J tube mods

I decided to experiment with my long term J tube by exchanging the fire brick fire box over to a vermiculite fire box.

I will be coating the vermiculite with VITCAS Zircon Paint Coating, the product is rated for 1750c and should offer abrassion protection as well.

Unfortunately we have very rough seas at the moment and my delivery has been delayed (I live on a small island dependent of sea conditions for main land deliverys) so the paint is already a week late!

Hopefully I will be posting video no two in a few days …..

Thank you for that Fox.

I'd love to see your stove in operation.  I've never seen the use of glass like that in a J-tube.

Great modification Fox!
Look forward to seeing how well the vermiculite holds up and its performance compared to the dense firebrick splits.

Hi Thomas, there is a series of 3-4 videos on my You tube channel that show how I built the last version of my J tube.

It was quite a complex design that worked extremely well, there has been a few ‘nay sayers’ but from my perspective I built a J tube that looked good and produced an awful lot of heat without any visible smoke!

In fact, I am in fact sort of detuning the design for this winter season as it was simply to hot to enjoy the ambience of the  continuous burning fire.

The previous design with the vortex working was regularly reaching 950f making to top glow red and the barrel sides far to hot to approach for cooking  purposes?

So this time there wont be a vortex or a preheated air supply, if I ever re build, I would try my  previous design in a 5” format to cool things down a little.

Part two…. Applying the Zircon.

Part three….

I have lit a few fires now and the paint is working very well, it has gone very hard and most defenatily protects the vermiculite.
The overall performance of the fire has changed as it now just takes a few minutes to catch and very quickly gets up to speed.
However there is a noticeable difference in the hot plate temperature at max burn, the  temperatures  are well down on the previous  model with the vortex and preheated air but, it does not not need feeding so regularly and the gasifier mode is really handy and really attractive to look at.

In gasifier mode, the fire does not like to be reloaded as it will show smoke out from the chimney, so I have to expose the main air supply to allow fresh wood to catch and then close it down again.
I have only had four fires, so time will tell how it works for me long term.

More videos to follow……

One more short video featuring the vermiculite board.

Unfortunately there are some  sound issues on this video.