I hope it’s not poor form to ask about an iron woodstove; you guyz know a lot about refractories, and that’s what I need to know.
My small steel woodstove is lined with lightweight insulating firebrick (2.2 lb per brick, IIRC). It has a smokeshelf of the same firebrick, and secondary air right under the smokeshelf at front and rear of the firebox. I’m learning to cook on and in it, both so I can eat when the power goes out, and because it’s fun. I wish the flue was at a rear corner, insead of the back middle: there isn’t room on the top for decent size pots and pans. But it works great as a barbeque.
I’d like it to work as an oven, but the lightweight firebrick doesn’t hold enough heat long enough. I grok that it keeps the heat in the firebox, and that helps make the burn cleaner. If I were to replace the firebrick with soapstone, the burn would probably not be quite as clean innitially; do you suppose it would clean up as the soapstone came up to temperature?
I think the soapstone I have is 1.25" thick, same as the existing firebrick. If it’s ~2.2 times as heavy, shouldn’t it hold ~2.2 times as much heat? Do you guyz think it wold hold enough heat long enough to bake bread or, say, roast a chicken? Maybe if there are still hot coals in the bottom when the food goes in?
The existing firebrick slows conduction of heat out through the walls of the stove, which slows the stove’s initial warning of the house, and sends more heat up the insulated chimney. I would think that soapstone would conduct heat out into the house faster, being more conductive. Initially that’d be nice, when I want to warm the house in a hurry, but this house is small and decently insulated, and it’s easy to overheat it. Both to ease that and to make a second heat shield between the stove and the lath-and-plaster wall, I mean to surround it on three sides with red brick, glued together with high-temp (good for something over 500 F) silicon caulk, 1/2 inch out from the steel stove walls. I’ll air seal the two front sides with fiberglass stove gasket rope, and leave the top brick all the way around lose so I can move it in to (mostly) stop airflow, or out to allow convection to add heat to the house faster. That’s only going to be maybe 360 pounds of brick, but if it will slow heat transfer into the house, and hold heat for an hour or two after the fire is out, i think it will help.
Anybody see anything wrong with this plan? And do you think I’ll at least be able to bake bread? I can add a couple of 2.5 x 4.5 x 9" heavy dense firebrick to both ends, maybe double up on some of the soapstone. Do any of you have any experience turning a small wodstove into an oven?