| Main knowledge bank page |
Recent additions |
Recent changes |
What links here |
Categories |
Category cloud How-to guides | Organisation profiles | Project profiles | |
Grants Cooking Stove for Large Groups[top] [end]The Mechanics' Magazine - 1855, Excerpt from Google Book Search
Very great care and scientific skill has been shown by Captain Grant in so arranging the parts as to provide for all the circumstances to which the action of the heat is likely to give rise, such as the expansion of the metals, &c. Thus the fire-doors, F, are made slightly narrower than the space between the brickwork enclosing them, the doors being fixed in their positions by means of studs below and above taking respectively into recesses in mortise-bars, G, which sustain the doors, and into the covering plates, E, which are over them. The intensity of the fires ia regulated by means of balanced dampers suspended over pulleys placed one against each side of the chimney. These dampers are somewhat narrower than the flues, so that the draught may never, by mismanagement, be wholly stopped ; and, being balanced, may be raised or lowered aa occasion requires. The saucepans, D, are fitted with handles, placed so as not to get heated, and with moveable chambers for steaming, &c. Means are provided for removing the chimney of an ordinary camp cooking-apparatus of this description, and for placing in its stead another having space in it to receive a large portable oven for baking. In this arrangement the flues are arranged so as to bring the heated gases into close and continuous contact with the oven, and the flue above is contracted towards its lower part in order to prolong the time during which this contact continues, and thus to abstract as much of the heat as possible from the gases before they pass off. The saving in fuel effected by the employment of this invention is very considerable. At the Aldershot Camp, where the cooking houses are all on this plan, the food for thirty thousand men is prepared with a consumption of coal amounting only to half-a-pound per day for each man, the cost being one-half penny per man a week. As this system of cooking is likely to be extensively used in large private establishments, it may be well to state that it is important that the brick-work in the fireplaces and flues should be well constructed; the former should be carefully built with fire-brick and fire-clay, and the latter laid correctly and level, in order that the iron plates which rover the work may have a true and equal bearing, for where this is neglected, the operation of cooking is not only materially impeded, but the intense heat of the fires soon deranges the imperfect brick-work. Before the fires are lighted all the ventilators should be opened, and the dampers raised. Those of the kettles or saucepans which are nearest the fires will, if the latter be properly lighted, boil in about half-an-hour from the time of lighting them; those farthest from the fires should then exchange places with these, the ventilators being at the same time closed and the dampers lowered, by which means the draft will be checked, and the whole of the vessels kept simmering until the cooking is completed. [top] [end]ContributorsUser:William Hatcher 4 March 2008 | |
Page created:
04 March 2008; Last edited:
20 March 2008; Version: 3 | |
Pagename: GrantsCookingStoveForLargeGroups @HEDON: RCJA | |
