Doug Haley

Try these

http://www.hardwaresource.com/hinges/specialty-hinges/weld-on-hinges-welding-hinges/weld-on-hinges-welding-hinges

use a weld on hinge common for container doors and prison doors and boat hatches

link attached

you'll see the hinges are basically a small axle on top and bottom bearing. It's like a mini car axle

It takes some welding work - but you'll want to do some welding anyway so the hinges look really really cool.

yes- you got it. Do it like a vault door. You could re-purpose a care axle and hubs. Mount the axle virticle on the inside of the house on the jamb. Connect the hub to the door with a cool hinge. All the weight will transfer to the bottom bearing and make sure it is setting on the ground. You will need to remove the housing on the hub so as to make it smaller. That will give you your virticle shaft and bearings like a vault door. A junkyard should let you get an axel and hubs real cheap. You would basically modify the car axel and paint it and make it look cool and mount it on the inside jamb. Weld hinges off the axel from there and then use 1/2" thrubolts to fasten the disc to the hinges. A car axel should work same as a vault door arrangement.

I may have some experience to offer as food for thought. Much of this is in my experience selling alot of butterfly valves. I know it seems wierd to think of a door as just an open and close valve (as big as it is), but it's the same.
With that said, round doors can not be supported by an edge hinge unless the post it is attached to is anchored in a concrete bunker. Let alone the hinge being able to carry all that leverage.

SO - you have to do the hinge as a pivot point. The guy who designed the hanging gardens of Babylon knew this well.

The big deal is to realize not only does the pivot point deed to be a bit away from the edge of the disc (door), but ALSO must be a couple inches off the plane as defined by the door jamb. This is called a double offset. To see what that is, google search "double offset high performance butterfly valves". They show it well. Large diameter butterfly valves will have the shaft (pivot point) way to close to the center for you, but the idea is the same.

So you need a top pintle and a bottom pintle double offset from the edge of the door and the plane of the door jamb. Set it into a thrunst bearing receiver hole on the bottom and a hole on the top of the jamb. This would be a pivot style.

If you insist on hinges on the edge, then set a piece of steel with a 6" web in a 36" x 36" x 36" concrete footing and frame it so you don't know what it is and make the hinge out of 1/2" plate steel. That door will be so massive that if you don't, when you go to open the door, it stays put and you turn the house.

Look at high performance butterfly valves with particular attention to the Offset design of the shaft from the disc in two directions. It will add to your pool of thoughts.

Obviously you don't want the shaft down the center of your door or it just spins on the shaft and you have a post in the center of your entrance way - so you set it off to one side as far as it will go. The part people do not understand is the second offset which is moving the pivot off the jamb as well. When you do that the door will cam off the jamb in lieu of "spinning".

You'd have to look at the way those websites graphically display how a "high performance butterfly valve" works to understand it. It's worth a look.

You're designing a door like the hanging garden of Babylon - in essence.

In the pictures of those round doors of your post - they are photo shopped - there is no way those hinges would support that much mass.

Design the door like a high performance butterfly valve but with the shaft moved way over to one side.

I hope you'll trust me on that one; I've worked on a lot of large diameter swinging discs on valves, and it's exactly the same.

I have an idea for you. Mix a slurry of fire clay (as found at Axner pottery). They sell it dry by the bag. Put a thin coat on your floor and let it dry. Oil it after.
If you look at prure clay (like a potter uses) under the microscope, it is comprised of shale like plates that bind to each-other. This would be the opposite of sand which looks like a cube.
If you walk on a shale beach you don't sink whereas if you walk on a sandy beach you sink. So the more pure your clay is on the floor the "harder" it is. Put a slurry of pure clay down - something like a Hawthorn fire clay or just use any pottery clay that a potter would use to throw pottery. One of the bigger names is Goldart (don't use Redart - that is terracotta). It comes in a bag just like concrete does. This should get you a plate like structure like microscopic shale and be really hard. I'd test a spot to make sure it seeps into the floor a bit. If the thin layer just floats on the top of the existing floor, it will scale off. So it needs to go on so it binds to the existing earth floor.

If that clay isn't hard enough - there is no harder stuff.

I'm a potter and have a couple of ideas. One is go to the axner pottery web page and look at kiln furniture. You'll see kiln shelving there. Kiln shelving is a high alumina type product sold in differing thicknesses and is available in large pieces. Cost may be an issue and in that case look at a product called rock wool. Rock wool is a refractory insulation. put a stainless pipe within a larger carbon steel pipe (double containment basically) and pack the space with rock wool.

Potters tend to build a lot of stoves and heaters as they build kilns. They are constantly looking for better ways to fire their ware - it's in their blood. And we are all broke, so we tend to be pretty thrifty.

One other thing to know is that stoneware fires up at 2K without issue and it's cheap. You could have a potter throw you a stoneware cylinder and glaze it with a cone 8 glaze for next to nothing. It would hold up to temps in excess of 1200 degrees F. It would not melt until it reached 2K F, and even then it would reconstitute. You'd have to let it down slow to prevent shatter, but that should really not happen. Shatter is why you would use stainless steel - if that was an issue. ALL masonry has has a limited life when heated and cooled over and over.

Three product ideas that may offer creative thinking though. Use schedule 10 304L stainless pipe (do a search on "pipe valve and fitting industrial suppliers" ). Use rockwool between two substrates. Use a stoneware cylinder (must be stoneware). Terracotta will burn.

Potters dabble in that sort of thing constantly so the pottery websites may spark some ideas too

Doug

Good to see you have reached out to ask about small footprint stoves. One idea is to look at what is called a Shepherds' stove. I hope this pic cut and pasts OK (if not just google shepherds stoves). They are designed for tents so it would seem to fit the bill. I'm a contractor and I pull a lot of equipment on trailers all the time. Don't load up your trailer - you don't want to do that. It's a false sense of mobility. The alternative is to build a cynderblock rocket stove outside your rig when you arrive at location. It should set up in an hour or two. Insulate everything but let out the heat underneath the trailer (not the gas but the radiant heat from the pipe (use schedule 40 black pipe)). Put a skirt around the trailer. It should radiate a home that small very well. It's basically what you would call a ventless crawlspace and you're heating it. It's common and was done all the time by older civilizations.




Doug