Gas Bottle Wood Burner

Gas bottle wood burners are very easy to make, efficient, and are perfect for late night parties. If you turn them right up, the middle can start to glow red, you can put a kettle on the top, or cut the top off and add a hot plate. These are really easy to make, and be changed however you want.

Oh, and Please vote for me in the Keep Warm contest!

Step 1 Materials

You will need:

-Gas Bottle (Large (47kg) or medium, but not the really small ones. The main image is a medium one.)

-A ~6 Inch Diameter Pipe 90 Degree Bend (I Used Lorry Exhaust)

-A length of ~6 Inch Diameter Pipe For Chimney (I Used Lorry Exhaust)

-Something For Handle, (I used two bolts welded together and a scrap piece of metal for latch)

-A Section Of Heavy Duty Hinge, Average Door Hinge Wont Be Strong Enough

-Box Section For Air Vent (~3 inch square for medium bottles, double for large bottles)

-Length Of Rod For Air Regulator (Optional, for damping fire down)



Tools:
-Grinder
-Welder
-Hose Pipe

Comments

[littletownreds]

Grates etc are not needed with wood burners as the draught (draft) is best on top of the wood. Other fuels such as coal need bottom draught.

I find with a small stove that a 6" flue is too big and have used as small as 3" with a 1 ft cube stove. Nothing says the flue has to be round, either. If you can cut and weld sheet metal or even plate then just fold it square or butt-weld.

In the UK you can still get Zebo which you put on the stove cold with a brush and it looks like graphite and gets darker with use - this is the modern equivalent of black-leading. It lasts for years and makes the stove look good.

Cheers.

Gordon

[rroo]

just found your info... a bit l8 tho cos i cut the bottle up without useing water in it first... I'm still in one piece.. and cut a larger panel from another bottle to go over the one for the door making a seal all the way round.. looks tidier than all the extras welded on your door.. and thanx to everyone else for your comments n ideas.. will add images of stages of construction when its completed.. 13kg bottle

[ravingking2008]

i cut the door larger and put metal strips inside so the door is flush when closed

[chemistu]

A bit late but I just found this after looking at an empty gas cylinder in the garden and thinking "hmm, that would make a neat potbellied stove".

On a side note once you have filled the tank with water the propane is gone, the quantity of propane adsorbing into the steel tank wall will be miniscule. What you can smell is not propane (propane is odourles) but the ethanethiol used to make the gas smell so you can detect a leak, Ethanethiol will bind to the steel walls very well and can be smelt at concentrations below 1 part per billion in air.

[Kelticpaddler]

Love it!! I would like to make one, angle it about 30 degrees, weld on some fins and add a circular temperature gauge to the front, so it looks like a WWII unexploded bomb. :OD

[pdtnc]

Do you just load it up onto the base of the bottle and light it? Or is there a Fire Grate in there above the air inlet?

[btop]

i have tried both, both seem to work equally as well.

[pdtnc]

ok, cheers

[pdtnc]

With a bit of thinking out I bet one of these might make an Interesting greenhouse heater.

[sandman.uk]

Fantastic build this I'm currenly honing my welding skills working on one of these. Handy thing I found though was to cut the door on 2 or sides only then weld on the hinge and cut the remaining side. That way you shouldnt have to worry so much about holding the door inplace while your welding. Next step for me will be to visit the local scrap yard and find some pipe for the flue and chimney

[Hamish121212]

I notice in some pictures you have the flue coming out the back and in other pictures you have it coming out the middle of the top of the gas bottle. Which works best? Also - have you ever tried putting a choke valve in the flue like they have on wood burners - or would that cause smoke to come out the door? Im looking at installing this in my house so dont want smoke inside :) Another question - did you consider having a fire grate in the floor to keep the burning timber off the base of the gas bottle?

[btop]

Hi, Well the chimney depends on what you want from the burner. If you want loads of heat (So much that the bottle glows red!) then you want the chimney out of the top, however if you want increased efficiency then the chimney should go out the back to prevent too much heat being lost.

[Lochy]

Cracking LPG bottle wood burner. I fit wood burning stoves for a living and have seen a good few of these but this one has some lovely touches. Great door lock, really good vent and control. Controlling air into a stove and getting rid of smoke is critical. This design could only be improved by adding a throat plate/baffle about the height of the top of the door. This would cause the combustion gases to swirl, give a secondary burn, giving cleaner emissions and keep the hot air in the burner longer. The plate would need to be removable for soot clearing but if the unit burns good and hot, it'll not soot up much. Wood burns best with air from above (coal from below) so the air control could raise a little. The bottles tend to burn out if used regularly (workshop etc) but you can get around this if you fit a bottom plate and bed in some fire bricks, vertically around the burn area. Overall a lovely stove. Well done mate.

