[TheForge] Wood Stove for Shop heat

[Jerry Frost]

While we're on the subject of wood burning shop 
heaters. . .

About 20 years ago I lived in a quonset about 20 miles 
out of Anchorage and voluntarily off the grid. I heated 
with a single barrel stove but my job kept me out of 
town so much of the time it was hard to cut enough 
firewood to feed the beast.

A ways farther out of town is an old coal mine and 
there were a couple of very convenient seams of the 
shiniest prettiest anthricite you've ever seen. I could 
pull my pickup right under them and literally pitch the 
coal into the bed. About 3-4 hrs of digging and 
pitching gave me a year's worth of coal heat so I 
started burning a combo of wood and coal in the barrel.

In short order I'd burned out the botom of the stove 
and had to make another. There was some really 
excellent stoneware quality clay in the same strip 
mine. The clay had too much coal particles in it for 
most potters to want to mess with but the stuff was 
perfect for ramming a stove liner with. So, that's what 
I did in my next barrel.

Well, needless to say a horizontal barrel stove does 
NOT make a good coal burner though used in combination 
with wood it worked okay. I experimented with different 
grate configurations but the stove was just plain the 
wrong shape.

What I did was build a vertical barrel stove. I built 
my own doors, One ash door about 10" x 5", slightly 
larger than a fire brick laid on it's side. The fire 
door was 12" x 12" and placed in the upper half of the 
55 gl drum.

I rammed the bottom of the drum with the mined clay 
about 3/4" thick and mounted the ash door flush with 
the clay floor. I used split fire brick on end to line 
around the bottom of the drum, leaving a gap for the 
ash door which had a split brick cut in half on top of 
it to make a continuous fire brick liner. I mortared 
the split brick liner in with furnace cement.

After I'd gotten this far I noticed the split brick 
liner made the bore slightly smaller than a bell 
housing and I knew where I could find an old cast iron 
one. After spending half a day digging in the wet silt 
of Cook Inlet's Knick Arm and using a breaker bar and 
cheater to snap off the hopelessly rusted on bolts I 
took my trophy home. Sure enough the old bell housing 
rested nicely on the fire brick liner. so I went about 
making a grate and shaker mechanism for it. I welded a 
plate over the opening for the clutch mechanism and it 
was ready to install.

The drum I was using was an old highway paint drum so 
it had a lid held on with a clamp ring. I replaced the 
rubber gasket with asbestos rope. (this was quite a few 
years ago and it was still available) the next thing I 
did was cut a hole in the lid large enough to just 
cover with a 15 gl. grease barrel which I welded to the 
lid.

Looking at the stove's lid from the side it looked a 
bit like a top hat, so that's what I called it or 
alternatively the "heat hat". I then ran a 6" stove 
pipe jack through the (now) top of the grease barrel.

After finishing a few little details like: a draft 
that'd snuff it out if you shut it all the way down, a 
6" sq. Pyrex window in the fire door and a nice shiney 
chrome rim instead of legs, it was ready to try. I 
ALWAYS test fire new home made wood burners outdoors 
just because. This thing burned like a jet engine and 
was very controllable so after playing with it for a 
couple days I moved it inside.

The first thing I discovered when I lit it indoors was 
I had to put a couple screws in the stove pipe cap as 
the draft was so strong it just blew it off. Shortly 
later I discovered it was WAY too much stove for my 
well insulated little quonset and I ended up trading it 
off with a neighbor who had a coal burning parlor 
heater.

My neighbor Arvid used my vertical barrel stove in his 
shop, a 62' x 90' quonset and it heated it nicely year 
round. Arvid started sending his son and daughter with 
a trailer with me to help mine the coal and I was 
perfectly satisfied with the coal heater so everybody 
was warm and happy. <grin>

Frosty
-------------------------------
If it ain't forged
it ain't real.
Wrought iron is.
The FrostWorks

Meadow Lakes, AK.

http://www.artmetalradio.com/