Glad I found this site...I've already learned a thing or three, and I've been heating with wood for 32 years....
When I buy something, I like it to be both functional and durable - and easy to fix if need be. Since I'm cheap, stuff has to last for a long, long time. From my username, you might have guessed that my daily driver is an almost four-decades old British vehicle - and still going strong. None of the 'electrickery' found on today's vehicles.... The garden tiller is almost as old as the Land-Rover. My VC stove is 32 years old, as is one of my Stihl chainsaws. The old Stihl needs a carb kit, while I need to do some work on the VC....
The stove is one of the earliest versions of the Resolute and it has performed well over the years. It sits on short-legs inside the fireplace; a 32 year old "muffin" fan moves air around between the stove and firebrick. It has excellent draft, with steel flue pipe up and out the tile-lined chimney. I replace the flue pipe sections every five or six years, but last year, used a single piece of corrugated SS pipe with a new chimney top. When running in side-draft mode, there is only the slightest wisp of smoke out the chimney. Usually, it's just heat vapors. A winter's use results in surprisingly little creosote. Damn good stove....
Now the question: The horizontal smoke path is comprised of two cast iron pieces and these don't quite join up, leaving a gap. This gap allows the smoke path to 'short circuit' a bit. It might even be that this gap has been widened over the decades by high-speed gas cutting, analogous to a cutting torch or 'gas ax'. I want to close up this gap on the next rebuild. While I can weld, welding cast iron is a challenge and it would prevent pulling the stove apart ever again.
The gap is too large at one end just to slather in the refractory cement. I considered using fiberglass tape as the matrix to hold the cement in place, but after reading this site, several folks have mentioned aluminium (yeah, that's how it's spelled for someone who drives an aluminium-bodied vehicle...) screen. Why aluminium? Why not galvy hardware cloth? Got plenty of that around....
TIA
Cheers
When I buy something, I like it to be both functional and durable - and easy to fix if need be. Since I'm cheap, stuff has to last for a long, long time. From my username, you might have guessed that my daily driver is an almost four-decades old British vehicle - and still going strong. None of the 'electrickery' found on today's vehicles.... The garden tiller is almost as old as the Land-Rover. My VC stove is 32 years old, as is one of my Stihl chainsaws. The old Stihl needs a carb kit, while I need to do some work on the VC....
The stove is one of the earliest versions of the Resolute and it has performed well over the years. It sits on short-legs inside the fireplace; a 32 year old "muffin" fan moves air around between the stove and firebrick. It has excellent draft, with steel flue pipe up and out the tile-lined chimney. I replace the flue pipe sections every five or six years, but last year, used a single piece of corrugated SS pipe with a new chimney top. When running in side-draft mode, there is only the slightest wisp of smoke out the chimney. Usually, it's just heat vapors. A winter's use results in surprisingly little creosote. Damn good stove....
Now the question: The horizontal smoke path is comprised of two cast iron pieces and these don't quite join up, leaving a gap. This gap allows the smoke path to 'short circuit' a bit. It might even be that this gap has been widened over the decades by high-speed gas cutting, analogous to a cutting torch or 'gas ax'. I want to close up this gap on the next rebuild. While I can weld, welding cast iron is a challenge and it would prevent pulling the stove apart ever again.
The gap is too large at one end just to slather in the refractory cement. I considered using fiberglass tape as the matrix to hold the cement in place, but after reading this site, several folks have mentioned aluminium (yeah, that's how it's spelled for someone who drives an aluminium-bodied vehicle...) screen. Why aluminium? Why not galvy hardware cloth? Got plenty of that around....
TIA
Cheers
