The Alpha — Flat-Pack Corten Chiminea Brazier
A fire that stands up and takes a shape.
Most fire pits sit low and spread their heat in every direction. The Alpha does the opposite — a tall, open-fronted A-frame in Corten weathering steel that draws the fire upward, throws its warmth forward at you, and pulls the smoke up and away over your head instead of into your eyes. It's a brazier, a chimenea, and a piece of standing sculpture in one.
And like every fire piece we make, it flat-packs. Up for winter, down for summer.
The shape does the work
The Alpha isn't a tall design for the sake of looking dramatic — though it does. The converging walls form a flue. As the fire burns, that tapered chimney pulls air up through the flames and carries smoke up and out the top, away from the people sitting around it. Anyone who's spent an evening dodging campfire smoke around a low open pit knows exactly why that matters.
The open front and angled back panels do the second job: they shelter the fire from wind on three sides while reflecting radiant heat out toward your seating. You point the open face at the lounge setting and the Alpha warms that space, like an outdoor fireplace, rather than bleeding heat off in every direction at once.
3mm BlueScope REDCOR® — heavy for the category
The Alpha is fabricated from 3mm BlueScope REDCOR® weathering steel — and for a chiminea, that's a serious gauge. The imported chimineas you'll find at the big-box stores are typically thin pressed steel that warps and burns through, or cast iron that cracks the first time it gets a frost on a hot casting. REDCOR® does neither.
It's engineered to rust on purpose. Left out in the weather it develops a dense, tightly-bonded patina that seals the surface and stops corrosion going deeper — no paint to bubble, blister or peel, and nothing to off-gas the first time you build a serious fire. The rust is the protection. Your Alpha ships in raw silver steel and settles into a rich, even rust tone over the first few weeks outdoors. From there it's effectively maintenance-free.
Why 3mm and not 6mm?
Fair question — the rest of our fire-pit range is 6mm plate, and we don't do thin steel by default. So we'll be straight with you: we built the Alpha in 6mm first.
It was magnificent. It was also a brute. At that height, 6mm plate made the piece extraordinarily heavy — genuinely difficult to assemble, and a real job to move or store. A fire pit you need three people and a bad back to shift isn't a fire pit you'll actually use, and it works against the whole point of a flat-pack design that's meant to come down and tuck away each summer.
So we stepped it back to 3mm. At this size and shape, 3mm REDCOR® is still seriously heavy-gauge — double the thickness of the imported chimeneas it competes with — and it carries the structure properly while staying light enough for one or two people to assemble, move, and store without dramas. The tall A-frame geometry does a lot of the structural work that sheer thickness does on our squat pits, so you lose nothing in durability.
It's the rare case where less steel is the better engineering call. We tested both and chose the one you'll actually want to live with.
Flat-pack — here for winter, gone for summer
The Alpha arrives flat-packed and goes together easily — no specialist tools, no fuss. When fire season ends, it comes apart just as easily and stores flat against a shed or garage wall instead of standing in your courtyard through summer collecting cobwebs.
That's the same thinking behind every fire piece we build: a fire pit shouldn't dominate your space for the twelve months a year if you're not lighting it.
Built to last, made to move
- Flat-pack design — assembles easily, no tools required
- 3mm BlueScope REDCOR® weathering steel — heavy-gauge for the category; we tested 6mm and chose 3mm so you can actually lift, assemble and store it
- Open-fronted A-frame — directional radiant heat, wind shelter on three sides, smoke drawn up and away
- Disassembles for summer storage — stores flat, not standing in your courtyard year-round
- Australian made — fabricated by our team at Somersby, NSW
Best of both — a fire and a feature
Lit, the Alpha is a proper fire: tall flames framed inside the steel, warmth thrown out front, smoke carried up and clear. Unlit, it's a sculptural Corten form that earns its place in the courtyard year-round if you'd rather leave it standing. Either way, it's built here, from Australian steel, to last for decades rather than seasons.
