older vets will remember this metal

Lloyd,

Yeah, but now you need to get two more: wash, rinse and rinse, as I recall.

Northe

Northe fired this volley in news:Wni_i.2853$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe10.phx:

One more. Hot soap, hot rinse, cold rinse. When cookie left the soap out of #1, he could make soup for the next meal.

LLoyd

Memories of my six years in the Utah National Guard. My enlistment expired in '62. As I recall, they are relatively simple devices, gasoline being the fuel.

Surely, those immersion heaters must go back at least to WW II, eh?

Harold

We used them in both regular army and army reserve. I got out in '73. We had C-rations dated in the '50's

"Harold and Susan Vordos" fired this volley

"Relatively simple" goes way beyond the complexity of them.

They're a "doughnut" shaped burner/heater that goes in the bottom of the can. There's a single baffle that seals off the gallery in the doughnut between the downdraft tube and the chimney.

A drip of gas falls onto a grate in the down tube, burns, and shoots the flame all the way around the doughnut to the chimney side, where the updraft keeps the action going.

The ones I worked in 'Nam didn't have any moving parts except the spigot valve to control the gas drip. This "new" one has a swing-out igniter pot in the chimney designed to help establish the updraft.

We just threw a wad of burning paper down the chimney, dripped a little gas in the down tube, and after about a minute of heating the chimney, threw a match down on the gas. It turns out that's a LOT easier way to start the beast than the documented method in the manual.

Yeah... no moving parts, all welded construction, plain old merchant stock steel sheet metal so you could fix them in the field, no 'custom' parts -- all stock pipe fittings, etc.

LLoyd

One rinse would suffice if they'd used Dawn or Joy rather than that yellow bar soap. It was good for poison ivy, though.

Heater,immersion, M-67,liquid-fuel fired, for corrugated cans. The heat output of those heaters is impressive: to heat 32 gallons of water from 50F to boiling in 30 minutes takes about 86,000 BTU/hr or about 25 kilowatts. Burning gasoline produces about 124,000 BTU/gallon, though some of that goes up the little stack.

Don Foreman fired this volley in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

That was the one thing that surprised me. I don't ever recall "trying out" touching the stack when I was in nam. Last night, I did. It gets hot enough to hurt, but barely hot enough to burn skin. It's pretty amazing that they are able to extract that much energy from the fuel in that simple an affair.

I also never remembered seeing more than one or two sections of stovepipe on the ones in country. This one has eight feet of pipe. That will increase the draft, and might add to the efficiency.

LLoyd

Probably not, and certainly not wildly available mid war. My father was badly burned in a laundry accident during the war and spent months on a hospital ship. Perhaps this helped inspire there invention?

That the one with two stacks coming out of a squared section donut?

Ever leave one dripping for the poor bugger that had to go and light them?

Ever stuffed a roll of moon floss into the stack?

Evil fun!

If this one is at all like the ones I was around, I always figured them for a bit large. I considered building a smaller one, to heat 5 or

10 gallos for hot showers in the hunt camp, and the like, but technology, in the form of an electric pumping, propane fired shower heater takes the real need away.

Good score, at $50. Dunno if a good scrounge could build a decent working one for that, all said and done.

Cheers Trevor Jones

Interesting. I had simply assumed they were quite old, considering the vast majority of the equipment we had while I was in the guard was WW II era stuff. Even our trusty old jeeps. The CO had a more modern version, however.

I was a member of the 625th MP Co. ----our sidearm was the 45 ACP ---and judging from their dreadful condition, likely from WW I. :-)

I'll never forget the reaming I got when we were at the firing line, for qualification, and told to squeeze off one round. Mine managed two, but only one pull of the trigger. I had to do a serious amount of explaining-----"honest, Sir, I really pulled it only once". Full auto, but on its own terms.

I sure as hell don't miss those days.

Harold

When dad was stationed in Germany in the early 60's, he brought home some kind of rations that were being disposed of. The thought of the round tins of big crackers and peanut butter still makes me salivate today.

Wes

The heaters (known as "Herman Nelson") we had in Paradise all featured the swing out door. At one LZ (Pony) I appropriated a HN from a neighboring 105 battery. We constructed a shower stall of 105 ammo boxes topped with a corrugated can and HN- w/ pull chain showerhead in the bottom. Payed the locals 1/2 buck to fill it everyday. That was gracious livin'.

According to Harold and Susan Vordos :

[ ... ]

You were *lucky*. A place where I used to go to shoot had an accident. One fellow brought in a very worn .45 ACP which he had inherited, loaded up a clip and put it in. When he pulled the slide latch, it proceed to load and fire each round in rapid sequence, before he could shift to get a better grip. As a result, the weapon pivoted on the web of his thumb climbing with each round until the last two shots went into his head and chest. He did *not* survive that.

It sounds as though yours was very close to that stage.

Enjoy, DoN.

It also sounds like I was lucky!

Thanks , DoN.

Harold

The lesson might be, when trying out an unknown weapon, first load a single round & see what happens. If that works, load 2 rounds & try again...

Chuckle!

Apparently you've never been in the service, not even the guard.

What you do is what you're told, in exactly the sequence that is prescribed.

I agree with your thoughts------it's just that as a private, you can't exercise any options.

Harold