About me
Hi, Welcome to my website. I am new to this so please forgive me if I make mistakes.
I am Tim (or Timothy to my mother when I was caught being naughty). I live in my house that is nestled between two creeks. It is on a little farm in Gippsland at the foot of the Strzelecki Ranges and opposite the Baw Baw Alpine Plateau.
I am a bit ‘green’ and consider that humanities excessive resource consumption is changing our environment for the worse for future generations. They will pay dearly for our slowness in taking action to lessen our impact.
I like to produce a lot of my own food and avoid processed food including milling my own flour from wheat and pulses and make my own bread. I use a big Excalibur food dehydrator which I use for preserving food and preparing meals for backpacking.
I keep my body weight in check by careful, but enjoyable eating and exercise. I also do a 24 hour fast, breakfast to breakfast, on Tuesday to Wednesday each week. When possible I do a daily brisk walk up into the Strzelecki Ranges and down again and I follow quite a few of Dr Michael Mosley’s healthy living ideas including reducing grain starch intake and substituting this with pulses and vegetables. I try to have a small ‘footprint’ by consuming less.
My home has a large solar electric power supply with 24 panels and power of 4.2 kW. More than half of the electricity goes back into the grid. A totally solar hot water system, with 30 evacuated collector tubes, supplies my hot water needs for about 95% of days. I even have a solar kettle to make my boiling water for tea on most days. My yacht (wind-powered) also has a solar kettle. I use wood (fallen trees) for heating and consider it to be a truly renewable and sustainable fuel.
I am also aware that our society is harvesting (mining) limited mineral nutrients such as phosphorus and potassium for farm fertilizer. Much of this is removed in farm produce for us to eat in cities. However, when our bodies pass on our waste we are not returning these valuable minerals to the land from which they were extracted. In the future, this will be seen as a very dumb idea. I do my bit to avoid this waste where possible.
For my working life, I was a research scientist specializing in chemistry and physics in the dairy industry. I enjoyed my colleagues and projects immensely. However, I also enjoyed my free time and could fortunately quickly switch between the two and spent much of my free time bushwalking, windsurfing, camping, fishing, sailing and skiing.
Now that I am retired, euphorically so after 9 years, I can devote as much time as I like to my passions and have joined the Strzelecki Bush Walking Club where most members enjoy walking, but some also like bike riding, canoeing and skiing.
I particularly like the extended walks and backcountry Telemark skiing with overnight camping. These activities are much safer and so much fun when they are shared with a group of enthusiastic like-minded friends.
Tinkering with Tim
If you have got this far, you probably have an interest in the outdoors, adventuring, camping, backpacking, mountain walking and skiing. I have enjoyed these activities from my teens to mature age… “not so mature, but I am trying to avoid saying the word old”.
At first, I made my own equipment, as a student, to make it both affordable light and effective. Now as a retired research scientist I just do my equipment developments because I can and am somehow compelled to. It still gives me such pleasure.
I also should add that my pleasure is enhanced by finding very different solutions to problems especially if they are; lightweight, inexpensive, sustainable and use renewable and recycled resources.
I am spurred on by the wonderful array of hi-tech materials that the world has made so available for us all to use. I sparingly use them and where possible I re-use, discarded and pre-used items to make my DIY equipment. ‘hard rubbish’ or ‘street chuck-outs’ and opportunity shops are, to me, a treasure trove of materials and an inspiration to overcome design challenges.
If you are interested in my approach to tinkering, I think it comes down to a compulsion to analyse situations and see the opportunity for correction of misunderstandings or the potential to make improvements to how things are done.
In my science research career, I liked to take time-honoured science ‘rules’ that often had credibility by repetition by important learned people and I liked to turn them on their head by going back to first scientific principles and conducting experiments and analysis to establish better more logical rules.
In fairness, I never pulled down a ‘rule’ until I had a good replacement and always invited critical analysis of my new ‘rule’. I was not interested in marginal improvements and instead focused on big improvements.
