blokenoname
DIY Log Dabbler 😁🪵💪💨💨💨
Making the body was probably the most time consuming part. The rest is relatively easy going now.
HEATER COVER & CORK BASE
Like the HI, Woodscents and Nano, my 'Mitsty Pine' log has an open core. Meaning, it uses a short piece of stainless steel tubing to set the heater into as a core, which is insulated only by a small air gap of about 1-1,5 cm width an all sides from the surrounding wood. This results in a fast heat up time of < 10 minutes, while the heated up steel tubing and wood (once it gets heat saturated), still provide enough thermal mass, to make for great heat retention and fast recovery by means of a thermal flywheel effect, which allows for consecutive heavy hitting without cooling out the core too much.
So, get out the tube cutter and cut some steel from your 10 mm OD ss tubing. As the upper core boring is about 6 cm deep, you'll need a piece of roughly the same length. As your core boring will be most likely not exactly 6 cm deep (when you work handheld, that is), but more along the lines of 5,5 or 5,8 or even 6,2 cm, you've to feel out the exact length of your cover a bit by trial and error. The tip of the ss heater tube should end just a few mm below the rim of the body, to prevent you from accidental burning when reaching for the log.
Then take your readily cut piece of ss tubing and make a dimple with the tube cutter, about 2 cm from its top end. This is forming the heater port. To do that, just fixate the tube cutter 2 cm from the upper end of the tube and turn it round a few times, until a dimple forms in the steel. Stop when it seems deep enough without actually cutting the steel through. This will form a ledge on the inside of the tube, which will later on serve as a stop for your stems and ss tips. Most tube cutters neatly round off the edges of a fresh cut automatically. While this is great for making ss tips, you'll probably need to (re)widen the top edge of the heater cover (where you made the dimple), to make your 9 mm OD ss tips fit into the cover again. To do that, simply use the nose of your needle nose pliers, stick it into the top end of your heater cover and give it a few twists, while pressing down forcefully. Be careful not to widen too much, as otherwise your tips will rattle around in the heater port. And also don't make it too snug, as otherwise you'll have problems getting tips in and out, when the steel expands from the heat. Take a piece of your 9 mm OD ss tubing and check frequently after a few twists, for an easy going fit.
You can also build the heater cover in two different ways. For what I call the 'basic air-path', your work on the heater cover is more or less done now. It will be set into the upper core boring of your log and ambient air will enter the heater cover through its bottom opening through a 10 mm hole in the bottom of the log, that later gets secured by a ss debris screen, to protect you from dust and dirt particles. This will result in nice, dense & fat clouds with virtually no danger of accidentally combusting, apart from having a clogged screen or overstuffed bowl, or otherwise blocking airflow and so cause overheating. I've no way of measuring, but as an informed guess, I'd say the log reaches ~210-220°C here.
The other way is using @Alan s 'Heat Island Technology', which utilizes a shorter air path in combination with already preheated ambient air, sucked in through sits in the sides of the ss heater cover itself, while the bottom of the unit gets sealed up. To do that, you simply cut three slits around the sides of the heater cover with your steel saw, about 2 cm from its bottom end. This will result in a log, running a few degrees hotter (220-230°C, I'd say) and may be more ideal for use through glass/water. For dry use, you'll probably have to work a bit on your technique first, to avoid accidental combustion, which can happen more easily here, as with the basic air path. So start with inserting your tip only a quarter or half way and go for a faster draw speed at first, ready for pulling the tip back a bit ir even out of the port, when you notice the vapor getting too hot. Then reinsert and work your way deeper with consecutive hits. You'll get it eventually.
