in my workshop, the primary source of heat in the winter is a wood burner made out of an old gas bottle. there's a couple of reasons for this, one is the guy in the workshop next to me is a carpenter, so there's always a surplus of good quality, dry firewood going for free, and the other is another guy on site has a surplus of large gas bottles, as he cant return any that are dented/damaged.
last year, id only just moved into this workshop, so the first one I had was thrown together very quickly, just to get some heat in the place, as it was bloody freezing. it consisted of a 4ft gas bottle laid down with the bottom stand cut off, the bottom end cut off, flipped round and hung as a door by welding on a bug door hinge, then a scrap steel wheel cut in half and welded to the bottom at each end, as a stand. it then had a peice of stainless flue pipe cut and shut with 2 45deg bends, to send the chimney straight up and out the roof. it was very basic, the draught was adjusted by propping the door open with an offcut of steel, and the grille was a piece of old mesh chucked in there that was soon buried by all the ash. saying this, it was ridiculously effective, in all honesty, probably too effective, as it was more of an incinerator!
it would get through 3-4 plastic fruit crates of wood a day, plus all the burnable workshop rubbish.
the thought was that by laying it down it would increase the amount of air it warmed before the heat was lost up the chimney, and it was also rather handy for standing your cuppa on top of to keep it warm (although if you left it there too long it boiled the cup dry!), it was so efficent we ended up with a kettle set up on top of it that was on more or less constant boil.
it also got very, very hot. so hot it would melt anything left within about 5 foot of it- the car seats we had gathered round it, any tools left near it, etc. on numerous occasions we had the stainless flue pipe glowing so bright yellow it was transparent, and the bottom of the gas bottle yellow too.
pic-
the thing being held against it is a peice of tounge and groove wood, not cardboard!
but, it had its downsides too. it took up loads of space, was difficult to sweep up around/underneath, it was a pain in the ass to empty the ash out because of the way the door worked and how deep it was, and although it got nice and hot, it burnt through the wood too quick- it would be better burning slower and not as fierce. plus it looked like curse word cos it was made in about an hour, and it being so crude didnt really say much for my fab skillz......
so, here we have mk2.
ive been planning this for a while now, to address all the issues with the old burner, plus make it look funky at the same time.
I have recycled the old bottle to make it, but set it up upright this time. it has a proper baffle and damper like your normal household wood burner would, a locking, side hinged door, a proper grille, and the bottom opens to clean it out. plus, I decided to try to make it look a bit steampunk, (yeah I know its not modern technology made to look old, its old technology made to look different, but I know what I mean!). by using some old cast water valve handles, and those holes on the door edges will be filled with brass rivets after its been cleaned and painted.
heres the mk2 'rocket burner' as a whole, obligatory 'in-use' pic-
notice how because of the funky design of the legs, there's very little floor contact area, and a lot of space underneath, which makes it easy to empty and sweep up around and underneath it, but its still solid and stable. the legs are hand cut with a grinder, from 1/4" plate. its hard work doing all those curves in that way!
in this pic you can see the steel overcentre latches that hole the bottom shut. there's one next to each front leg, then the beetle door hinge next to the back leg, so the whole bottom can swing down to empty the ash out. also you can see the holesaw detail on the legs, which took ages to do!
the centrepeice of the design, the door-
its a basic rounded-corner square hole cut into the side, about 14" square, hung off a single house door hinge- notice how the hinge is fitted so the pin is kept away from the heat as much as possible, so it doesn't seize. it is then edged in 1/4" steel strap to stiffen it up and make it look better, with the corners being made by cutting a ring from 1/4" steel using differing size holesaws, then splitting it into 4 to make the corners. the latch is also extended out to stop the old cast steel water valve wheel that operates it getting hot, by means of a 4" or so length of steel tube with 10mm inner diameter, and a m10 coachbolt (as it had a square shank to fit the square of the valve wheel), which operates a simple twist-plate latch on the inside.
then up top, we have the baffle/damper arrangement. the top pipe stub you see here is about 9" long, and was formed by hand out of a sheet of 2mm steel, cos it couldn't find any pipe that big, or anything the right size to form it round, so I had to freehand it by hammering it over a length of scaffolding in the vice. it extends up into the chimney pipe by 1" (chimney recycled form old burner), and down into the gas bottle by 2" to act as a damper to stop all the heat shooting straight up the chimney- it now goes up, has and has to fill the top of the bottle before dropping back down to exit.
inside the pipe, is an adjustable baffle plate, also made from 2mm steel plate. I really should have taken a pic of this bit, but imagine a 6" disc, mounted on a butterfly like in a carb, except with a 2" holecutter hole through the 'high' side of it, to allow a small amount of draft even when shut off totally, so it can be shut down for slow burn, and the fire wont go out. it is mounted by cutting the ends of some bolts in half and welding the flat side to the plate, with one bolt being very long so you can adjust it without burning your hand.
no pics of the grille, but its made up from 1/2" rebar(i don't want it buring out anytime soon!), welded together in a 2" spaced grid, and welded into the bottle about 4" up from the join with the bottom flap.