I have been compelled to do what I have done. It comes from curiosity, focus (some would say obsession), education and delight in science, maths chemistry and physics.
My late father who had a limited education, that was typical of his times, was always interested in science, his thinking was ahead of his times on many issues and he enjoyed finding better ways of doing things and instilled these values in me. He generously allowed us kids to use his large workshop from a young age.
My mum was a whizz with a sewing machine and made many things with us from clothing, backpacks and yacht sails.
Just because I have retired, it does not mean that I have changed my ways of thinking, and I continue to enjoyably apply the same thinking to my hobbies, interests and activities. I am a bit of a geek and possibly a bit on the mild end of the Asperger spectrum and I love a bit of fun but I do not easily abide nonsense. This might help explain me.
“In the process of writing the content for my website, I find it clarifies my thinking (just like writing scientific papers did) and helps me separate ‘what I think I know’ from ‘what I know I know’.”
Consequently, even if no one ever reads this, I have benefited. Here is a little ode to my thinking and writing process;
They are just little gems each one so minimal,
Arriving, dreamlike as gifts subliminal,
Not planed or sought by rational thought,
Now to write them in an order logical.
If you read further expect to be challenged and in return, I will welcome comments and questions, based on logic if your thinking and analysis are different to mine
“We all have the right to be wrong”-— Mothy the mother of necessity. This is the ONLY way human processes are improved.
An ode to my to my chaotic writing;
They are vague nebulous dreams or ideas,
Until implemented, tested and shared with peers,
Through inciting thinking and writing,
Even then they may express like diarrhoeas.
I am building this website to share my crazy DIY projects with the small community of outdoor adventurers who may be interested. I will add posts on; ultralight outdoor wood-burning stoves, DIY high-temperature refractory coatings, tent stoves, ultralight cookware, folding kettle, alpine tents, food ideas, green ideas, DIY tools and recipes as time permits.
They will be published in individual posts and full articles for those who may be interested in the background and history of the development. I will update them from time to time as I correct my many mistakes and get a better understanding of the technology or product.
I hope you enjoy and I would welcome constructive comments and feedback and to hear about your tinkering on specific pages or posts. Alternatively, please send me a PM using my contact form at the left of the top menu bar. I go away on lots of trips, but I will get back to you.
One last laugh at my self
Being new to posting, I use a key phrase of ULTRALIGHT WOODSHED and was delighted a couple of days later that the post was on the top of the google search page. Then I was quite deflated, when my dear daughter said, ” Dad that’s not a great achievement as there would not be another creature in the known universe that would put those words together!”
An ode to the dilemma of key phrase selection:
My naive key phrases me thought terrific,
Found around the world, even across the insular–Pacific?
Then said my child as she generously smiled,
Who in the universe would search words that specific?
Tim
Addendum
My KISS stove in the link below has supplanted the above mentioned Miniature Dome stove. The KISS stove is now my lightest, simplest, hottest and most compact backpacking tent heating/cooking stove. It even has a telescopic screw-up flue pipe that fits inside the tiny fire dome.
Tim-
Glad I found this “Bio” on the site. You’re into a lot of fun things. A lot of us “Tinkerers” are a like for sure.
Is there a way to “subscribe” or get notifications with links when there are updates to your blog, or some asks a question and you respond?
Thanks!
Sorry for the barrage of questions throughout your site in the last week….Its like a rabbit hole!
-Brian
Hi Brian, Thanks for your kind comments and questions and I am glad that you are having fun in my ‘Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole’. I see that you have subscribed to my newsletter and that is the way that I usually introduce some new posts. I will look into how to make notifications about all new posts, post updates and even comments if that is possible. I would like to be able to put people such as yourself on such a mailing list without burdening all subscribers with too many emails that they don’t want. I will look into it.
