Picked up 6 (yes 6) empty 19kg as bottles yesterday and today set about making 2 wood burners. Started at 12:30 and just finished the second one. Suprised how quickly they go together really. Though the plasma cutter really helped (first proper job I have had for it)

So we have gone from this:


Wood burner 1

To this:

Wood burner 2

x2

One for my workshop and one for the main workshop. Hopefully they should make it a more pleasant place to be. Just need to find some 4" pipe for flues now, have cut the holes in the back already.

First cut the handle/guard off the top with an angle grinder and slitting wheel (make sure the valves shut for this...)

Then hacksaw off the valve as it wont come undone no matter how hard you pull and hit it with a 4ft bar.

Drill 8 holes around the valve at the top, near to the welded boss. Then use a metal cuttung blade in a jigsaw to cut it out. At this point it will smell a bit, but nothing too worrying.

Once that hole is cut you are good to go with the angle grinder. If anything does pop or bang it's got somewhere to go and vent. That said, nothing spectacular happened on either of these 2.

Marked out the door, 8" from the bottom of the cylinder, and the door is 7" high.

Drilled a hole in each corner, then cut out with slitting blade in angle grinder.

Welded on 18g steel strip around the door, 1" wide. Hinge side is welded on inside, so the whole door is sealed. Hinges are heavy duty door hinges (4mm thick plate).

Door latch simply jams the door shut on a weld bead (flatted with the grinder), and pivots on an 8mm bolt welded on from inside, theres another bolt for it to rest against when the door is open. Really simple and solid way of keeping the door shut! Welded on a U bolt as something to open the door with as well.

The vent at the front is 50x50x1.5mm box with a butterfly type arrangement made from a bolt and a piece of 16g plate. Then a small length of tube as a lever. Hole was marked out and cut with the plasma cutter. Top of the vent is level with the weld bead around the cylinder.

Cut out a 4" hole in the back of the cylinder, again with the plasma cutter. Cut on the tight curve on the back edge so the pipe will exit at around 45deg to go out the window. The flattened this bit of plate out with a lump hammer and welded it to the top of the cylinder to blank off the hole where the valve was cut out.

Thats it. Simple and took around 2 hrs to make the second one.

Fired up the first one and crisped the paint nicely. Could feel the heat off it from around 6' away, with it standing outside. So it should be brilliant in the workshops.

As you have 6 you can make me one then

I spotted a cylinder that had been fly-tiped today I think I will keep britan tidy tomorrow and get it.

i have 3m (maybe 4m) of 5" flexi stainless flu if you want it for £50

Perhaps you'll want to blur the piccies to stop the legal owners of the gas bottles getting upset??
The ones I made ran on used engine oil. They were a bit smokey but once up to temperature, the whole bottle would glow. Of course mine didn't belong to Calor or anyone like that...... ;-0

spotted some "professional" jobs on e bay complete with funky black finish which might save problems mentioned by owelly

Pot belly stove, gas bottle burner on eBay (end time 15-Dec-10 12:17:23 GMT)

Surely someone has paid a deposit at some point on these so they can't get too upset?

I very nearly picked up two extremely mint ones from a reclamation yard at the weekend, that was until the boss turned up and said to the other bloke that he couldn't sell them to me as they wanted to refill them for heaters.

All they wanted was £2 each and I was faffing around trying to take measurements - doh!

Ended up with a very battered gas bottle (argued they wouldn't refill it) and an R134a refrigerant bottle (with some in).

They should do me for what I want (used oil burner - thread to follow once I've got something to show)

[Edited on 12/12/10 by hobbsy]

Let me know if you find any good source for flue pipe.

One recommendation I've had (but not had chance to pursue) is 4" truck exhaust pipe. Its single wall so I guess you'd use it for the first part of the flue but not where it passes through walls / ceilings etc (you probably want double wall for that). It should radiate a fair bit of heat out of the first part of the flue whereas using double wall for the lot would mean the heat just goes up and out.

Building regs require 50mm clearance between the best-quality double-skinned flue pipe and any combustible material. Ebay-quality double-skinned may require 300mm clearance.

You may have to have some form of metal exit plate through a flat roof. There's probably something already available for that job.

Yeah that's what I'm trying to say, you can get away with single skin lower down to maximise heat output but you want to swap to double skin when you pass through something like a roof.

300mm clearance That's one big hole in the roof.

How good are flexible flues?

When I get around to building mine I'm considering passing the pipe through an (openable) window. I could either do it with a couple of 90degree bends or with a flexi pipe.

The bottles came from an industrial place, they are old forklift ones, same size as a 19kg but have a different valve fitted. The company they came from stopped trading with their old gas supplier years ago, and these are the bottles that have been sitting in the yard since.

Theres no deposit on the small bottles, but there is on the 47kg ones.

Obviously I can't condone cutting up gas bottles anyway, its dangerous and silly

bugger some one beat me to mine.

quote:

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Obviously I can't condone cutting up gas bottles anyway, its dangerous and silly

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Looks good, nice work.

Not wanting to be the usual bringer of bad tidings and all that crap, but just check things over with your insurance. If the building is yours, then its not really an issue, but I recently found out that our insurers (Aviva) won't accept ANY form of portable heating in the workshop other than halogen lamps!! I have now changed insurers, and they have a clause which states that any gas or kerosene space heaters must be guarded for 1m all around, signed, and made a "fixed item". No other heating other than fixed, is allowed...............Just best to be careful and check with them if insurance is critical to you, if not then no problem!