by hpmer » Sun Nov 02, 2014 4:07 pm
Yeah, I might just have really great clay subsoil. Never tested it for composition. I don't add any sand or anything else to the mix, it's really simple. Dig the stuff up, soak it in a bucket, screen out the roots and rocks and go. Simple and works great. Got the idea from Donkey a while ago. Originally I made a "puck" mold out of an old tuna fish can to test mixes so I could have consistent sized pucks to measure weight, durability, etc., then I fired them in one of my original "L" rockets. Everything from 1:1 clay:ash up to 1:5 to find stuff that would work. For me, 1:1 and 1:2 or 3 seem to work best. Any higher and they're too fragile and crumbly. The "problem" with these stoves is they don't produce a lot of ash, so I have to store it up for a while. And, since I don't burn every day or even every week, it can take a long time to collect enough material.
The rebar just floats in a little cradle that I form when the core is wet, so it's not permanently connected or buried in the mix at all. I take a piece of rebar, wet the ends and squish it down and back and forth so the "cradle" is just a bit longer than the piece of rebar. I lift it off when I clean out the ashes. I don't think it gets hot enough to have a material impact on raising the temp of the wood resting against it either. And Peter and Donkey's experiments with the Peter Channel uses a big, flat piece of steel to form their channel and that seems to work pretty well for them.
But it protects the front edge of the feed from the wear and tear of longer pieces of wood banging up against it and sliding down and generally wearing it away. Plus it may have a similar function in that air can get down in between the rebar and the front of the feed since I have it stand off maybe 3/8" from the feed. It obviously doesn't stick down past the top of the burn tunnel like the P-Channel, but works really well for me, and is super simple to execute. I like simple.
Now that you guys have shown me how to use Photobucket, I went a bit crazy with the pictures. Maybe I'll go back to my maple syrup stove thread over at Donkey's board and throw in a video of that thing in action. I call it my maple syrup production facility. A bit grandiose, perhaps, since I only produce about a half gallon of syrup, but hey. I'm planning on building another smaller sap warming stove for next spring so I'll document that process, too.