Never any bad questions, just bad answers. Keep on tinkering,
Tim
Hey Tim. Looks like I can’t reply to your last reply
With the hunting, to be honest I haven’t been that successful. A lot of the issue is access to places to hunt-I used to have people constantly whinge about the deer on their properties so i thought it wouldn’t be too much trouble, but when you offer to do something about them its a different story. I started with bow as well, which is a hard way to go about achieving my main goals of just gathering meat and knocking down the ferals. So recently got firearms licence and have hit the state forests, which aren’t easy places given the deer are so spooky there. Have a local guy trying to rehabilitate his property, so he is keen for them to be gone but another difficult place to hunt. The animals I have taken home have really just been turned into steaks and mince as they do most of our normal meals. I figure jerky would make good food for out bush so keen to try that eventually.
I’ve managed to have a bit of a play with fan blowing into soup cans. I can see why you went for being able to lay long sticks through the stove like on the student stove. Doesn’t take long for the fuel load to get burnt up and breaking sticks up into little lengths isn’t real fun. I’ll hack up a can and try that next. Just trying to get a baseline of performance to see where I go from that. I’ll try smaller diameter air pipe next, as I always suspected what you said about it being air velocity rather than volume.
With the 555 timer, I always just assumed they were quite efficient, but after your comment I went and checked data sheet and confirmed what you said. I did find out though that there is a CMOS version that is waaay more efficient at 1mW power dissipation. I figure with that your battery savings would be substantial if running the fan at 50% duty cycle, but problem is it handles even less current so will need a transistor and that may bring things back down again. I just can’t help trying for efficiency, but I seem to love to over complicate things!
I was in the past trying to make a high power red LED torch which was going to run too hot. I killed 3 or 4 fans trying to set up cooling for that. Got a 2 watt fan now that I’m playing with for the stove
Anyway, back to planning online lessons….
Cheers
Stu
Hi Stuart, The many stray deer on my farm have mostly gone. Lead poisoning I think. Jerky is easy to make and I seal it in metallized plastic sachet or pouches. The metal gas barrier means that that it keeps forever without progressive oxidation (rancidity). This is described under Food Packing Ideas in https://timtinker.com/backpacking-food-ideas-recipes/
Small soup cans are too small, they will work but the fuel preparation as you have found out is tedious. Have you tried the ‘Studen Stove’ (tuna tin stove) https://timtinker.com/student-stove2/
Think of it as a flame powered axe, that just keeps cutting your sticks in half as you cook!
The blower cycle time is very tricky even if you could achieve low logic/switching current. It is not as simple as % of the time on or %off. With manual switching I found that I may only turn the fan on for 30sec and the have it off for some minutes until the net turbo phase is required. Hard to get machine logic to do that as well as have it survive in a backpack and a campsite.
Tim
Hey Tim. Love the blog you have here. You seem similar to myself in the tinkering department-I’m constantly fixing, improving, making, inventing, or trying some weird idea in garage for all of the activities I’m involved in. You are a fair bit further along in many of your techniques
I came across your site here when I was searching about hiking stoves. I’ve long liked the idea of using wood for cooking rather than carrying gas, but never looked too far into it. Recently came across the Kelly Kettle, which got my mind churning with ideas for making a light weight version that I could cook on also.
Given the type of food I make, I needed something more dedicated to cooking and boiling water, with more heat control. The rocket stove idea is just too tall for practical out bush as well I think, you don’t always have a flat surface to cook over such a tall stove.
Trying out ideas with tin cans and adjustable air holes for heat output gave me the idea of possibly using a small air blower so combustion takes place further down (less wind impact), which sent me to google and hence to here.
Been going over your whole site here looking at your ideas and solutions. Really interesting to see the things you have come up with.
Appreciate the time you have taken to write it all down here. Saves reinventing the wheel for me in a lot of cases.
I’m sure I’m have things to say on specific pages for various things here, but just thought I better say how much I appreciate your effort to document all of this
Hi Stuart, Thanks for your interest and kind comments. I am happy that you have enjoyed my posts and I would appreciate any comments or questions on the particular pages. Yes, it takes a tinkerer to know another one. Improving and inventing for me is a compulsion that I have enjoyed from my childhood, scientific work-life and now retirement. I suspect that you may be similar.
