first try building a scrap metal rocket stove

So your steel and concrete riser works well with no smoke? I don't know if you saw my steel and concrete rocket "hybrid" thread or not, but after I poured the concrete riser mass and installed a liner, mine started smoking like a wood-stove. My glass-fiber liner may be causing the smoking. If yours works well, I will simply remove my liner and forget about it. I had a slight draw issue but I think I solved that in the burn chamber area. How often do you burn it? I've burned mine for 2-3 hours at a time, for a total of about 12 hours and the steel is holding up perfectly fine.

Any suggestions or questions or updates, let me know. I'm following your build closely since its very similar to my design.

Hi John,
My project has been buildt so far almost without any fixed plans, if you know what i mean. It is a free project guided by inspiration and by the available materials. All stuff that i bought so far, was bought trying to spend as less money as possible.
About the smoke, if i fire up my stove with matches and some straw or pine needles and small tree branches, the smoke will come up the feeding tunnel. If i use a blow torch for 30 seconds, to start the fire, an initial draft is established towards the riser and no smoke will come up the feed tunnel.
The exaust is (after 10 min of burning time) mostly steam. If for example it burns out of fire wood, when i add some more while the stove is still hot, it will smoke a little, but only till the burning gets going again.

Yeah I've been working outside in canada, in my un-heated, dirt-floor shop. Did you see my thread? I think my smoke is due to my new liner, and the sub zero shop is making my huge internal mass take forever to warm up. I think if it were warm, and maybe I remove this trial liner, maybe it would work better with no smoke. This huge sub zero mass takes more than 3 hours to warm up, and that may be one of my issues.

Thanks for the input

My stove is still in my worshop, right where it borned. So far i have made it work for periods of 4 to 8 hours non stop. The steel riser seems to be holding on despite it is half the thickness of yours. I believe that the mild temperatures of the portuguese winter are helping my stove to work properly. The mass i added warm up pretty fast. Air temperatures here are for sure much higher than in canada. Have you tryed a blow torch to give the stove that first push?
I took a look at your project and at first sight it looks much better planned and studied than mine.
Accordind to some opinions here, metal is not the best choice, i will not disagree with those opinions, logically ceramic will resist longer to high temps. But i think that we dont need extremely high temps, after all, the purpose of the stove is domestic use, not industrial.

Greets

I did spend some time planning yeah, I made 5 propane tank type desings, 5 barrel type desgins, and a couple brick mason designs, then I decided to make this. It needs some tweaking though. I think the liner I made should go. See if that's what's smoking...

Anyway I enjoy following others posts, especially this one let me know if anything exciting happens with your build

everything has been great since removing the riser mass and liner. hows your build project doing?