Canvas or silk wall tent better for a stove?

MD

MD

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Before lucking into a 10x12 40 year old Pioneer canvas tent last week I already owned a 9x12 Egyptian cotton "sail silk" tent made by Canada Outfitters, an extinct Vancouver Company. Neither one is fitted yet with a chimney hole.

The smaller one has five-foot walls, the other one three-foot walls. They are both roomy once set up, though I have only had the 9x12 up before. I hung the 10x12 up in the basement yesterday to gauge it's potential inside space.

The 10x12 canvas one has fabric that seems to be just a tad thicker than the silk one and might be more spark resistant and burn-proof than the silk one. I don't know, but with the five-foot wall the silk one seems more appropriate to put a chimney jack in.

Tough decision. I have about 10 months to do it, but I think I'd like to have heated tent next season.

At 69 next season, I'm getting tired to sleeping in a damp pickup canopy after trying to get as warm as possible by the campfire before bed.

I'm open to advice.
 
Since neither have a hole yet, you could always configure your stove and pipe set up first then decide which tent would work best with it. I am by no means an expert but for a few years I ran a straight pipe through a roof panel, which worked fine. I never had a spark issue although I always brought wood from home that I knew was dry. If you went out at night, you could see a spark or 2 coming out of the pipe and now and then, 1 would land on the tent. Fast forward to now, I run a pipe set up that runs out on an angle away from the tent. The draw between the straight and angle set up is negligible and unless it's stupid windy towards the pipe, I don't worry about sparks.
 
I have no experience with silk tents but I do with canvas. I would go with the canvas tent and the stove jack would be through the roof or out the back wall. Angle your stove pipe away from the tent. Cover the tent with a tarp, this will allow snow to slide off easily. When the temperature dips you will be warm and dry.
 
Egyptian cotton tents were highly desirable for people who travelled by manpower. They are extremely light, with a very tight weave, and considered to be wind proof and water proof. They are essentially a 4 ounce canvas, made with with egyptian cotton. You might be still able to fetch a pretty good penny for it if you were to advertise on websites where winter trekkers still man haul with toboggans.

I have several canvas tents, one of them being an original egyptian cotton tent like yours. One thing to consider - if you are cutting poles to hang your tent on, the three foot wall is a lot easier to configure.

State of the art winter hauling tents now are Snowtrekkers, made in the USA. I have one, they are not cheap, but if you are canoe hunting in the shoulder season, they are ideal, because they are very lightweight, with properties very similar to Egyptian Cotton.

Both of your tents will burn, but chances are the Egyptian cotton one is so old that it probably was not treated with fire retardants. A good tarp over the tents will help with spark control. The main way to avoid spark damage is to never put paper in your fire. Paper will catch fire and shoot straight up your pipe, and then float down on your tent. If you are a smoker, don't throw your empty smoke pack in the fire. Which leads to pipe placement. If you run the pipe straight up and out, you will have difficulty tarping the tent. You could cut a hole in your tarp and hope for the best, but when the wind kicks up, you dont want your tarp flying around the hot stove pipe. On my Egyptian cotton tent, I ran the pipe out the right hand door flap. Some people run the pipe out the back panel, but having it in the front seems to be the preferred method, as you don't have to track wood and debris through the tent.

Think about your stove too. Folks who put baffles in their stoves claim to have superior burns with less sparks. I have never used one, so can't guess one way or the other, but many swear by it.

Anyway, if it were me, if I didn't have to worry about man-hauling the tent, as in driving into a campsite, or quading or skidooing, I would use the canvas tent. If I was pulling a sled on snowshoes, i would probably use the egyptian cotton one. You will have a lot of fun in any case.
 
I get way less sparks on the roofs of my wall tents if I extend the pipe rather high above the crown of the tent and do not use a cap.
If there isn't enough wind or the fire isn't all that hot, the sparks hit the cap and then have a better chance of falling down onto the roof.
If the ground is snow covered or rain soaked I do not use a cap, if its dry out its wise to use a cap to try and control sparks that can sail off and may start a fire.
Either way, I put a tarp over the roof the best I can so the sparks can land on it rather than the canvas roofs.
 
The stove pipe spark arrestor caps work really well. Been using them for years with the wall tent and the synthetic TeePee tent. The heavy duty tarp for the wall tent also has a silicon ring installed for the stove pipe to pass thru.
MD..... talk to Paul about this , it was his canvas tent we used to use.
 
billbmcleod said:
I personally would not put a wood stove inside any canvas tent unless it was fireproofed. A friend had a bad experience with a. Tent fire and now will only
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Think, by law, any tent intended for human occupancy has to be treated with a fire retardant, at least I was told when looking at wall tents.

Grizz
 
Reviving an ancient thread, after pondering getting a stove for several years, today I just got a real deal on a lightly used Camp Chef barrel stove ($329.99 regular price) for $100.

https://www.cabelas.ca/product/34900/camp-chef-wall-tent-barrel-stove-kit

So now I have to seriously considder all of the above advice and finlly decide on which tent to sew a pipe jack into.

Even though the lighter sail silk tent is one foot shorter, with five-foot walls it is roomier. The 10x12 is more robust, but with three-foot walls feels kind of cramped. Pretty good for one person, two people would be bending their heads over all the time. I'm like the idea of an angled stove pipe like a gun barrel out the side more and more all the time.
 
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MD said:
Reviving an ancient thread, after pondering getting a sotve for several years, today I just got a real deal on a lightly used Camp Chef barrel stove ($329.99 regular price) for $100.

https://www.cabelas.ca/product/34900/camp-chef-wall-tent-barrel-stove-kit

So now I have to seriously considder all of the above advice and finlly decide on which tent to sew a pipe jack into.

Even though the lighter sail silk tent is one foot shorter, with five-foot walls it is roomier. The 10x12 is more robust, but with three-foot walls feels kind of cramped. Pretty good for one person, two people would be bending their heads over all the time. I'm like the idea of an angled stove pipe like a gun barrel out the side more and more all the time.
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My stove pipe goes out the back wall of my 12X14 tent angled away from the tent about 5 ft away. A tarp covers the whole tent. I have the same stove that you just bought and it's works well for me. I don't get an all night burn but I'm fine with that, I light it up in the morning.
 
pete dobinson said:
My stove pipe goes out the back wall of my 12X14 tent angled away from the tent about 5 ft away. A tarp covers the whole tent. I have the same stove that you just bought and it's works well for me. I don't get an all night burn but I'm fine with that, I light it up in the morning.
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Thank you Pete. I was thinking of doing the same thing so that I could tarp over the whole tent. Do you have a 45-degree elbow right at the stove and direct the pipe at an angle out through the tent that way like an artillery gun barrel? I guess if I did that i'd have to make an excact calculation to determine where to install the stove jack. How close is the back of the stove to the tent wall?
 
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