Home made eleventy one (sort of)

The start of the new year, and I thought I would make my own stove from scratch - tank, pipes, burner.
I wanted it to have a cylindrical kerosene tank like a 111 , and I also wanted it to be small enough to fit inside standard British rectangular mess tins. Here is how I did it.

Tank
First off, I found this video link extremely useful, although I didn't use a lathe.

You need brass pipe (50mm diameter, 1mm wall), brass plate (1mm thick), 8mm copper tubing and a 8mm right angle elbow fitting (standard British plumbing fitting).

Cut off a section of pipe (100mm)



and cut two circles from the brass sheet about 60 mm diameter. Then cut a circle from hardwood about 25mm thick and about 45mm diameter. The brass circles are formed into the two end caps over the wooden former, as shown in the video link above.



The circles are hammered over the wooden former to produce the end 'cups', and several intermediate anneals are required, before the caps fit tightly into the ends of the pipe.



End cap 1 is left blank, but end cap 2 will eventually have the hole for the pump.



The end caps need to be a tight fit all round the inside circumference of the pipe so that a good pressure tight solder joint can be made later.

Next bend a length of 8mm tubing to produce the curve necessary to empty the tank when transferring the fuel in use. I used dry salt to fill the tube before bending, but you can use dry fine sand. Anneal the tube first to soften it, then crimp the ends of the tube when full, and bend by hand, Cut off the crimped ends. Then drill a 8mm hole in the centre of the pipe, fit the tube and braze (Silverflo 55).



The tube in the pictures above had already been nickel plated as a test (more on that later).

Then drill a hole for the filler tube, and after wrapping the transfer tube with wet rags so its braze doesn't remelt, braze on the filler tube. This was also off a scrap Primus 96 which I filed to fit the curvature of the pipe before brazing.



The pump I used was an old pump and tube, also from a scrap Primus 96, with both the tube and pump shaft cut down to fit inside the tank.



The pump tube OD is about 15mm, so drill a 15mm hole near the top of end cap 2. You will also need to make a thick brass 'washer' with a 15mm hole in it to reinforce the braze area for the pump tube connection.



Joint the tube and washer onto the end cap in a single braze operation.



Clean up the cap circumference and make sure it is a good fit in the pipe, clean everything again then solder in both end caps



Fit a new pump leather and filler lid seal, then assemble the pump and leak test under pressure and under water.

Plating
I used this link to get instructions for both copper and nickel plating (the nickel plating link is included in this copper plating document).

I cleaned the tank and fittings as normal - citric acid, steel wool, kerosene rinse, dry and then a meths final clean.



I plated the fittings first, using a nickel plate anode and using 6 volt DC. Time was about 30 mins before rotating the fittings 180 degrees and re-plating for another 30 mins



Then I plated the tank using two nickel plate anodes in tandem for the long side, and I rotated the tank 90 degrees about the long axis every 30 mins (2 hour total). Again, I used a 6V DC source.



The end caps were plated opposite a single anode for 30mins each. I was very pleased with the result..



Burner Lipstick
I have described how to make a lipstick before, but this time I brazed the tapered stainless tube onto a nut from the right angle elbow fitting to be connected to the fuel transfer tube, and instead of drilling the jet into the brazed cap, I drilled and threaded a hole (4.5mm and 0.5mm pitch) for the standard nipple



Then fit the gauze on the inside



Burner Bell
This was a simple construction made from a brass circle and four brass strips cut from brass sheet. You can cut the whole thing from one piece of brass sheet, but it wastes a lot of brass, so I cut the parts separately and brazed them together, (Silverflo 20), as shown in the drawing.



The sides act like a concertina, so you can raise or lower the burner plate to increase or decrease the entrained air.



Assembly
This is the easy bit.



Fit the horizontal end of the elbow fitting onto the tank fuel transfer pipe using a brass olive (standard British fitting) and tighten the nut. Fit the burner lipstick (using the already brazed on nut) to the vertical end of the elbow using a short piece of 8mm pipe and an olive, and tighten the burner. Leak test, then drop on a spirit cup and fit the burner bell tightly.

Fill the tank to 2/3 full



Prime...



and pump...



If the air/fuel is correct it will heat water in the mess tin/pan/ kettle and leave no soot.



Size
It's a small tank, which is what I wanted. It fits into the small mess tin with room for pot stand, spirit container, windshield etc. The whole lot then fits into the larger mess tin. Or you can put the large mess tin upside down on top as a lid, and secure with a strap.



I'll post a couple of finished stove photos and flame shots in the Frankenstove section.

Have fun.

 

Ok...WOW! What a great job you did. Outstanding.

Alex

 

Nice work. Impressive.

 

Outstanding.

 

Crazy good work man.

 

I think the MOD, or ''Q'', at the very least, will be knocking on your shop door soon.

 

Superb job! Great details of all your excellent work, I like your plating rig..

 

Thanks for all your replies.
Since posting the above I have changed the nipple from one with a 0.32mm jet to one with a 0.23mm jet. I also lowered the flame plate slightly to adjust the mixture. The flame is still not perfect, but is less powerful now and more in keeping with a small stove with a 1/3 pint capacity tank.

