Fire!! Gas bottle burners, and the making of.

  One of the first really good justifications I had for learning to weld was the need for a quality wood burner without it costing an absolute fortune,   I had seen a few burners made from used propane bottles and figured that it shouldn't be that hard to build one,
    This was a while before I owned a digital camera so no photo's of the original.  It was fairly primitive but worked well and would stay in all night.
      Some friends  where interested by my fire and asked me to make them one.

    This was a lot better than my original and had a really successful door hinge that became a model for all following it,
     I also went for a round door, as it allows the biggest log in through the smallest hole,

                        A little after I built this oneIi was asked to build one for fitting into the worksurface of a kitchen in a bus,
  I have a load of build pictures of this one,

 

 This burner was fairly successful but with a short chimney didn't draw enough  to not smoke with the door open,
   this led to a lot of  experiments with door size  and baffle placement inside the cylinders, 

   I found that the they worked best when the bottle was used upright,  and made a few  more for people,
     the strap hinge worked really well and I figured out a way of having a positive latch mechanism so the door could not open accidently when moving around.

     One of the earlier ones i built was made to sit on a wheelarch in a  mercedes truck  so had special long front legs

  There was one which had a door closure made from parts out of a motorcycle gearbox and a downwards
opening door.

 

 

  In the end I think I built around 14 of these little things and in the final ones worked incredibly well, in some cases staying continually alight for a week,  the door and valve sealed well enough that you could put the fire out, and it was possible to drive around with them lit without ending up with a fireball in the vehicle.
        






This one was for an airstream, and had the chimney offset  so  the window would not be obscured.

I really enjoyed handcutting the hinges.

  My favorite ones were made from 19 kg bottles,  and i think the proportions work best this size,  

These had the final model of catch,  which clamped the door closed.

      Sadly they work out  too labour intensive to build any more, mainly because the bottle itself takes so much processing before it can be used.

  But....  I am working on a model that can be repeat produced a lot more simply..

     More to come...... 
    Cheers . and a happy productive  new year. Dan.