My name is Bob Tilden, and I am an addict. As long as I can remember, back into the middle of the last century, I have been fascinated by pipes, tanks, wires, and gadgets that whirr, clack, and rumble. For all my adult life I have collected mechanical and electrical junk just so that it would be available for use in some project someday. I was fascinated the moment I first saw the processor that a friend had assembled; I tried to ignore how much I wanted to build one, and at the beginning of 2008 I started construction on the processor pictured below.

Cooking bio- diesel is a hobby for me. I started doing it as an excuse to build the production equipment. I continue it because I enjoy working the process and because it presents me with an ongoing excuse to build even more equipment. I am happy to produce a 25 gallon batch each week; enough fuel to feed my 1983 Mercedes 300D and to provide winter heat for my workshop. I have a full- time job which keeps me from getting into too much more trouble than that.

I originally posted this website in July 2008, mostly as a way to look more "legitimate" than the other hill- country guys who were running around town in old pickup trucks, scrounging oil. Just as much as boi-diesel people want dependable sources of oil, restaruanters want a dependable way to get rid of their old oil. The history is that back- yard biodieselers come and go, and that their enthusiasm builds and fades with the coming and going of the summer months.

This past summer I was able to make enough bio-diesel to give me a good "cushion" for the next year. Production is now just a few batches a month, and my supply of good oil pretty well matches my needs. Just as I suspected, my time spent cooking has diminished, but I still have an excuse to tinker around with stuff from the scrap yard. This winter I am working on better ways to handle the incoming oil and to make better use of the by- procucts.