I participate on this site for that very reason.
We are always improving on function, emissions and efficiency.
I cannot provide details on specific changes, those are absolutely propriety. This is after all a public forum.
And that's exactly why I asked the question the way I did. This forum is a very useful asset for a company like BK, not only because of the exposure potential consumers have to BK products, but also the consumer feedback BK has access to. It's a two way street and I appreciate the fact that you participate here.
Here's my nit pick list in no particular order for the benefit of BK. I'm not expecting any elaboration on these points because I understand some of this would necessarily involve proprietary info discovered through internal testing.
First, let me say I really like this stove a lot, it's the best I've had by far and I've had some very nice stoves. It's going to work really well here and I can already tell it's going to save me a lot of time loading, carrying wood and processing wood while keeping my place a more comfortable, more consistent temperature. Less trips out of doors in the cold rain/snow. That's saying a lot because my previous stove worked very well and wasn't a crude smoke dragon or anything like that.
1) Like every other stove I've had with a glass door the corners of the window soot up on low or med-low burn. The glass is considerably larger than any of my three other stoves that had glass and, on the Chinook, the completely clear area is larger than the entire window areas on my previous stoves. So, already that's good, better than all my previous stoves. A load of wood burned on high-med high cleared most of the soot but still left about 5 sq. inches in the two bottom corners not cleared. But I don't believe for a minute there's not room for improvement. I burn dry, seasoned wood so it's never been too terrible of a problem but that's not to say that completely clear and clean glass would not look spectacularly better. Impossible? Just the nature of the beast? I think, at the very least, it could be improved upon by managing the turbulence in the window area better. I noticed the side firebricks end about two inches before the door. This leaves an open vertical channel that causes turbulence of dirty gasses swirling around in the firebox that is strong enough to disrupt the "sheet" of glass wash air. It would be a simple matter to fill these channels with narrow firebricks. Also, I haven't had the bottom center soot up. That suggests the glass wash air could be fine tuned to be a little stronger on the two sides where it is needed more.
2) The hinges are bolted on from inside the firebox but are not protected from extreme heat by firebrick because they are in the same open channel I mentioned above. If there were firebrick fitted into the side channel not only would turbulence be reduced, but the hinges would stay cool enough to retain high temperature grease which would reduce hinge wear years down the road. I have some high temperature dry moly spray lube but I think those hinges get a little too hot for it to be effective for even half a season. It looks like the hinge pins might be softer than the metal surrounding the pins. If so, any slop from hinge wear could be fixed simply by replacing the pins. However, with the long BK burn times I won't be opening the door very often so I imagine that is a very long time down the road!
3) The Chinook's loading door only opens slightly past 90 degrees. This may be unique to the modern design of the Chinook model. The bigger issue is that the official "doorstop" is the outer face of the door about 2" from the door edge (where it contacts the corner of the stove). The first time I opened the door to re-load it, I didn't expect it to stop so soon (my previous stove opened all the way) and the paint was removed from the face of the door where it contacted the corner of the stove. So now there is a line of bare metal on the door face. I don't think it's worth it to touch it up since that area is the official doorstop and I need to open it all the way to insure I don't burn myself on the hot door edge while inserting wood. There should be a doorstop on the backside of the door that prevents the face of the door from contacting the stove body. Because with the door barely opening past 90 degrees, the door is going to be opened to the stop every time.
4) I've already mentioned this one but the fans could be quieter while moving the same amount of air. On low-med low they are fine. But at medium and higher settings I rate them a C+ to B-. Definitely not obnoxious but there is room for future improvement. A few years back I read an interesting article about how Ford re-designed the F-150 acoustics. The sound engineers said they weren't shooting for the absolute lowest dB ratings when they adjusted various parameters that impacted sounds, rather they were trying to keep the unpleasant sounds at bay. It had to do with frequencies, harmonics, etc.
That's all for now, as you can probably tell from how short this list is, and the nature of the suggestions, this stove is definitely a winner!
. That's why I went into BK land, avoiding the tripping
