A wood stove question

Got this old wood stove at the ranch and I want to put it to use for occasional heat. Noo main heat or a stove for continuous heat.

It just has doors that close and a screen and not airtight fit on the doors. It does have a large pipe stack outlet where the white bucket is pictured. My question is will this smoke up the place without a tight-fitting door or will it work fine without
a sealed front.

Thanks

It is about draft, not doors. Probably sometimes.

That would be correct

I heated with that exact same stove 40 years ago when I was poor and living in an old stone farmhouse. They work fine and draft good, but there is absolutely no heat control. If you load that sucker up with big logs, it will be roaring like a jet engine two hours later, there is no way to damp it down because it is not even close to airtight.

I believe they used to market them as Franklin stoves. I actually still have that stove buried in one of my sheds somewhere. I only used it for about two years before I upgraded to an airtight.

That’s a good old Sears and robuck stove. I use it to heat my trapping cabin. I crack a window in the loft about a 1/2 inch and it doesn’t smoke in the cabin at all. When starting the stove I open the front door a crack till the fire gets burning nice or it will smoke a bit. I have never used the doors on mine because the pure heat it puts off will warm my cabin in 45 mins when it’s -30. I will then add only a couple of logs every hour once I have some good coals going. It will eat more wood than the newer sealed stoves but I really like the open front with the screen for warming up when I first fire it up.

We used to call those "Franklin stoves". Pretty inefficient, no real draft control, they are not air-tight, so they will burn up wood fast.

you want a in flue damper to help adjust it down about 2 feet above the stove , you need to make a good kindling fire that lights fast to establish draft

and you want to have stone or non combustible for any close walls , it probably needs 24 inches from the walls

which turns into a huge foot print

my parents have an old fisher , they do have dampers in the doors but were not air tight it works , it turns out a ton of heat , it needs to be watched and have dry wood it uses more wood than an air tight and it sits on a brick hearth with brick walls on the closes two sides open to the room on the other two sides.

big foot print

the newer air tites have minimum clearances of 3-4 inches back and 8-10 inches sides from combustible walls

It is what is called a Franklin stove. will put out a lot of heat but very ineffficient.

Alot of the new stoves (super tight) you need to crack the door when getting it going anyhow. Usually not an issue other that the rare occasion when the wind is JUST right creating a downdraft. 98% of the time, the crack is needed.

Yes, it is a Franklin stove and looks and does have a dampener built into the first cast iron flue leaving the stove like Sakbone's stove. I think I will use it and see how things work with it. Wood is no problem, and it won't be used for days on end a day here and a day there.


Thank You very much for all the help!

Franklin's have a very shallow smoke chamber and are notoriously "Smokey". Vast improvement over an open fireplace, but not very efficient with wood. Have heard of folks that used coal, and were satisfied.

As long as you have a good draft going up the stack won't even notice any smoke coming out of firebox, to make doors a little more "airtight" just add gaskets ro doors

If you have electricity, a "heat saver" installed in the vertical portion of the flue makes all the difference in the world. A "heat saver" is a tube bundle air to air heat exchanger with a thermostatically controlled fan that blows through the tubes. Good looking cabin.

Thank You all for your knowledge of these type of stoves. No electricity where I will use this stove.
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