Putting glass in an old cast iron wood stove door

I’m helping someone build an 8” system, and he really wanted to be able to see the fire. About 2 years ago I picked up an old USSC wood stove off Craigslist for $45. I took the cast iron wood stove door off that stove earlier this week and cut the center square 7” out with an angle grinder to mount door glass in it. I have an extra 8”x8.5” piece of wood stove door glass I got for free because it was cut crooked and it’s actually going to fit. I used 1/4” carbon felt from a welders blanket for a gasket, and the glass floats freely in the carbon felt with no metal contact. It’s going to work nicely in his 8” masonry system.

I had to drill and tap some extra holes in the door, and make a frame to hold the glass out of stainless steel, but it turned out pretty decent.

looks pretty nice, and finished well. I especially like the radius in the corners.

You may want to keep an eye on the welding blanket as it may not like the constant high temps. Welding blankets are not really designed for continuous heat but rather extremely high momentary heat. It may become brittle and leak over time.

Thanks for the advice Duane. We’ll keep an eye on the carbon felt. It would be very easy to swap it out for flat gasket material. I know it shrinks over time so I sized it larger than needed when I cut it out as gasket.

I thought you did an excellent job.

It is one thing to buffalo the fans, but another the players, and I am a retired welder so when I say it looks great, it has some meaning. Again great job.

Travis Johnson wrote:I thought you did an excellent job.

It is one thing to buffalo the fans, but another the players, and I am a retired welder so when I say it looks great, it has some meaning. Again great job.

Awesome, thanks, that means a lot to me Travis. I'm flying blind on a lot of this stuff, and its encouraging to hear that it looks good from the pros. My grandfather was a welder in the railroad shops, my father was a mechanical contractor, and I did some construction during college, but this is new territory for me.

Here’s the build project so far. It’s an 8” system with blind benches based on PVDB’s 2015 MHA design and build.

This is how far we got tonight:

An 8” rocket requires a massive amount of air supply according to PvdB’s chart at http://batchrocket.eu/en/building#dimension so I had to open up the air holes in the door, plus add a few.