OK, it took a while, but I just finished this stove. I ended up making a double 55 gallon barrel stove adding a couple of simple baffles, one in the top barrel and one in the bottom barrel.
Part of the reason I went with this design is so I can burn a wide variety of wood and not just skinny sticks. Since it is heating my wood shop and I am in the midwest (lots of shop scraps and less than straight hardwood
trees) I felt it would be easier to use than a rocket stove in my current situation.
It is burning very cleanly after the first few minutes or so and putting out an enormous amount of heat. Today the shop went from 50 to 60 degrees in maybe 30 minutes after lighting the fire. I am getting a LOT of radiant heat off it and am planning to stack some more concrete blocks around it, mostly for safety and to store a bit of that heat.
Unfortunately, I think I could get addicted to stove making... I may need to get help before I make too many more stoves... But I definitely want to make a rocket stove and a
cob oven first. And a gasifier. And a better charcoal kiln...
As it turned out, I have about $200 in it mostly for the stove kit. I also bought some stove pipe, furnace cement, and a door gasket as well as the barrels.