the little dish.

After taking the photo of it below I felt prompted to take a look at the FB Edradour community page .....

Note added April 20 at 2 PM, it's still burning but dwindling fast now, that's 66 hrs

It's time for me to spend a few seconds pulling up the wick a bit and she'll be as good as new..

....... and this was at the top of it -

There is more than one way to see that God's light shows us everything.

While on the subject of synchronicity here's a thing!

I now use a 12cm ring in place of the stainless bowl, as was the case with the kitten dish (see photo ) it holds 7 wick tins.
I did that to enable more oil to be put in the saucer and it looks neat too.

The bell handle on top of the glass dome is now securely connected to it by some rather amazing heat proof adhesive.

That bell was given to me by a friend who found it in a second hand shop and as soon as I was given it I put it on the top of the flower pot heater that I was using at the time as can be seen in this photo -

I had not yet been given the idea of putting long wicks in tins at that time but Anna certainly knew that she was going to have me do it, this is a perfect anagram of the code that she led me to in 2002 that I found today April 20.

7 WICK TINS AND A BELL ON TOP ID ROSS' HEATER.

Food for thought!

Several months later I figured out how to make relly good floating wicks that will burn for between 24 hrs and 60 hrs before needing adjustment.

Rapeseed oil, sunflower oil, olive oil and even coconut oil all work with them
The wick holders will work for months so all you need to do is either adjust by pulling up or replace the wick and it will do it all over again.
Here's a picture of a couple of the floating wicks.
The domed disk stabiliser on top of the little screw cap bottle top is cut from the bottom of a coke can with a 30mm hole saw drill bit.
The disk is connected to the bottle top by the length of silicon tube with an eyelet in the bottom of it as a ballance weight.
The holes in the disk and bottle top are a tight fit for the tube to ensure a good seal.
The second picture is the bottom view.