Winter Camp

Nov 30, 2021

Winter is coming....But my camp is ready.
A lot of things went together just right to get it there. I did some work for a friend in exchange for this antique stove. I had nowhere to put it when I got it, and no plan for it, but I hoped I'd get to use it someday.
It sat in the front of my garage for months...

Then I got my country land, and my neighbor gave me a good deal on a tent, so I had a place for it. But first I had to sew in a "stove jack," to keep the hot stove pipe insulated from the rest of the tent.

I watched this video before sewing mine by hand, with a speedy stitch. It took a few hours...

First you sew the whole stove jack on to the INSIDE of the tent. Then you carefully cut out the tent fabric about one inch from your sew line, cut darts at the four corners, and fold your sides back underneath.

I have what appears to be a, not too pretty, but waterproof double-stitched tent and stove jack.

So I had the top half of the stove figured out, but still had to deal with the connection to the stove. When I originally put a piece of 6" stove pipe on my stove, it fit perfectly and I thought my job was done. (I won't explain how to put a stove pipe together...They come in two foot sections that need to be snapped together).

After doing a little research, I learned that while my pipe may have fit pefectly around the top ring of the stove, it was upside down. This may seem counterintuitive, but seemingly authoritative sources on the internet assured me that stove pipes go male-end down. While smoke, flames and heat travel up out of the stove pipe, creosote and any water that make it into the pipe will travel down. If the male ends of the pipe are down and on the inside of the pipe, then it won't drip down on the outside of the pipe and get your stove and tent dirty.

But I had to really "make it fit." It's not easy to bend this stuff.

I thought for a long time about how to do a better job of this connection. I looked online and at the store for connector pieces.
Then I finally realized that, since the pipe is a perfect fit on the outside of the stove...and since the male end of the pipe will fit inside the pipe...I could just cut a two inch section that could fill all the gaps.

This may seem like common sense and no big deal at all, but it came to me as a eureka moment.

I also installed a cast iron damper on one of the stove pipes.

My neighbor, who had been collecting palettes for me, also delivered them to my land, along with some lumber. We carried most of it to camp using the hiking trail. My neighbor from down there showed up when we were getting a little tired of carrying things. It was a big help to have the stove delivered to camp by four wheeler.