Daily tobacco leaf-chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1890-1895, 1892-04-29
TO BURN WASTE STRAW.
An Ingenious Brooklyn Man Has Devised
Simple Method of Using Weeds.

IA Simple Method of Using Weeds.
In little shop just opposite the entranc'
to the Fulton ferry can be seen unique
invention in which number of well known
BroOklynites are interested. 1t is the straw
burning stove, invented by Mr.. G. b. Field
which he claims is destined to revolutionizt
the fuel question in the far west. AS Il
| generally understood, one of the grea
hardships of the winter in the west is thu
lack of fuel of any kind and the great ex
pense of bringing it from the abundance o.
other sections of the country. Another
agricultural difficulty is what to do with
the waste straw and weeds about a farm
Mr.. Field contends that he has solved bott
problems or rather that he can make the
last solve the former. His process is very
| simple, and, as he gave practical demon
stration of it to a reporter, it certainly
seems to carry out all he claims for it.
Every farmer has lot of waste straw
grass and weeds that is useless for fuel il
burned in the ordinary way, but Mr.. Fields
way is not the ordinary way. 1t is very
easy way when you see how he does it, like
the famous standing egg of the Genoese
disooverer. He takes any kind of hay
grass, weeds or straw, the ordinary day
farm refuse, and cuts it up in common
hay cutter. Then he puts it in what he
calls retort, sheet iron cylinder about
the size of the everyday ashcan that fills
our streets when the carts go round A
retort holds eighteen or twenty pounds of
the cut straw pressed down and packed
tightly.
There is an ordinary stove CRATE at the
bottom Of the retort and before he begins
tn in nj - &c ~,
the center round stick about four inches
in diameter. This is the little joker of the
whole scheme. When the retort is full he
pulls the stick out, and of course it leaves
a hole through the center of the mass. The
consequence is very important. 1t makes
a central draft for his combustion when he
sets the straw on fire. and every one who
uses one of the central draft lamps can ap.
preciate the benefit of this intense heat and
fire.
Now, having packed his weeds into the
retort he next puts into what is an ordi-
nary stove, except that in place of fire
box and CRATE, such as we find in the coal
burning kind he has a compartment large
enough to hold the retort, which is about
twenty-eight inches high and eighteen
inches in diameter.
Iulo 10 llhC u DlS5 ONtil anu ClOScS WlGL u
door which takes up one end of the stove
The other end is divided into two ovens,
one for baking, the other for heating. The
top Of the stove does kot differ from the
ordinary kind being divided up into six
pot holes, with the usual lids. Having put
in the retOrt full of the cut weeds, he opens
a little door ut the bottom of the stove, ap-
plies match and the fire is made. The
hole in the middle of the packed mass
makes a central draft fire that in few
moments generates carbonic and nitrogen
gases, which, igniting, make an intense
heat. The straw burns slowly from the
bottom up, the twenty pounds Of weeds
lasting about four hours and giving a fire
that will cook, heat, boil, broil, or do any
thing that an ordinary stove will do and at
a cost that is only the collection of the
waste about the farm.
The reporter saw one of them burn for
two hours and the contents were then not
half consumed. 1t was most interesting
operation, Every one knows how difficult
ordinary way even to merely destroy them.
Here they are not only reduced to fine
ashes but made to serve all the needs of
the farmer for fuel, cooking or other do
mestic purposes. There is no complicated
machinery, no elaborate process of prepa-
ration; you merely, as it were, put a lot of
straw or weeds into an iron ashcan, place
it in another square iron box and your
stove and fire are ready.-Brooklyn Eagle,