It’s cute as hell and is an actual running gas engine, that isn’t a whole lot bigger than your hand.
I saw this yesterday and when I looked, I saw prices anywhere from $450 to $700.
When I looked again today, the cheapest I saw was $550.
It’s obviously a very cool toy but you could actually use it to pump water with or power up some LED lights when you went camping and such as a novelty.
You would certainly be the only one around who had such a thing.
This guy has a very cool set up powering some lights and a tiny Jeweler’s Lathe with it in his shop.
One of the advantages(?) of being unemployed is that I can’t afford to get too creative.
Do a search for “sterling engine” on that site.
All kinds a neat shit. Low temp sterling engines aren’t good for much, but the rest of the results could hurt my wallet.
I gave up on wanting a Stirling engine when inverter generators became so inexpensive and quiet. Powers two freezers, a fridge, and some LED lights for a tenth of a gallon of gas an hour. Before I put it away, I run it dry with a cup of the $6/quart fancy gas and next time it starts right up.
At our age, fuck justification.
“I wants it, my precious.” is a good enough reason.
Silicon (Sig) Greybeard can build it
So … you want the best gravestone in the cemetery or that?
Remember they don’t put pockets in shrouds.
You can find small gas engines for less than $200 if you look around.
Horse power?
Take a look at a book called “Trustee from the Toolroom,” printed in 1960. It’s British, and a bit slow-moving by modern standards, but it involves an older retired guy who has to travel from England to Polynesia to settle his deceased brother’s estate. But he’s barely scraping by, and he can’t come up with the money to pay for the trip.
His hobby is making things in his little basement workshop and writing articles about his projects to sell to a “model engineer” magazine. He doesn’t know anybody… but people all over the world know of *him*, and he basically couch-surfs halfway around the world.
He carries one of his little projects with him – a tiny gasoline engine and generator, that powers a light bulb. Small enough to carry in a pocket. Basically, an internal combustion flashlight.