Matthias Hacker

Nancy Reading wrote:Do you find the knob is getting hot? I Think that the wooden knob (although it looks nice) might not be durable.

Hello Nancy,
I‘m happy you like it!
the wooden knob is a getting a bit warm, but far away from getting hot.

Regarding the Shorty upscaled, yes it has been done with success, you might want to take a look at this thread on donkeys, all dimensions have been discussed with Peter, as well as a Sidewinder construction. All the dimensions for scaling are there, you only need to convert from mm to inch.
https://donkey32.proboards.com/thread/4091/shorty-batch-160mm-system-brick

Hello everybody,

I found a nice & easy way to make a door lock, that might be worth sharing. I did see something similar somewhere before, but I cannot find it anymore. However, take a look at the pictures.

The metal rod is 6mm / 0,236 inches in diameter, and it has quite some flexibility before deforming/bending. At first I had that rod straight, which worked as well, but much better with the 180 degree bending, this gives the rod more length and thus more flexibility. Like this the door lock doesn’t need any movable parts.

Note that the hook is only welded to the doorframe on it‘s lower part, while the upper part has a tiny bit of air in between the rod and the door to move freely.

Mounting the nuts inside the doorframe is rather easy for Shorty and DSR3 doorframes, because they have an opening at the right spot. When using a stick weld it’s possible to weld through this opening.

Note that the nuts are not welded directly onto the doorframe, but on a stripe of metal, wich is tagged to the doorframe. One might come away with simple sheet metal screws, but I don‘t trust them that much.

The holes for the screws in the lock are wider than the screws, so the lock is adjustable.

If a rocket stove should burn clean, so clean that you might be able to have food in contact to flue gases, then it will be hot, very hot. If you want to have it like this, go ahead. Or you construct a kind of heat exchanger, that will cool down the flue gas before it comes in contact with your food.

I much prefer to grill on medium to low temperatures, which is only possible with coals. I made myself a grill with refractory slabs and it works really fine.

Do you want to grill directly on coals or with a kind of pan in between the fire and whatever you want to grill?

Hello April,

I just came across your topic and it was interesting for me to read it , since I recently finished a DSR3 core.
First of all I am sorry, that the core didn´t work as expected, and I hope you found a workable solution.

One thing that catched my eye is the picture of the door frame, that you posted (31pic). There seems to be a mistake in following the original DSR3 design, that might be crucial, the slots for the air intake on the left and right side should be in the upper half of the core. Looking at your picture, they look like going down almost to the bottom of the core. Peter mentioned several times, that this is crucial, and with the slots that low, it would be more prone to run into thermal overload, at least I understood it like that.

Another thing, you have a large bell! Do you have a bypass? Like a shortcut for the flue gases, that they won´t cool down that much before they enter the chimney. At least when the bell is cold, such a bypass might be crucial for the fire to come to live. The chimney will provide more draft, when the flue gases are at temperature, and the temperature before entering the chimney should  be at least around 200 F.

I hope you have a good working stove now, but for the case you are still on the journey, these things might help you. I want to believe, that a DSR3 design can work fine with a rectangle afterburner instead of a tube, but I didn´t try this. I could fine tune my core very easy with diminishing the space inside the top box by putting inside some refractory leftovers to calm down the burn a bit.  

…but why not ask them, if they can export their products themselves. I was taking a look at their website once again and read, that they have experience with exporting at least to EU countries.

This is their website
http://kaljevepecimb.com/Kontakt.html

Translated link https://kaljevepecimb-com.translate.goog/index.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp&_x_tr_sch=http

And a picture of available Dimensions attached.

Well I don‘t have any long term experience with them, but they survived my rather excessive cutting with ease. On the pictures you can see the grooves that I cuttend for stripes of metal. And keep in mind they are handcrafted, while being quite precise, there are seldom perfect right angles nor are they perfect plan.

Yes, packaging would be a challenge. Plus taxes and shipping costs…

I'm located in northern Serbia, southeast Europe, a region that was under Austrian-Hungarian influence, some of the craftsmanship they brought has survived, like for example building tiled stove, which is not a Serbian tradition.

Attached pictures of my recently build DSR3 core. I did cut the edges to perfect angles for dry stacking them, but if mortar is used, that wouldn’t be necessary.

Well if there is interest, we could try that out.

David Wieland wrote:
For the firebox: 12" x 24" x 3/4" (305 mm x 610 mm x 19 mm)  cut down to firebox length, because no 12" x 18" shelf was available
  https://psh.ca/collections/high-alumina-kiln-shelves/products/12-x-24-kiln-shelf-pizza-stone
For the riser top: 12" x 12" x 1/2" (305 mm square x 12.7 mm)
  https://psh.ca/collections/high-alumina-kiln-shelves/products/12-x-12-kiln-shelf-pizza-stone
A firebrick thickness strip cut from the large slab spans the top of the riser outlet.
With taxes and shipping, the two shelves cost me C$174, but they saved a lot of time and didn't require warm curing -- important because the cold weather had already begun.

Omg, that are serious prices. There is a shop not too far away from me where they make tiled stoves and handcrafted refractory slabs and bricks, at numerous dimensions. The largest slab is 50x21x3cm for the price of about 8 dollars. They follow the traditional craftsmanship and recipes. Maybe I should start exporting them🙈