Great, but are you going to tell us what you learned?

We made maple syrup here for 10 years using a homemade evaporator.
http://www.spaco.org/ms.htm


I tried steel grates (re-rod) but a 5/8" diameter rod dissapears in
about a year. So I finally broke down and bought cast iron grates.
They seem to last forever except if you EVER let the ashes pile up
underneath enough to touch the cast iron. Then they sag.
So I certainly agree that cast iron is better. Of course the
evaporator fire is kept VERY hot. We were after a stack temperature
of 550 to 750 degrees F.

Pete Stanaitis
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I also wondered why cast iron was preferred in such applications. I
asked a lot of people about that, finally got a good answer from a
boiler and firebox design engineer.