I personally like the ones with the basic air path better, as I prefer dry use and so can insert my tip fully from the beginning and take deep & slow easy hits, without having to think too much about technique. But to each his/her own and so you've to experiment, what you personally like better
Cork base is easy. Take one of your nearly fitting corks and cut a disk of about 1-1,5 cm hight. File/sand down until its diameter is fitting for your 2,5 cm core boring. You want the cork base sitting really snug, but again not too snug (too snug is, when the cork starts buckling and warping while pressing down). Drill a 8 mm hole into the centre of the base and see, that it is aligned with the 10 mm hole at the bottom of your core boring in the body. Now work your 10 mm ss heater cover into the slightly smaller 8 mm centre hole of the cork base for a good interference fit. The bottom end of the heater cover should be snug with the bottom of the cork base and not touch the wood (but you and the log will survive and not going straight to hell, if it accidentally reaches down into the wooden hole a few mm nevertheless), then set the base into the core boring of the body and push it down to its bottom. I use a piece of old 15 mm aluminum tubing for that, so that the protruding heater cover can slip into the tube and then carefully push base and cover down into the core boring with the rim of the tube.
If you are not afraid of silicone and want to secure the heater cover even more and also protect the cork a bit more from the heat, you can make the hole in the cork base a bit larger and put a 1 cm ring of high temp med grade silicone tubing around the base of the heater cover before fitting it in.
In both cases, see that you get it right the first time, as there's no good way to get the cork base out again without breaking it. So you will have to cut a new one, but even that takes only a few minutes.
RESISTOR & CIRCUIT
The electricity part...
If you can really call it that, that is
What you're building here, isn't more complicated than soldering a tiny light bulb (resistor) with two wires (leads) to a 4,5 lantern battery as a power source (in our case only to the DC jack, of course), building makeshift torches as kids.
Take the resistor, grab one lead, bent it down and wind it around the resistor core till its end is parallel to the other lead. Cut two 5 cm pieces of your chosen wire, take a splice and crimp it to the shorter lead, you've just bent down and then put one of the cut wire pieces into the other end of the splice and crimp it down too. Repeat with the other lead (though this might not be necessary, depending on the actual hight of the body, you made). You can leave it that way, or additionally solder splices and leads with some lead free high temp tin/copper or tin/copper/silver solder. Or you forgo the splices altogether and just solder the leads. PD's Tom shows you how this is done in an old vid, a page before this one <<<
Now thread your DC jack into the hole at the side of the log body's bottom end and heat up your soldering iron.
Turn the log body on its head and stuff the ready assembled heater into the heating cover/tube, the extended leads pointing towards you. The tip of the heater should just reach up until below the ledge/ridge you've cut into the top end of the heater cover, leaving about 1,5-2 cm of free space in the tube, which then forms the heater port, that will take in your ss tips.
After finding the correct hight for the heater to be set in, now mark that hight at the level of the DC jack on the leads. Pull out the heater and bent the leads in a 90° angle with your pliers on that mark. Cut the bent ends, but make sure they are still long enough, to reach from the heating tube in the centre to the leads of the DC jack, sitting in the wall of the body. Now put the heater back into the cover again and solder it to the jack.
I usually have the originally longer and unbent lead of the resistor soldered to + (that's the round pin in the middle of the jack) and make sure, it nowhere touches the other lead or the steel of the heater cover itself. The bent lead may touch the heater cover (as long, as the other one doesn't) but must never touch the other lead, otherwise it'll short out. No big deal with 12V, but it'll result in a non functional unit or your log starts 'singing' even. So be careful nevertheless.
I solder the bent lead to the - (that is the flat pin at the side of the jack), because that pin is more flexible and can be bent with the pliers to adjust, if a lead causes a short out. Usually a quick check with a magnifying glass against the light is enough to make sure, nothing touches where it isn't supposed to touch. Then I double check with a PS, that indicates short outs with a blinking LED.
Ok. All that remains is taking one of the 15 mm ss screens and form a kind of bucket screen out of it for the debris screen. I form it around a piece of 9 mm tubing and rework with the pliers and then insert it into the heater port, wiggling it downwards towards the resistor, with the flat bottom of the bucket towards me, until the folded rim of the bucket encloses the tip of the resistor from all sides. Like ~2 cm deep in, where the ledge is.
Then you'll need to close up the bottom by cutting and sanding a fitting cork disk, and plugging the bottom with it. Remember to cut a hole into the cork for air intake and to set a screen into it, when you go for the 'basic air path' option with the heater cover. I usually cover up the cork and wood with a piece of black felt with an adhesive backing then (remember the air intake), that can be easily removed and reapplied, if need be.