suffice to say, it kicks out some good heat (notice the corrigated roofing sheet on the wall as a heatshield) and is far more refined than the old one!!
last year, id only just moved into this workshop, so the first one I had was thrown together very quickly, just to get some heat in the place, as it was bloody freezing. it consisted of a 4ft gas bottle laid down with the bottom stand cut off, the bottom end cut off, flipped round and hung as a door by welding on a bug door hinge, then a scrap steel wheel cut in half and welded to the bottom at each end, as a stand. it then had a peice of stainless flue pipe cut and shut with 2 45deg bends, to send the chimney straight up and out the roof. it was very basic, the draught was adjusted by propping the door open with an offcut of steel, and the grille was a piece of old mesh chucked in there that was soon buried by all the ash. saying this, it was ridiculously effective, in all honesty, probably too effective, as it was more of an incinerator!
it would get through 3-4 plastic fruit crates of wood a day, plus all the burnable workshop rubbish.
the thought was that by laying it down it would increase the amount of air it warmed before the heat was lost up the chimney, and it was also rather handy for standing your cuppa on top of to keep it warm (although if you left it there too long it boiled the cup dry!), it was so efficent we ended up with a kettle set up on top of it that was on more or less constant boil.
it also got very, very hot. so hot it would melt anything left within about 5 foot of it- the car seats we had gathered round it, any tools left near it, etc. on numerous occasions we had the stainless flue pipe glowing so bright yellow it was transparent, and the bottom of the gas bottle yellow too.
pic-
the thing being held against it is a peice of tounge and groove wood, not cardboard!
but, it had its downsides too. it took up loads of space, was difficult to sweep up around/underneath, it was a pain in the ass to empty the ash out because of the way the door worked and how deep it was, and although it got nice and hot, it burnt through the wood too quick- it would be better burning slower and not as fierce. plus it looked like curse word cos it was made in about an hour, and it being so crude didnt really say much for my fab skillz......
so, here we have mk2.
ive been planning this for a while now, to address all the issues with the old burner, plus make it look funky at the same time.
I have recycled the old bottle to make it, but set it up upright this time. it has a proper baffle and damper like your normal household wood burner would, a locking, side hinged door, a proper grille, and the bottom opens to clean it out. plus, I decided to try to make it look a bit steampunk, (yeah I know its not modern technology made to look old, its old technology made to look different, but I know what I mean!). by using some old cast water valve handles, and those holes on the door edges will be filled with brass rivets after its been cleaned and painted.
heres the mk2 'rocket burner' as a whole, obligatory 'in-use' pic-
notice how because of the funky design of the legs, there's very little floor contact area, and a lot of space underneath, which makes it easy to empty and sweep up around and underneath it, but its still solid and stable. the legs are hand cut with a grinder, from 1/4" plate. its hard work doing all those curves in that way!
in this pic you can see the steel overcentre latches that hole the bottom shut. there's one next to each front leg, then the beetle door hinge next to the back leg, so the whole bottom can swing down to empty the ash out. also you can see the holesaw detail on the legs, which took ages to do!
the centrepeice of the design, the door-
its a basic rounded-corner square hole cut into the side, about 14" square, hung off a single house door hinge- notice how the hinge is fitted so the pin is kept away from the heat as much as possible, so it doesn't seize. it is then edged in 1/4" steel strap to stiffen it up and make it look better, with the corners being made by cutting a ring from 1/4" steel using differing size holesaws, then splitting it into 4 to make the corners. the latch is also extended out to stop the old cast steel water valve wheel that operates it getting hot, by means of a 4" or so length of steel tube with 10mm inner diameter, and a m10 coachbolt (as it had a square shank to fit the square of the valve wheel), which operates a simple twist-plate latch on the inside.
then up top, we have the baffle/damper arrangement. the top pipe stub you see here is about 9" long, and was formed by hand out of a sheet of 2mm steel, cos it couldn't find any pipe that big, or anything the right size to form it round, so I had to freehand it by hammering it over a length of scaffolding in the vice. it extends up into the chimney pipe by 1" (chimney recycled form old burner), and down into the gas bottle by 2" to act as a damper to stop all the heat shooting straight up the chimney- it now goes up, has and has to fill the top of the bottle before dropping back down to exit.
inside the pipe, is an adjustable baffle plate, also made from 2mm steel plate. I really should have taken a pic of this bit, but imagine a 6" disc, mounted on a butterfly like in a carb, except with a 2" holecutter hole through the 'high' side of it, to allow a small amount of draft even when shut off totally, so it can be shut down for slow burn, and the fire wont go out. it is mounted by cutting the ends of some bolts in half and welding the flat side to the plate, with one bolt being very long so you can adjust it without burning your hand.
no pics of the grille, but its made up from 1/2" rebar(i don't want it buring out anytime soon!), welded together in a 2" spaced grid, and welded into the bottle about 4" up from the join with the bottom flap.
suffice to say, it kicks out some good heat (notice the corrigated roofing sheet on the wall as a heatshield) and is far more refined than the old one!!
it gets considerably hotter with the door shut. ive now added some metal heatsheilding to the roof and an old metal shelf slipped between it and the bench for the moment.
