Wood Burning Stove
TexasHunter83
11/22/13 3:12am
Hey fellas,
I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this, but I'll give it a shot. My neighbor and I recently build a wood burning stove. Most of the stuff I've looked up about camping in low temperatures is that a wood burning stove is the "way to go" when it comes to heating a wall tent. We used propane heaters last year and were almost fumed out of the tent. From what I've read, and seen, wood burning stoves seem to be more common place than I thought. Let me explain what I did and then I'll ask the question.
We made it out of a 12" pipe with a "T" on the top. Not wanting the heat to escape straight out of the pipe, we welded a steel plate to the T and capped it off, essentially turning it into a "hot plate" for cooking (or whatever). We welded and closed in one side of the pipe and cut a 4" hole and welded a 4" 90 for a smoke stack. For the door we just made a hinge, applied stove rope, made a latch, and cut open a air flow hole with a damper. We then made a stand for it that is separate so it will be easier to transport. We still have some finishing touches but for the most part it's ready to go. We actually lit it up the other day and it got really hot, but the fire seemed to want to die out with quite a bit of wood left to burn. I'm not sure if it's an issue of the air flow through the damper, or possibly because we didn't have any stove pipe attached (thus not getting a good "draw" through the stove). I'm currently debating making the air flow hole bigger, but it seems as though I've seen several people burning good fires with the damper open just a little.
I guess my questions are: Do any of you have any good advice for building a wood burning stove? Do's and Don'ts? Any ideas on the damper and air flow situation? Any information would be greatly appreciated. I tried to attach a picture but the file is too big. I'll work on it.
Disclaimer: This is, by NO MEANS, a professional project. I'm a novice welder and an even more novice engineer...lol
I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this, but I'll give it a shot. My neighbor and I recently build a wood burning stove. Most of the stuff I've looked up about camping in low temperatures is that a wood burning stove is the "way to go" when it comes to heating a wall tent. We used propane heaters last year and were almost fumed out of the tent. From what I've read, and seen, wood burning stoves seem to be more common place than I thought. Let me explain what I did and then I'll ask the question.
We made it out of a 12" pipe with a "T" on the top. Not wanting the heat to escape straight out of the pipe, we welded a steel plate to the T and capped it off, essentially turning it into a "hot plate" for cooking (or whatever). We welded and closed in one side of the pipe and cut a 4" hole and welded a 4" 90 for a smoke stack. For the door we just made a hinge, applied stove rope, made a latch, and cut open a air flow hole with a damper. We then made a stand for it that is separate so it will be easier to transport. We still have some finishing touches but for the most part it's ready to go. We actually lit it up the other day and it got really hot, but the fire seemed to want to die out with quite a bit of wood left to burn. I'm not sure if it's an issue of the air flow through the damper, or possibly because we didn't have any stove pipe attached (thus not getting a good "draw" through the stove). I'm currently debating making the air flow hole bigger, but it seems as though I've seen several people burning good fires with the damper open just a little.
I guess my questions are: Do any of you have any good advice for building a wood burning stove? Do's and Don'ts? Any ideas on the damper and air flow situation? Any information would be greatly appreciated. I tried to attach a picture but the file is too big. I'll work on it.
Disclaimer: This is, by NO MEANS, a professional project. I'm a novice welder and an even more novice engineer...lol
18,344
At this point we'd welded a hot plate on the top, cut a 3 1/2" hole and added a 4" 90 degree pipe for a smoke stack.
Next we built a stand out of angle-iron and some 1 1/2" pipe. (later we added rebar to stabilize the legs.
Took some time to make a door. We adhered a stove rope on the inside of the door, Cut a hole for an intake and made a damper, also made a door-latch that secures with a bolt. We made it "tight" enough to depress the rope as it closes. You can also see rebar we added to the stand.
Then we added some handles. (You can see the stove rope is hanging a little at the top, so we took it off and welded a ring of 3/4" flat bar around the inside of the door to "hold" the rope. We also used some better adhesive to secure the rope. This isn't shown in these photographs.)
Here is just a pic of it smoking. All in all we probably spent about $50-$60. (Including welding rods, stove pipe, rope, etc...)