maxed_out said:
hey trk2 got any updates yet??? its got to be cold by you now.
It is cold! Actually tonight is the first night of the season where the temperatures are forecasted to drop into single digits.
The Isle Royale is still a work in progress. The stove has been cleaned, and rubbed with steel wool and I am waiting for some Stove Bright to arrive because I was not able to find a local source. The andirons have been ordered ($123+$20 s/h from my local stove shop in case anyone wants to compare) but I was quoted 3 weeks for a lead time. The lack of andirons does not particularly concern me because the fire box is plenty big enough to load wood strategically without any risk of anything shifting against the glass.
Since I am waiting on paint anyway I have spent my time trying to find the best source for fire brick. The stove currently is a mix of the original soft insulating brick and some replacement heavier/harder more conventional fire brick. The original bricks that remain are all in tough shape. The local stove shop advised me to replace the bricks with the heavier, tougher bricks that they offer for $2.50/brick. The also can get me an entire replacement brick set from Quadrafire for $160 which is competitive from what I found online when I did the google on my internet machine
To shorten this story, I am not going to pay $160 for fire brick, but I also have no intention of replacing insulating bricks with conductive bricks and calling it a win. I found a source
here that seems like a good replacement. I can cut the 2-1/2" in half to get the proper split, I'm just not sure yet if I can do it on my tile saw (which is currently being borrowed) or if I'll have to do it on my band saw. So anyway that's the status of the renovation.
I do have a story to tell involving my newly purchased wood stove. I am fortunate enough to own a house with a daylight basement. I am even more fortunate that it is completely 100% dry. In coastal Maine, this is a rarity. I think I was 10 years old when I visited some cousins in Rochester, NY and discovered basements could be dry, could be finished, and could be had without ledge. Who knew? So when my girlfriend and I bought this house, the first thing I did was put a garage door on the basement wall and wheeled in my '66 Mustang convertible project car. This is all mostly completely irrelevant to the story, but I know there must be alot of men out there who, like me, have found themselves changing water pumps or replacing head gaskets in their driveway in January when it is so cold that everything, literally everything you touch will cut your hands. I have seen
Saw movies with less blood then my winter emergency vehicle repairs. So, for those of you who have ever found themselves repeatedly in those situations, keep the faith. It is possible to have a great and comfortable work area, and you will always, always be grateful for it...at least until the significant other fills it up with crap.
Anyway, the Isle Royale is currently being renovated in my fantastic basement. When I backed my truck into the basement to unload my new stove I had a plan to lift the stove with my come-along, drive away, and then ratchet the stove down on some blocks to make it easier to work on. This plan worked fine up to the point where the stove was suspend about an inch above my truck bed, when the 2 ton rated come-along cable snapped. Nothing was damaged, the stove fell back into the bed and the suspension thankfully cushioned the fall, but this was a 2 ton come-along that failed lifting a 400lb stove. I was fortunate that it failed when it did, in another minute I would have driven the truck away and I'm guessing a 4 foot fall would have been fatal to the stove, and I don't want to think what else.
I'm going to rant a little here. The come-along was made in China and Chinese made crap are killing people. That may sound like hyperbole, but I honestly believe incidents like this occur more often then we think, with more horrific results. Don't get me wrong, American made products have killed their fair share of people too, but one (only?) benefit of today's lawsuit happy culture is that it keeps most American companies sincere in producing safe products. Anyway, this is my personal plea for people to purchase reliable products, particularly ones that you rely on for safety.
I'll post pics of the stove and the come-along soon.