Regarding twig stoves, the blower adds magic to cooking with wood fuel (even with rain and wet wood). I hope you have read my post about my Miniature Dome Stove three-in-stove. It is a very versatile and squat stove that lives in its own cooking pot.https://timtinker.com/miniature-dome-stove-a-three-in-one-stove/
Regards & stay safe from the virus,
Tim
Thanks Tim.
I’m keen to try the blower once I get a chance and energy to have a play. I’ve checked out your dome stove-very impressed! At the moment I’m more keen on something like your small outside styles. That’s the sort of thing I’m going for initially. Interested to see how long tin cans hold up to the conditions
I’ve got science background myself also, currently working as a teacher. Which is lucky, because I’ve recently found out that makes me somehow immune to the virus!
Hi Stuart, Good luck with immunity via teaching, it sounds as likely as injecting yourself with bleach! I thought that one of our politicians (Peter Dutton) who is just so ‘headbanging nasty’ that he would be immune as no self-respecting virus would reproduce in him. But I was wrong.
I presume you have ready my blower stove posts and the tuna tin stove https://timtinker.com/student-stove2/ will last a WE trip or more with care if cleaned and oiled after use. They cost nothing, and even if they fail you can still fall back on a rock stove https://timtinker.com/rock-n-hole-stoves/ or a hole-in-the-ground stove https://timtinker.com/rock-n-hole-stoves/. many options. Please let me know if you would like to purchase one of my tiny fire blower units to get you started. They are cheap and as an introductory deal, I will throw in a spare fan ( that you probably never use, but I take one jus-in-case), compact and robust. They are one of my sweetest inventions and at ~50g I never go bush without one, even if it is just to start a campfire under horrid condition or to start a fire in a cold wet fireplace in a mountain hut. Where are you from?
Regards & stay safe,
Tim
Thanks Tim.
Haha-Peter Dutton!
Yes, the student stove was the direction I was looking at going. I think I’ve read all of the pages here while procrastinating! I thought of starting with tins, and once I settle on design principles I’m happy with make something maybe a little heavier but longer lasting (maybe SS coffee milk jugs or similar).
I didn’t realise you were selling things also-I thought there would be interest in at least a few of the things you make. I’ve actually got a fair few laptop fans here that I was going to start with, but once I burn them out (i seem to have a habit of killing them for some reason) I’ll get in contact.
I was pondering a fan controller with astable 555 timer as well, with variable resistor to control pulse times. i thought that might reduce power usage a bit and give more control, but more to go wrong. Be nice to find a fan that draws under 200ma to mean you don’t need to drive through transistor though. I should discuss that on the appropriate page once I’ve had a play though.
I’m from Wollongong area in NSW, so a fair bit north of you. I used to spend a lot of time fishing, which took me to many different places, but in the past 5yrs I’ve gained an interest in hunting also-DIY meat and dropping feral animal numbers were the main drivers of that interest. I sometimes get the urge to just get bush for no other reason, but mostly its in combination with some other interest. I back onto the Illawarra escarpment here, so I’m keen soon to spend time up there by walking out my back gate. Just got to see how I’m feeling at the time, but need to get away somewhere soon!
Thanks again
Stuart
Hi Stuart, Light ss pots make a good start $1-2 at an opportunity shop. If you procrastinate long enough you can always get a fully functional fire blower from me. Manual switch pulsing was the best I could do, as I say in my post that “…the quiescent and active current will largely nullify any battery energy saving.\”.
https://timtinker.com/extending-battery-life-for-blower-stove/
My fans have done very well. I’ve killed only two. I melted my first one. The blower tube was just too short and the heat was too strong! The second had the wires ripped off, but it was luckily at the end of an Easter walk over Mt Bogong. Both weaknesses are addressed now.
The hunting sounds good. Do you make jerky? I do quite a bit of fishing and use it for regular meals year-round. Nice to be able to bushwalk out the back gate. It will be good when we can go off for overnight trips again.
Regards,
Tim