This post describes conical connectors that can be easily inserted into tent stoves and then be used to conveniently connect to flue pipes or other tubes.
Introduction
Most tent stoves require a close-fitting of the flue pipe into the stove body to achieve the best performance. In addition, my tent stoves have an additional tube fitted to the stove to feed long fuel sticks into the burner. These tubes also need to be close fitting for good stove performance. It is difficult to fit such a close-fitting tube into the matching round hole. Once fitted they can easily ‘fall in’ when the stove expands with heating. These connectors must also be removable if the stove body is to become a pack-friendly load.
An alternative conical connector for tent stoves described in this post can make the fitting of such tubes easy while ensuring a good seal, The conical fittings provide some flexibility and also a simple means of preventing the tube and any internal shape rings from falling into the stove.
Furthermore, increasing the depth of penetration of a flue pipe into a stove can improve the temperature of the cooktop by exhausting ‘less hot air’ from a lower level in the stove chamber. A suitable conical shape can be made in the flue pipe connector to adjust this penetration depth.
In addition, an easily removable and replaceable flue means that it is easy to put a small fire starter down the flue port. The heat from this can instantly create a strong flue draft to start the stove. This is particularly useful under very cold conditions with stoves such as mine that have high efficiency inverted burners.
Conical connectors for tent stoves
Initially, I made these conical connectors for tent stoves with lapped welded joints because that was simple if the overlap was large enough. However, it had the disadvantage of leaving a gap in the round shape when the cone was fitted into the stove. Also, on the inside, there was a similar gap between the connector and the flue pipe. I subsequently found that I could eliminate both these gaps by butting the edges of the cone and welding on an external joining strip to the section of the cone that does not penetrate into the stove. Detail of this type of joint can be seen in the above photo for the smaller flue pipe connector. The larger fuel stick tube connector is made with a simple lapped weld as a little air leakage in this joint is inconsequential.
This means that there is a good seal to the stove body and a good seal between the inside of the conical connector and the fitted flue pipe.
As mentioned above, the conical flue connector makes it easy to refit the flue pipe after putting a fire starter into the flue port to initiate a strong flue draft when starting a cold stove.
Similarly, for the fuel tube connector, if it is made suitably long, it can be used as a stand-alone fuel stick holder, without a long fuel stick tube standing in it.
This arrangement may be helpful during start-up and may be required if there is excessive charcoal build up in the burner or dry fuel sticks cause reverse burning if there is a long fuel tube. Changing between the two configurations is easy with this type of connector.
Lastly, both conical connectors for tent stoves allow considerable angulation of the connecting tubes while maintaining a good seal. It means that for the flue pipe it can be angled so that it can pass conveniently through the tent flue gland. For the fuel stick tube, it can be angled away from the hot flue pipe to make it safer when loading sticks into the fuel tube.
Methods of rolling cone shapes are described in a separate post. The tools for rolling the bottom edges of the cone inwards and the top edge outwards is described in DIY hand tools for tinkering. A new improved compression ring to go inside the bottom of the flue pipe is described in tent stove compression ring .
Tim
gge
