A rare ebay find, a CS56 burner and air buttons. All I needed (!) was most of the rest of the stove - pot rest frame; windshield; burner inner and outer caps. I’d make the pot rest frame out of a donor Tilley Guardsman frame I happened to have. My intention was to build a kit of parts, such as Tilley marketed back in the day, to interchange with a Guardsman lamp, turning lamp into stove, stove into lamp, by utilising the same fuel tank and pump and swapping frames, burners and vapourisers. Already owning THIS CS56, at least I had a pattern to work to to fabricate the parts I needed and a spare vapouriser too, unique to the stove, shorter than the lamp vapourisers and having a larger jet orifice. First job was to cut the handle pivots off the donor Guardsman frame. I made four components out of steel rod to mount the pot rest ring (also fabricated from steel rod). Silbrazed in position and the upper ring silbrazed to them, I made pot rests out of steel tubing, slit down the length and flattened slightly to make U-section pieces. Silbrazed in position. Comparison with the pot rest frame from my existing CS56. Only when side-by-side like that did I realise that the spacing of the ‘rings’ is different between lamp and stove frames. No matter, it won’t affect usability. Sprayed in high-temp brake enamel. The burner inner cap. An easy job on a lathe, without one I’d to build one up from brass tubing and a discarded blowlamp pump. Original CS56 inner cap on the left. The windshield (original enamelled steel example on the left) is a somewhat complex shape. The truncated cone of the lower part was easy enough to make out of brass sheet, silbrazed at a vertical seam. I pondered a while on how to reproduce the upper part and hit upon the idea of using a stainless steel jam funnel, silbrazed to the brass lower part. Final job, the burner’s outer cap. A work in progress, the only steel tubing I had was metric-sized and 2mm undersized in diameter. I cut down the length and inserted a 6mm wide sliver of steel, silbrazed in place, to bring the diameter up to specification. I’m awaiting delivery of a 3mm-thick steel disc to form the top. Silbrazed in place and trimmed, I’ve then the laborious job of marking out and drilling 135 holes! To be continued … John
John, your metal working skills continue to delight me. I will be following your progress with interest.
Waiting for the outer cap ‘lid’ I took the opportunity to adapt a Bialaddin spirit cup to use on the CS56. The stove was intended to be primed by the lighting wand used for Tilley lamps, but it’s borderline effective (more metal to heat up), dribbles priming alcohol onto the tank and together with its storage jar is something to mislay. A Bialaddin priming cup is the answer but to adapt to the slimmer Tilley vapouriser, benefits from a tubular lining sleeve to overcome the sloppy fit it would otherwise have. Bialaddin vapouriser on the left.
Before they shut up shop, Willis & Bates made the wicked priming cups with smaller tube to suit the Tilley vapourisers. I bought a few when I was there visiting. Don't know if I've any left.
@Ian I gather so Ian. I think some filtered through to Base Camp, which is probably where I got the one I’ve been using on a CS56 for some years now, unless I got it from you!
Another job to do, creating the wire gauze component to slip on the burner, essential to prevent flames lifting off the burner at anything approaching optimum tank pressure. I can’t help but think it was a bodge by Tilley, committing to an over-engineered burner design then finding the prototype’s burner flames lifted off. Quick fix, but effective. Here’s the original gauze attachment on the burner. I used stainless steel gauze to cope with the heat, cutting a strip 15mm or so wide, 150mm long. I removed strands running across the width of the strip, the remaining ’tails’ being used to thread back into the other end of the strip when it was formed into a cylinder to fit over the burner. I then made four radial cuts with tinsnips and bent the projecting flaps over at about 30 degrees to the horizontal.
Steel disc ‘lid’ silbrazed onto the outer cap cylinder and 135 centres for holes punched. I used a strip of thin card replicating hole centres to mark out the centres. Good job I had an auto centre punch - one of these. Drilling the holes next!
Holes drilled and ‘inner gauze’ installed. Original cap on the right. Fuelled up, ready for test firing. Success!