Here it is today with new jet, on coffee duty

 

WOW - just WOW! @Twoberth
This post is a candidate for the Fettlers Master Class (@Spiritburner )

 

@Harder D. Soerensen
Thanks Harder

 

Fully agree, Master Class indeed.

 

Excellent work, @Twoberth.


Cheers

Tony

 

Blown away. Thank you for documenting the process for those of us who would never attempt this.

 

Nice work!

It is always interesting to make a burner and to figure out how it should work. Long time ago I made a regulated silent burned prototype: https://classiccampstoves.com/threads/making-regulated-silent-burner.26890/ That one needed additional holes for air intake to get flame blue.

Also burner bell "project" Making burner bell needed some re-design to get results that I wanted.

You get quite good combustion since no soot on pot/kettle. Flame is a bit yellow so maybe it's burning a bit too "rich" (=would need more air). Maybe little bit taller "burner bell" would be good/fun test to do. I mean a bit more space(~5-10 mm) between jet and flame spreader. That would allow more distance for air to mix into fuel. Maybe that could give full blue flame.

(Sort of) 111 designation would need a regulated burner so that would be a next step to take.

 

@Afterburner
Many thanks for your useful comments, and the links to your threads. I read them some time ago when I became interested in making flat pack burner bells. I am still playing with raising and lowering the flame spreader, which is why I like the 'concertina' concept, where you can raise or lower the flame spreader by altering the bend on the arms (shown here on a Monitor)



Regarding regulating burners, I tried using an isolation valve for regulation (shown below)



but it was too far away from the burner nipple to produce a fast response.

I also had a problem with the above set-up, as regulating the liquid supply with the isolation valve produces a lower vapour exit velocity from the jet, which entrains much less air and gives a flame that is too rich. Why is this not a problem with the 111 regulation?

I would be grateful for any thoughts you may have relating to this issue (the effect of regulation on the resulting mixed air/fuel vapour ratio).

 

Reminds me of a much simpler (and easier to fettle!) version of an Enders 9060. Back in the day I'm sure this could have been a commercial success!

 

Very nice job @Twoberth. I'm looking forward to a homemade 22 when you finally get a regulated burner to work to your satisfaction.

 

After thinking (always bad) about Afterburner's comment about the flame not being blue I decided to move the flame spreader up more - no effect!

I had checked the nipple jet hole and a 0.23mm pricker was a tight fit (or so I thought), but I decided to change the nipple anyway. When I took out the old nipple and rechecked the jet hole, the pricker was not a tight fit at all. It just felt like a tight fit when fitted in the lipstick as the pricker wire was pushing between the gauze coils tightly packed just below the nipple.

A quick squeeze of the nipple between the vice jaws to get a true tight fit with a 0.23mm pricker, and the flame is great. Thanks @Afterburner for making me rethink the 'problem'.

 

Please accept my apologies! Maybe 'tone' in my post was too negative. English in not my first language so I am not able to pick up the right words.

Anyway, burner physics is interesting even I have not glue about combustion engineering nor any similar. So my observations are just based on thinking/ideas what I see in use on various stoves.

In that Enders Bivak "burner bell project" I got similar symptoms and I needed to look roarer burners of few stoves to see how they work. Specially how fuel & air mix flows and exits from burner parts. Without any theoretical knowledge how roarer burner should work I thought that:

• air flow around jet's top surface level should be as free as possible from any obstacles
• preferably there should be a way for air to flow below jet level since maybe fuel stream that is just coming out from the jet would like to suck air already at that point. (That is possible at least in 'standard' roarer & silent burners. Also Primus Omnifuel and Optimus Nova has air flow channels below the jet level)
• flame should be able to 'shoot' out from the burner as free as possible. Otherwise flow speed in burner is reduced and fuel to air ratio gets non-optimal.
• flame spreader seems to be 'down pushed' almost in all roarer burners. That is the case in 'standard' roarer burner if you look the bottom shape of the 'standard' roarer burner. Down pushed flame spreader fill help to 'shoot' out the flame since it guides flame into gaps between burner bell and flame spreader
• flame spreader's mount supports to burner bell should be as narrow as possible in order to allow as free as possible flow of the flame out from the burner bell.

Again those are just my thoughts without any theoretical knowledge how it should work. So it could be just fantasy or fake information.

At couple of flame pictures I saw some interesting behavior (see yellow arrows):



On those points where yellow arrows are pointing you can see that flame is a bit bending back inside of the burner. Width of the flame spreader mount effects to heat transfer into lipstick and also how well flame can flow out from the burner. It would be interesting to test how the width can be changed and how it effects into burner performance.

Regulated burner seems to work best if it is possible to control the flow of evaporated fuel. Liquid fuel flow control will be less accurate and there is also delay to wait to evaporate the new fuel amount. I copied 207 burner flow control principle in my regulated burner test project. Control in that burner worked well. (Maybe I need to do better version of that burner since soon I (hopefully) get my workshop into operation again ).

If liquid fuel flow control is used I think that "control gate" should be just under the the jet as in Optimus Nova and Primus Omnifuel. Then there is only couple of cubic millimeters volume before the jet to store fuel for evaporation.