Most unusual stoves

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begreen

Mooderator
Staff member
Nov 18, 2005
104,694
South Puget Sound, WA
Now that winter has settled in, time for a fireside chat. The topic is: What's the most unusual stove you have seen?

I'll start with the Spruce Stove. Able to burn a full trunk at a time. Dig the log rack in the back.

spruce-stove full trunk burner.jpg
 
Whoa, what the heck is that!

At a glance it seems like a pretty high maintenance fire place. Wouldn't you have to keep feeding the trunk into it to prevent the fire from simply eating down the log and potentially spreading fire into places you don't want it?
 
Yes, the log needs to be fed every xx hours. There is a use controlable aperture that closes around the log. Note that this is being shown in a non-combustible environment.
 
I wonder what the drying times are for while trunks.maybe dead standing trees in the west would work, but that limits ones fuel supply to only dead standing ones...
 
I wonder what the drying times are for while trunks.maybe dead standing trees in the west would work, but that limits ones fuel supply to only dead standing ones...
I have all the trees pushed into piles from clearing for our place. That was spring 2 years ago. Unless they have been on the ground they are very dry. 12" Red oak I bucked and split, they were ready to go in about 3 weeks in the sun and wind.
 
Interesting. Here wood does not dry when unsplit. (And it's less humid here than in Kville).
 
The stove is in the Netherlands. I imagine once they get a hot bed of coals established in that large barrel that semi-seasoned wood ignites fairly well, but slow enough so that one is not having to feed the log in hourly. There was a detailed article posted on it several years ago. Links in this thread:
 
Those are really cool. I can see the outdoor dragon breathing fire. If I don't damp down my chiminea with the cap half closing it up I can easily have 3 foot flames out the top of it.
 
The old Dick Hill design boilers where the wood was loaded into a water cooled vertical tube from the top and then burned on the bottom were definitely different. As the logs burned they dropped down in the tube making room for new logs to be loaded from the top hatch. They had a jumbo version he was playing with that reportedly took 4' logs. These stoves had fans to no need to worry about natural draft.
 
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Not sure if the OP has seen the stoves he posted, I surmise that "seen on a screen" counts too. (okay, I have not seen strange ones in real life - old ones in the old country yes, but that's not strange...)

So, here a collection I have from my browsing over the year.

Looks like a repurposed European washing machine drum:
1705629000296.png



The fire escaped...
1705629056953.png

Thermal mass,.I presume.
Wouldn't want this in my living room... (and that's coming from a BK owner.....)

1705629113582.png

Floating stove, aka strong stove pipe...
1705629187206.png
 
The first one looks like a Bullerjan, aka cross between a stove and a V8 with no headers.
 
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Yes, I think it might be a Bullerjan:
 
Not sure if the OP has seen the stoves he posted, I surmise that "seen on a screen" counts too. (okay, I have not seen strange ones in real life - old ones in the old country yes, but that's not strange...)

So, here a collection I have from my browsing over the year.

Looks like a repurposed European washing machine drum:
View attachment 323208


The fire escaped...
View attachment 323209

Thermal mass,.I presume.
Wouldn't want this in my living room... (and that's coming from a BK owner.....)

View attachment 323210

Floating stove, aka strong stove pipe...
View attachment 323211
The skull is Eddie, mascot for the band Iron Maiden :)
 
There are some REALLY cool stoves on Facebook groups that Ive never known existed, to which many are still in operation today.
Very large, ornate stoves that put my little VC to shame. While they are all unlisted and I would never have the space for one, it would be cool if someday I hit the lottery and build my mega cabin on the side of the mountain to have a cool old stove like one of those that I've seen in those groups.

The challenging part about following those groups is, 95% of the posts are from back woods folks posting pictures of the most dangerous setups you can ever imagine.

I really think they should do a better job at moderating those groups and flagging dangerous setups. Because right now it seems to be a celebration in stupidity.
 
I’ve got one of the strangest stoves sitting in my garage waiting on a piece of glass right now! I have no idea what I’ll do with it, I thought it would make a fun project.

View attachment 323247
it would seem you plan to smoke some meat on the right there at a minimum. The smoke chamber could be bigger for more meats. :)
 
it would seem you plan to smoke some meat on the right there at a minimum. The smoke chamber could be bigger for more meats. :)
Not a smoker. The exhaust gets pulled down across the fire and then exits through the box on all sides. The oven has double doors, I just removed them so I could paint it.
 
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Not a smoker. The exhaust gets pulled down across the fire and then exits through the box on all sides. The oven has double doors, I just removed them so I could paint it.
I look forward to seeing the finished product.
I never thought I would consider wood stoves that interesting.
 
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I look forward to seeing the finished product.
I never thought I would consider wood stoves that interesting.
If you are very interested it becomes an expensive interest. I use another one that is pretty rare. The stove itself wasn’t too uncommon, but the heat exchanger is very rare to find. Heats my 30x40 garage very well.

RenderedImage.jpeg
 
The Jotul 201 has interested me but it never took off here, perhaps because in spite of improved combustion performance the market was heading toward stoves with ceramic glass windows?
 
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