Another forum member Struggle is rebuilding his wood stove

[elkimmeg]

I guess the phone call worked Great news now that you have completed your rebuild care to add to this post then, I will wiki it so others can refference it.
https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/4299/

Remember once you get it running and working right make sure you let your wife know

 

[struggle]

I will update this again after I make sure all is well with how it burns and works. It is going as I type now, but I need to make a run out tothe wood pile, so I will leave it with my wife who just said it does look nice.

I would say that phone call worked great ;-P

 

[struggle]

Well I am on my second burn on the stove today. I ran it with four splits in it this morning. Let it completely cool down and then restarted it tonight (burning as I type) After things seemed good this morning I left the house after it warmed up and wife put one more piece of wood in it. I went to get firewood with the truck which I spent two hours cleaning the other day and it snowed yesterday so I wanted to get to the wood pile before the farm I store wood at was a mess from melting as it was to get above freezing this afternoon. Well anyway. When I arrived home from that the house was pretty smokey from the paint curing I suspect. Opened a few windows to let that air out.

I put the stove back together where it was to stay. This helped me not have to borrow anyone to move it downstairs as I did it piece by piece.

I set the bottom on two 4x4 blocks and some other 2x4s on top of them to raise the base high enough to allow me to put the legs on it after the top rods were secured as the legs block the nuts to the rods.(get your mind out of the gutter this is a woodstove).

Since I was using a new bottom as the original was cracked I prefit the sides to the base before cracking open the first tube of sealant. The new bottom is slightly different than the old one. Everything went together the same and functions the same just that the bottom has a different build to the slats in it. After everything seemed good I put the rods in the top as it would seem very difficult to do otherwise for installing them.

I pushed the base plate against the wall and put the rear plate on first and the the side and the front last. After that seemed well I took a ratch-it strap and put it around the stove as there is nothing really securing the sides except for the sealant and one bump and off a side may fall. I then slid the base out from the wall and installed the top. After doing this I found the my right side panel somehow moved inward and I had a substantial gap so I moved the top up slightly with a screwdriver and then moved the side panel in place and the set the top back down and tripled checked everything and started to snug down the four rods at the bottom of the base bit by bit. After I was happy with that I put the legs on and then tilted the stove one side and removed the blocks under it so it was on its own. I went over all the areas I could find inside I could and filled them in more with sealer. I think I was a little reserved on how much I put on the base as I did not see sealant coming out the outside areas but it did seem to be on all the inside areas.

After that I just started to put together all the inside panels and baffles/air intake tubes. Some of which had sealant from the factory so I resealed areas as it was from the factory. Then I installed the gaskets per instructions.

I stuck a shop light in the stove was not able to see any light except from the griddle gasket area which I will recheck tomorrow after a couple of burns as I suspect it was just not settled down.

Let it sit overnight and lit it in the morning for a short burn.

The result so far has been I can here it sucking wind through air intake on the left side of the stove. Never heard that before and as well with the rear air intake door. I know like Elk said it was pulling air from a lot of places it was never intended too.

Here is the parts laid out picture and two finished pictures less the warming racks as I want to be able to see all the seams for a couple of days before putting them back on.

Total cost so far has been just over $200 for the base and sealant,paint and gasket kit which were all mailed to my house.

(broken link removed to http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b148/struggle_/DCP_2042.jpg)

(broken link removed to http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b148/struggle_/DCP_2050-1.jpg)

(broken link removed to http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b148/struggle_/DCP_2051.jpg)

I will paint the pipe it was that I just ran out of paint and it looks bad.

 

[BrotherBart]

Nice job and a great looking stove guy. Now you will be heating with a stove that you know literally inside and out.

 

[elkimmeg]

Damn does that look good

 

[ourhouse]

That stove looks great! Very nice job

 

[begreen]

Yeah, looks straight out of the factory. Nice work. You've given that stove another 20 years of life. Good feeling isn't it?

 

[elkimmeg]

I hope you read the manual. I want to point out one point that. to either fill the bottom with sand or leave an inch or so of ash. Doing so will mean not rebuilding that stove again anytime soon

 

[daldrich]

Very nice rebuild. Really. I'm rebuilding my Resolute right now and decided not to to disassemble the plates and instead re-cement the inside/outside plates, re-cement the fireback and new gaskets. Hopefully won't regret going whole hog like you did.

-d

 

[struggle]

I have no regrets so far. I did read the online pdf manual and I am seeing I am having to constantly adjust the air intakes in down draft mode as if just a little to open I can hit 700 on the top and to little and I nose dive on the temp to 400. What gives with that?

I am filling the stove full of wood.

Thanks for all the praises. I am glad I did this. Big thanks to Elkimmeg for encouraging the rebuild. I just need to learn how to tame this thing down.

 

[DavidV]

Rebuild/pointing......all the same when you go from bad stove to good stove. All that work makes me glad I have a cat stove. Even when I purchase the etire rebuild/baffle replacemet next year, I will have less work to do than that. Kudos to you Struggle. An outstanding hermostat in the house is in the "off" mode. and it's in the 70's.