Subject: [Homestead] Home busiiness, making hand warmers
Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2004 15:19:59 -0700
You don't have to go the fuel-cell route to generate internal
heat----use a small platinum wire catalyst and a valve to expose
methanol vapors to it. The platinum wire will glow red hot as it
converts the CH_4 O methanol vapors into CH_2 O formaldehyde. Turn
off the methanol valve to turn off heat generation. Need a (tight) cap
on the methanol reservoir through which you can pour more methanol as it
is used up. No patents to worry about in this quite old application
Another, cheaper catalyst might work to replace expensive
platinum---haven't looked into it, or cost of small platinum wire either.
Any metal stamping shop could make the two-piece steel stamping per your
fairly crude hand drawings or a little more explicit written desires.
Several ways to assemble stampings, might join by resistance-welding,
spot-welding. A good shop might do a few trial-and-error runs to get
something that works and appears reliable, but probably not many. You
should conduct your long-term reliability tests before you put a lot of
them on the market, and product liability insurance would be a very good
idea in any event.
Good, if very seasonal, home business product. A note, once you
accumulate a dealer list it is fairly easy to shove other products
through it.
[Homestead] Home busiiness, making hand warmers,
Tvoivozhd, 09/10/2004