That was it. Enjoy your DIY log 
HEATER COVER & CORK BASE
Like the HI, Woodscents and Nano, my 'Mitsty Pine' log has an open core. Meaning, it uses a short piece of stainless steel tubing to set the heater into as a core, which is insulated only by a small air gap of about 1-1,5 cm width an all sides from the surrounding wood. This results in a fast heat up time of < 10 minutes, while the heated up steel tubing and wood (once it gets heat saturated), still provide enough thermal mass, to make for great heat retention and fast recovery by means of a thermal flywheel effect, which allows for consecutive heavy hitting without cooling out the core too much.
So, get out the tube cutter and cut some steel from your 10 mm OD ss tubing. As the upper core boring is about 6 cm deep, you'll need a piece of roughly the same length. As your core boring will be most likely not exactly 6 cm deep (when you work handheld, that is), but more along the lines of 5,5 or 5,8 or even 6,2 cm, you've to feel out the exact length of your cover a bit by trial and error. The tip of the ss heater tube should end just a few mm below the rim of the body, to prevent you from accidental burning when reaching for the log.
Then take your readily cut piece of ss tubing and make a dimple with the tube cutter, about 2 cm from its top end. This is forming the heater port. To do that, just fixate the tube cutter 2 cm from the upper end of the tube and turn it round a few times, until a dimple forms in the steel. Stop when it seems deep enough without actually cutting the steel through. This will form a ledge on the inside of the tube, which will later on serve as a stop for your stems and ss tips. Most tube cutters neatly round off the edges of a fresh cut automatically. While this is great for making ss tips, you'll probably need to (re)widen the top edge of the heater cover (where you made the dimple), to make your 9 mm OD ss tips fit into the cover again. To do that, simply use the nose of your needle nose pliers, stick it into the top end of your heater cover and give it a few twists, while pressing down forcefully. Be careful not to widen too much, as otherwise your tips will rattle around in the heater port. And also don't make it too snug, as otherwise you'll have problems getting tips in and out, when the steel expands from the heat. Take a piece of your 9 mm OD ss tubing and check frequently after a few twists, for an easy going fit.
You can also build the heater cover in two different ways. For what I call the 'basic air-path', your work on the heater cover is more or less done now. It will be set into the upper core boring of your log and ambient air will enter the heater cover through its bottom opening through a 10 mm hole in the bottom of the log, that later gets secured by a ss debris screen, to protect you from dust and dirt particles. This will result in nice, dense & fat clouds with virtually no danger of accidentally combusting, apart from having a clogged screen or overstuffed bowl, or otherwise blocking airflow and so cause overheating. I've no way of measuring, but as an informed guess, I'd say the log reaches ~210-220°C here.
The other way is using @Alan s 'Heat Island Technology', which utilizes a shorter air path in combination with already preheated ambient air, sucked in through sits in the sides of the ss heater cover itself, while the bottom of the unit gets sealed up. To do that, you simply cut three slits around the sides of the heater cover with your steel saw, about 2 cm from its bottom end. This will result in a log, running a few degrees hotter (220-230°C, I'd say) and may be more ideal for use through glass/water. For dry use, you'll probably have to work a bit on your technique first, to avoid accidental combustion, which can happen more easily here, as with the basic air path. So start with inserting your tip only a quarter or half way and go for a faster draw speed at first, ready for pulling the tip back a bit ir even out of the port, when you notice the vapor getting too hot. Then reinsert and work your way deeper with consecutive hits. You'll get it eventually.
I personally like the ones with the basic air path better, as I prefer dry use and so can insert my tip fully from the beginning and take deep & slow easy hits, without having to think too much about technique. But to each his/her own and so you've to experiment, what you personally like better
Cork base is easy. Take one of your nearly fitting corks and cut a disk of about 1-1,5 cm hight. File/sand down until its diameter is fitting for your 2,5 cm core boring. You want the cork base sitting really snug, but again not too snug (too snug is, when the cork starts buckling and warping while pressing down). Drill a 8 mm hole into the centre of the base and see, that it is aligned with the 10 mm hole at the bottom of your core boring in the body. Now work your 10 mm ss heater cover into the slightly smaller 8 mm centre hole of the cork base for a good interference fit. The bottom end of the heater cover should be snug with the bottom of the cork base and not touch the wood (but you and the log will survive and not going straight to hell, if it accidentally reaches down into the wooden hole a few mm nevertheless), then set the base into the core boring of the body and push it down to its bottom. I use a piece of old 15 mm aluminum tubing for that, so that the protruding heater cover can slip into the tube and then carefully push base and cover down into the core boring with the rim of the tube.
