Hey guys, first time posting. I've enjoyed the site for the wealth of information of the past couple years. Finally gathered some pics of my own.
I have a '76 Grandpa Bear that I "inherited" from a friends lake cabin when they took it down to build up a new dwelling.
Was originally located in Wolf Lake, NY (sullivan co). Now it's located in the western Fingerlakes between Honeoye Lake and Canadice Lake.
It was in really good shape when I first picked it up. Originally it was going to be heat for my barn/shop. It sat out in the barn for several years as I pondered about spending the money on a chimney stack.... After finally being handed a condensing propane furnace and installing that in the barn, I realized how dumb I had been for all those years... my house had a block chimney from the basement and I had been heating with electric baseboard. <sighs>
So anyway, the stove needed a good wire-wheel and paint. These are a couple after pictures prior to my install.
This is the same as the others pictured with the half round channel in the doors and the 1/2" round stock as the door seal.
At some point this stove was a rear outlet stove, and someone welded up the outlet and welded in a vertical flue flange.
This is my second year running the stove to heat my house ~1200sqft ranch from the basement.
I finished my install last year already into the heating season, so I pushed myself to start making heat instead of making a shelf baffle for it. (After learning about them here)
So this year i finally took some time and built a baffle. Unfortunately I neglected to take pictures as i built the baffle only of the installed unit.
2 pieces of .25" plate 26.5"x8". Overlapped them by about an inch and welded some angle to the one so i could slip fit them together once they were in the fire box. Final plate worked out to be around 26.5"x15". I installed a 2nd row of firebrick in the back of the box to act as a shelf as seen in some other people's setups. Then I took my diamond wheel and cut 2 more bricks on an angle to allow the baffle to prop up inside the box. This leaves the ~2" spacing for proper exhaust venting for the 8" flue.
The baffle seems to work perfectly!
It definitely keeps more heat in the box and less heat loss right up the flue.
So far so good.