Wood stove materials - Brass?

[bowhunter15]

Gonna make a Wi-fi stove nock-off this winter. To be cheap, I planned on SS which I can buy in .004" (sidewall and pipe) and .007" (top/bottom) from Amazon's Small Parts subsidiary. I started doing a little research on other stove materials:

Cartridge Brass: 0.308 lb/in^3 120.0 W/m-k Melting Point 1680F
302 Stainless: 0.289 lb/in^3 15.9 W/m-k Melting Point 2500F
Titanium: 0.163 lb/in^3 17.0 W/m-k Melting Point 3000F
Aluminum: 0.098 lb/in^3 225.0 W/m-k Melting Point 1190F
510 Bronze: 0.320 lb/in^3 84.0 W/m-k Melting Point 1790F

The only wood stoves I'd seen before are SS or titanium. Titanium is of course lighter. Some brands brag that titanium has better thermal conductivity than stainless, so you'll heat your tent better rather than lose heat through the pipe. From my observation of the data it looks like a wash on that argument.

I've read threads about massive failures with aluminum because hot spots burn it up in a foil-thickness. That leaves brass and bronze. Brass (cartridge brass) is lighter and has better heat transfer, so lets focus on that. According to MatWeb, it has fair to excellent corrosion resistance, it's fairly strong in comparison to steel and Titanium, and it's cheaper than stainless steel foil, at $43.76 for a 12" x 120" roll from McMaster-Carr.

Does anybody have experience in trying brass as a material? I figured if anything, instead of using it for the whole stove, one could use it for the top plate and get better heat transfer to anything you might be cooking on top.

 

[squeekieslayer]

interesting, i have no input at all... but seems like a good idea... i love my wi fi stove so i am sure your knock off will be great too.

Brass would certainly look a lot cooler than everyon's silver stoves hahah

joe

 

[moxford]

Looks like it's considerably heavier, more prone to denting/bending, and has *much* worse thermal conductivity (like, much worse ... Ti-t6 has 46.5 BTU-in/hr-ft^2 vs cartridge brass' 833 BTU-in/hr-ft^2.)

Oh, and brass often contains lead - make sure you get the pure stuff or it might not be fun to heat it up inside an enclosed tent

Honestly, it seems worse in every single way except price and, looking online, I don't even see a compelling savings there unless you're REALLY desperate. If a Wifi is 1.5 lbs, you're then likely coming out to 3.0 or so. How much is not having to hump 1.5lbs worth?

-mox

 

[bowhunter15]

Looks like it's considerably heavier, more prone to denting/bending, and has *much* worse thermal conductivity (like, much worse ... Ti-t6 has 46.5 BTU-in/hr-ft^2 vs cartridge brass' 833 BTU-in/hr-ft^2.)
-mox

I'd think you would WANT a greater thermal conductivity so that the heat transfers out into the livable space or cooking surface rather than escaping with the air through the pipe and outside. So I would think brass would be significantly better in that regard. If it's not please explain. That was the huge selling point for brass. The price was an added bonus. It's only about 6% heavier than stainless. By using it only for the top and stainless for the rest, the weight difference would be negligible, but the cook surface should be improved.

The only other thing is that the heat transfer depends on both the material properties and the amount of material it needs to go through. Since we're dealing with foils only a couple thousandths of an inch thick, in practice it might be negligible too. The only way to tell would be to do a boil test or do some calculus that I don't fell like refreshing on.

On the lead point, Brass 260 has a lead composition of <=0.070%. How dangerous that level is... I honestly don't quite know but now that it's been brought up it might be the more pertinent concern with using brass. I don't see it having any way to leech into anything you'd consume, and we handle brass bullets and instruments (tuba, trumpet, etc) with no issues. Whether or not the heat would do anything such as what you see with fumes from galvanized pipe I'm not sure.

 

[moxford]

You are correct - I got my thermal-capacity (how hard it is to heat) and thermal-conductivity (how well it transmits heat) intermixed in my post.
Apologies.

Density of the brass you listed is ~ x2 that of the Alum, 3x that of the Ti.

I don't know how much the lead in the brass will cause issues (or run?) ... just something to research before you snuggle up to it.

-mox

 

[Hunt'nFish]

Humm..... I'd think if there were benefits to brass, other makers would use it. And they don't. Seems like a heavy option.
Hunt'nFish