"Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it's really how it works."
- Steve Jobs -
Note: This series originally appeared on Whaleshares.
In case you're just "tuning in," you can read the first three installments of this story here, here, and here.
Any time you haven't heard from me for a while, please feel free to reach out in a comment below any article. I consider your encouragement invaluable! In fact, it's your encouragement that helps me keep going.
The blazing warmth of fire... ~ Image courtesy of Giffy.com
Homemade Wood Stove - Part 4/Conclusion
Let's take a final look at the stove design.
I'm no wood stove expert, and that was even more true in the early 1970s. Even so, I had seen any number of wood stoves at friends' homes and in stove shops around New England.
As a result, I had some fairly clear ideas about the basics I wanted in my stove. I knew what I wanted it to do (heat the house) and, roughly, how I wanted it to work (well).
In this chapter, I'll share some of the inner workings of the stove, and the fundamental design ideas that I applied in its making.
Stove in the living room. ~ Original image by 
In the image above,
you can see the way I remember the stove, positioned at one end of our living room. I left the window there in its open position, and cut and inserted a sheet metal barrier to just fit in the opening and allow the stove pipe to pass through.
The images below present the same scene.
However, they offer three different perspectives, plus if you click on any one of them, you can see a full-sized version of the image.
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Three Perspectives - CLICK for larger image. ~ Original images by
A box with burning wood in it...
Sounds pretty simple, right?
Even so, like any engineering design, a wood stove comes with a set of sometimes conflicting requirements.
For example, you need to keep air flowing smoothly through the system in order to keep the wood burning and to exhaust toxic gases out through the chimney. But if the air moves too fast, then a lot of the stove's desired final product--i.e., heat--goes right up the chimney with it.
If the air moves too slow, you risk having toxic gases leaking out into your living space. Not good.
And so your stove design needs to find a delicate balance. It needs to slow down the airflow enough to extract the maximum heat into the living space, but not so slow that the system chokes and leaks gas into the room.
Looking in from the front. ~ Original image by
It can be a baffling problem.
(How's that for a deliberate pun?)
The method I chose to extract more heat was to install a baffle in the stove fire box. In the image above, you can see the baffle in place in the middle of the firebox. The idea and purpose behind a baffle is to lengthen the path that the burning gasses must travel, and thus allow more heat to transfer from them into and out through the metal body of the stove.
In the exploded view below,
you can see the baffle floating in space. When installed, the baffle actually divides the interior of the stove into lower and upper chambers. The lower chamber holds the burning wood, and the upper chamber is simply part of a longer path through the stove to allow the hot gasses to transfer their heat to the stove body, and thus out into the living space.
Stove parts identified. ~ Original image by
Once again,
here are three perspectives to allow you to access full-sized illustrations and consider the design of each of the stove components. Note that the stove body, stovepipe collar, baffle, legs, and stove front are all welded together in one piece.
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Three Exploded Views - CLICK for larger image. ~ Original images by
Let's take a closer look at the door.
In the image below, you can see that the door has an air space with an adjustable opening at the top (a damper to control the rate of air flow through the stove) and interior holes in bottom to allow the air into the firebox. The purpose of the air space is to preheat the incoming air as it passes from the top of the door to the bottom.
Door without front cover attached. ~ Original image by
The door front cover is welded to the rest of the door. Not illustrated here are a couple of small guides holding the front damper to the top of the door air chamber, allowing it to be slid left and right to adjust the air flow, while preventing it from falling off of the door.
In the cut-away view below,
you can see how the baffle divides the interior of the stove into upper and lower chambers.
Although not illustrated here, there is a seal (made of a "rope" of twisted, heavy duty aluminum foil) between the front of the stove and the door. The seal compresses just enough to fill any irregularities in the surface of the stove front and the inside of the door, providing a good air-tight seal. The door is mounted with a hinge on one side and a lever/wedge latch on the other side to hold the door tightly shut while the stove is in operation.
Cut-Away View. ~ Original image by
The next illustration shows the overall path that the air follows in its passage through the stove. This is the key illustration showing how the stove functions.
More than any other,
this image illustrates the design of this wood stove.
Air Flow Path. ~ Original image by
Air flow.
The flow of air coming into the stove is regulated by sliding the front damper left or right to adjust the size of the air inlet. "Turning off" the stove is a simple matter of closing the front damper completely. Conversely, when starting the stove, the front damper is set to the fully open position.
Air entering through the front damper is pre-heated as it passes through the door air chamber. It then enters the firebox through holes drilled across the bottom of the door.
Because the air is entering from the front, wood in the firebox burns from the front to the back.
Wood Stove in the "loading" position. ~ Original image by
Flames heat the baffle from the underside, and hot burning gasses rise and circulate, redirected towards the front of the firebox, and then traveling up and around the baffle, redirected again toward the stovepipe exit at the top back of the stove. The hot gasses transfer much of their heat to the stove body as they follow this path, thus heating the surrounding living space.
Finally, the hot exhaust gasses rise up through the stovepipe and out into the surrounding world. As mentioned in previous articles, keeping the chimney clean can be a problem as creosote builds up constantly when the stove is in operation.
Each time I build something,
I gain ideas about how to do it better next time. Making is definitely a "learn by doing" process. I learned a lot by building and using this wood stove, not the least of which is that I would build another one in a heartbeat if I wanted to heat with wood again.
Thanks for reading.
I hope you've found the conclusion of my wood stove story satisfying. I have ideas for improvements, so if you're thinking of building a wood stove of your own, please let me know. I'd be happy to share some recommendations.
FIN
A shelter from the frozen elements... ~ Image courtesy of Jerzy Górecki
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