I was helping a friend with an older Jøtul woodstove. I don’t know the model but it looks like a Jøtul F 500 Oslo. Anyway, the secondary air tubes were loose and fallen on the right side of the firebox. The two cast baffles above the tubes were very warped and the insulating blanket above the baffles was all buggered up. I suggested to him that I replace the warped baffles with a rigid ceramic board from Lynn and then cover everything with a piece of wet pack also from Lynn. What do you folks think of this modification? I can get a wet pack that gets hard with heat or a standard blanket from Lynn.
Repair and modification
- Thread starter Starbrightsteve
- Start date
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Every cast iron wood burner I have owned has suffered from warped and cracked parts. Some of these parts were damaged by too much heat (overfiring) or just got tired from being in the heat for a long time. I’m sure using the ceramic board above the secondary air tubes is better than the “proper parts”. At $30 bucks it’s also better than the (about $250 plus’s shipping) guess by the dealer. I think the wet pack on top of it all will be more durable and easier to clean off than the blanket. But..I understand you just want it restored to original. Do you see any reason to not use the wet pack?
Thanks for your thoughts
What is wet pack? I have been doing this a long time and never heard of it.
What cast iron stoves have you had in the past? Some are designed with sacrificial burn plates that will crack and wear out over time, but that is by design. The early F500s had a castiron baffle and they did have warping issues. Jotul switched to a vermiculite (skamol?) baffle board with an insulation blanket well over a decade ago and that seems to have fixed the issue. There may be a retrofit kit to do this. Ask your Jotul dealer.
PS:the easiest way to work on this is to remove the top. It's gasketed and fairly easy to do.
PS:the easiest way to work on this is to remove the top. It's gasketed and fairly easy to do.
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First, what’s a wet pack . It’s like a ceramic blanket that can be formed to a shape like the inside of a combustion chamber and when it’s heated it dries and holds the shape. If you bend it after it is fired it breaks like a cookie. Lynn makes it of a similar material as the ceramic blankets that are used above many woodstove fire boxes. We used the wet pack when we retrofitted big old oil fired boilers with new flame retention burners.
Past wood stoves: Lange 6302, Waterford Stanley cookstove, some Dutchwest thing with a catalyst. Then I switched to Quadrafire. I have had to replace two bricks since I switched to welded wood stoves.
The warped baffles in the Jøtul will be added to the scrap pile and a rigid insulation board used in its place . Thanks for the info on Jøtul replacement board.
Past wood stoves: Lange 6302, Waterford Stanley cookstove, some Dutchwest thing with a catalyst. Then I switched to Quadrafire. I have had to replace two bricks since I switched to welded wood stoves.
The warped baffles in the Jøtul will be added to the scrap pile and a rigid insulation board used in its place . Thanks for the info on Jøtul replacement board.
The Lange and Waterford are both fantastic and very durable stoves. I work on a few of each and haven't seen issues with either. The Dutch west yeah they have issues.
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