I got to thinking this morning, sometimes a sketchy affair. The brass stoves we all know and love were initially developed before aluminium became practical. It was expensive. The Washington monument capstone in D.C. was made of aluminium at the time, in the 1880s, because it was a rare and exotic element in quantity, perhaps more valuable at the time than gold. Apart from the walk down memory lane, are there technical reasons why aluminium couldn’t be used for the paraffin burning Primus, or other stoves? The Svea 123 for example. Would be much lighter in weight of course. It’s possible joining materials together would have been a problem, as TIG welding hadn’t been developed yet, not sure.
I don't know why it never came to use. But there were atleast one attempt to make an aluminium stove. The Endura, but it didn't seem to be any good since it never came into production.
Interesting! The Endura didn’t …. endure, and it does appear they had trouble with the joinery, merely pressing the halves together.
I think the halves were bolted together with those six screws that also acted as feet and pot stands respectively. Probably with some kind of sealing material between.
What about the thermal conductivity of aluminum acting like a heat sink drawing heat away from the burner, and therefore not maintaining pressure. Just a thought.
I don’t think that’s necessarily so, because the thickness of aluminium required for the pressure vessel (fuel tank) would be greater than that for a brass tank. Though brass sheet construction has its share of stress cracks I’d expect metal fatigue due to pressurising and depressurising cycles would be more marked in aluminium.
Modern alloys might work but whether it would be a practical alternative who knows. These days steel is cheap
Right, good point - I’ve a dandy pressure canner made of cast aluminium, all american. It is quite substantial in thickness & mass.
Modern remote tank stoves do use aluminum for the cylinder. No issues there. Not practical for the burner bits, won't handle the heat.
Some parts of the stove, valves and burners and such, would have to be made of other metals. Almost any other metal in continuous contact with aluminum will aggressively corrode the aluminum if there's any moisture present.
I'd say it's not so much technical reasons, it could have been done before the end of the heyday of traditional stove designs, but economics and market forces would have prevented it being viable. Primus had a go at steel tanked stoves during the great war, likely due to material shortages or perception of. They never sold particularly well, and the cost of tooling up and training staff must have been enormous. Likewise in the next war steel tanked versions of brass stoves and blowlamps were rolled out from necessity, but were abandoned once brass supplies returned and steel tanks returned to a tiny minority. Brass just hit the sweet spot of strength vs. weight vs. ductility vs. ease of assembly vs. cost vs.aesthetics vs. et al., and became the norm for millions of domestic and outdoor stoves. Over the years production methods and design features were honed to perfection in terms of practicality, efficiency and economics. Aluminium wouldn't offer any advantage worth the effort and cost of starting the process again, and may well have ended up heavier, more expensive to assemble, and very unlikely to provide a return on the investment of new equipment and space of a production line. Brass stoves were what customers viewed as the norm, and any radical deviation would be treated with suspicion over the tried and tested models. There simply wasn't any need to change, especially once the market started dwindling. In recent decades it has been quick and easy to prototype and put designs into production- FEA software for stress analysis in deep drawing, and cyclic loading of a pressure vessel in use. Tooling is far quicker and easier to produce with modern methods. Head back to the days of classic stoves and a lot of things were worked out empirically and development costs were higher, relatively.
Have often wondered the same, but I came to a similar conclusion as a lot of the folks posting above - yes you can do it; it would be a few ounces lighter, but it would have to be a lot more expensive if done correctly. In order to work, self pressurizing stoves like the Svea recycle a bit of the heat of combustion from the burner and use it to pressurize the fuel in the tank. Too little heat and you can't sustain the flame; too much and the tank over pressurizes. So there has to be the proper thermal balance. Luckily aluminum conducts heat even better than brass, so although the design would have to be modified, it could be made to work. Parts like the burner bell would have to remain brass of course, or else they will melt. A bigger problem is constructing a pressure tight fuel tank. Brass can be soldered quite easily, aluminum not so much. 6000 series aluminum can be welded, and there are dip brazing techniques that work quite well - but these processes are a lot more expensive. And you would probably want to anodize everything to keep it from corroding. So what would you save? The tank and valve riser on my 123 weigh about 8 oz; so say... 4 oz? Would that be worth maybe doubling the price? Probably not - especially when one can buy a canister stove these days for a whole lot less.
Yeah, I was thinking more along the lines from an historical perspective. Early on, the technology just wasn’t there. Brass is easy work, and easy to solder, aluminium is a different animal. When did TIG welding debut? I’m certainly not really a fan of cheaper materials, steel tanks for example were a step down in quality for stoves and lanterns. Rust never sleeps, as the saying goes. I’m just surprised the manufacturers didn’t do it anyway.
It could be done easily and IMHO should be done. Not sure there's a market for it beyond me however. Frankly liquid fuel stove technology has stalled out, with some notable, overly complex, exceptions like the Soto Muka et al. Canister stoves seem to have taken the entire market nowadays, which is a shame. So wasteful with the heavy disposable canisters, which I've noticed nobody every really accounts for in their "ultralight" weight counts. Remote bottle stoves are too complex and they malfunction and need servicing all the time. A titanium 8R or 123 would be amazing. Modern materials are changing rapidly. It would also probably cost $450.
Most younger backpackers value the simplicity of instant lighting over all else and, for some reason, Trangias don't appeal to them. (This was explained patiently to me by my daughter when I was trying to select a gift for her and her husband.) So then it comes down to "which canister stove?" I opted for Windburner over JetBoil. ....Arch edit: Dropping a "titanium 123" might well split the tank, rather than just the dent it would put in a brass one.
Cartridge & Gaz stoves & lanterns were pretty well represented back in the dark ages too, and had their adherents for sure, there’s no denying the convenience. It was much more of a certainty finding Coleman fuel in the hinterlands than the Coleman/Hank Roberts or Gaz cartridges though.
From various reviews on stoves on Youtube and other places, it seems that the speed of obtaining some boiling water from first lighting the stove is the overriding priority for many, for some reason. I'm not bothered if I can save a minute or two using a different stove: I just view the surrounding area as I wait.
Ease of lighting, there is a certain “hair shirt” element to this preheat business that tends to add a bit of drama to the affair, along with soot and fumes and the potential of frightening the womenfolk and horses, torching tents, singeing eyebrows. What the cool kids probably really want is a re-chargeable battery device, but that’s going to take while before a practical unit is ever achieved. It’s a pity a small BWR or Molten Salt Reactor couldn’t be developed for achieving the morning Tea.