If you are not afraid of silicone and want to secure the heater cover even more and also protect the cork a bit more from the heat, you can make the hole in the cork base a bit larger and put a 1 cm ring of high temp med grade silicone tubing around the base of the heater cover before fitting it in.
In both cases, see that you get it right the first time, as there's no good way to get the cork base out again without breaking it. So you will have to cut a new one, but even that takes only a few minutes.
RESISTOR & CIRCUIT
The electricity part...
If you can really call it that, that is
What you're building here, isn't more complicated than soldering a tiny light bulb (resistor) with two wires (leads) to a 4,5 lantern battery as a power source (in our case only to the DC jack, of course), building makeshift torches as kids.
Take the resistor, grab one lead, bent it down and wind it around the resistor core till its end is parallel to the other lead. Cut two 5 cm pieces of your chosen wire, take a splice and crimp it to the shorter lead, you've just bent down and then put one of the cut wire pieces into the other end of the splice and crimp it down too. Repeat with the other lead (though this might not be necessary, depending on the actual hight of the body, you made). You can leave it that way, or additionally solder splices and leads with some lead free high temp tin/copper or tin/copper/silver solder. Or you forgo the splices altogether and just solder the leads. PD's Tom shows you how this is done in an old vid, a page before this one <<<
Now thread your DC jack into the hole at the side of the log body's bottom end and heat up your soldering iron.
Turn the log body on its head and stuff the ready assembled heater into the heating cover/tube, the extended leads pointing towards you. The tip of the heater should just reach up until below the ledge/ridge you've cut into the top end of the heater cover, leaving about 1,5-2 cm of free space in the tube, which then forms the heater port, that will take in your ss tips.
After finding the correct hight for the heater to be set in, now mark that hight at the level of the DC jack on the leads. Pull out the heater and bent the leads in a 90° angle with your pliers on that mark. Cut the bent ends, but make sure they are still long enough, to reach from the heating tube in the centre to the leads of the DC jack, sitting in the wall of the body. Now put the heater back into the cover again and solder it to the jack.
I usually have the originally longer and unbent lead of the resistor soldered to + (that's the round pin in the middle of the jack) and make sure, it nowhere touches the other lead or the steel of the heater cover itself. The bent lead may touch the heater cover (as long, as the other one doesn't) but must never touch the other lead, otherwise it'll short out. No big deal with 12V, but it'll result in a non functional unit or your log starts 'singing' even. So be careful nevertheless.
I solder the bent lead to the - (that is the flat pin at the side of the jack), because that pin is more flexible and can be bent with the pliers to adjust, if a lead causes a short out. Usually a quick check with a magnifying glass against the light is enough to make sure, nothing touches where it isn't supposed to touch. Then I double check with a PS, that indicates short outs with a blinking LED.
Ok. All that remains is taking one of the 15 mm ss screens and form a kind of bucket screen out of it for the debris screen. I form it around a piece of 9 mm tubing and rework with the pliers and then insert it into the heater port, wiggling it downwards towards the resistor, with the flat bottom of the bucket towards me, until the folded rim of the bucket encloses the tip of the resistor from all sides. Like ~2 cm deep in, where the ledge is.
Then you'll need to close up the bottom by cutting and sanding a fitting cork disk, and plugging the bottom with it. Remember to cut a hole into the cork for air intake and to set a screen into it, when you go for the 'basic air path' option with the heater cover. I usually cover up the cork and wood with a piece of black felt with an adhesive backing then (remember the air intake), that can be easily removed and reapplied, if need be.
That was it. Enjoy your DIY log
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