[btop]

Thanks, I was going to put a baffle in, but decided not to. I was thinking on how to get it through the door.

[LokiGnosis]

btop, two questions that might be on the "Stupid" side but here goes, why not have the Bottle up side down, so that the Flat base is now on the top? Cooking Plate as per a Pot Belly Oven? Failing that, if I were to have the Dome at the Top, couldn't the Pipe come straight out of the top, rather than the side? Thanks, Loki.

[btop]

 I've made a few with the pipe coming out of the top, they get very hot, but burn a lot faster, usually with flames out of the top of the chimney!

[LokiGnosis]

Cheers btop, I've made a Gas Bottle Burner and am going to make a few alterations. I am going to cut a Sq out of the top and fit a flat plate for a coffee pot/cooking and use the piece that I cut out as a baffle that can be swung/pivoted, just to see if I can..........
Any advice on the thickness of the flat plate?
Thanks,
Loki.

[btop]

 Like the idea of a hot plate, I might try one soon. As for the baffle, I don't know much about how it all works but Im sure someone else can help us out?

[reheat]

Great stove, baffle plate could be made in two halves and fed in thru door apature. Also if a metal frame was welded around the door and the middle cut out then a piece of 4mm ceramic stove glass could be fitted to give a great view of the action.

[phidauex]

Just a note to readers - this process may seem like a lot of effort, but "positive displacement" is the only safe way to cut into a gas bottle. I do actually know someone who was injured by cutting into a gas bottle that hadn't been properly displaced of propane!

[btop]

 Safety First!

[Spokehedz]

I also agree with the above statement. The $1 you spend on water will save you many hundreds of dollars in hospital and/or rebuilding your house bills.

[zombiejeezus]

Is there a reason why you say not the small ones? Also is there a way to paint or enamel that will last for any length of time I could put on it?

[btop]

 I meant not the really small ones such as the diving gas bottle sizes, as they are a bit too small to put logs in.

[LokiGnosis]

Zombiejezus, no idea why "Not the Small Ones" but you could use Motorcycle Exhaust paint to get a good finish, the hotter it becomes the harder it gets. Loki.

[btop]

Hi, Well the chimney depends on what you want from the burner. If you want loads of heat (So much that the bottle glows red!) then you want the chimney out of the top, however if you want increased efficiency then the chimney should go out the back to prevent too much heat being lost.

[mj11490]

made my first burnner today works great warms up workshop well thanks for the information will be making a bigger better one soon

[btop]

 The heat output is great! Brilliant for sheds and garages.

[spinafex]

I left the water in the cylinder (Just to be safe) and laid it down on the ground then using the grinder I cut out the marked areas. Once I had cut through one side of the marked area, I felt it was safe enough to drain a little water away and  finish the cut. Cheers Mick

[btop]

Thanks for making Mick! thats sounds a very safe way of doing it, although pretty much all of the gas is displaces as you fill the bottle with water.

[adamjgh]

Great post The small ones do work fine - I've been building them for years here in the UK out of the smaller 7 and 15 kg bottles for caravans and campervans. I find that a grill inside made up from reinforcing bar is useful to get air flow under the fire. I've got one in my camper made from a 7kg version, that I've welded a flat plate over the round 'handles' it had on the top as a stove plate - and added a door to the front of the same chamber to create a small potato oven. The chimney runs out of the rear of this area too.

[bart10655]

I have a regular size propane tank like the ones for grills and stuff.. I wont to make a small stove out of it so i opened the valve to let the gas out and nothing came out so i started shaking the bottle and i could hear fluid in it what can i do to get the gas out? Is there some kind of safety device in the bottle that will only let it out if something is hooked up to it?

[nortly]

there is a shrader valve in the main valve you have to depress it like a tire valve stem

[newvegan]

These are cool. My brother makes smokers for cook-off competitions out of the large propane tanks. Great way to reuse them!

[wierd idiot]

Why would you want a wood burner when you can make a very good truck muffler out of em?

[carpespasm]

A good idea I've seen for similar things is to use stainless for any handles. It stays much cooler (though probably still pretty warm in this case) than normal steel and it welds to plain steel fine.

[zyda]

Very cool project! It has been quite cold in these parts the last few nights and I certainly have thought about ways to safely make a fire to warm me up...

[paulpcc]

nice. when our water tank started to rust, we used the old one years ago for bonfires. (you could cook cool jacket potatoes in the ashes in about 20mins too).

[paulpcc]

wrapped in foil of course :o)

[sensoryhouse]

so i could use a compressor tank right?