I realize that rocket mass heaters are slightly more efficient than masonry heaters--93 percent as opposed to 87?--but they're both mass heaters, both in the same ballpark, both very efficient and clean burning, and a masonry heater might fit some folks' aesthetic better. I predict that European stove masons will have a very busy winter this winter.
So, the core of a rocket heater is a vertical tube, in which the gasses and flames from a short, small, horizontal firebox rise, swirl, mix with air, and burn completely? This wouldn't work with your tube-in-a-drum design, but where you can expose that vertical combustion tube, try quartz tubing. If it will take the heat--I've done some research and I think it will, but I'm not set up to try it--you'd get bright, dancing firelight and a lot of delicious, deep-penetrating far infrared to bathe in anytime you were firing the heater.
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