Woodstock Stoves: Beta Testing CUSTOM WOOD STOVE ART

Woodstock Soapstone Stove blog ^ | September 20, 2013

[Brian Kopp DPM]

Friday, September 20, 2013

Beta Testing CUSTOM STOVE ART with the Kopp Family

Click image to enlarge

The Woodstove Design Challenge has focused our attention on questions that we hadn’t really addressed before:

1. Can we make a really high performance woodstove that is completely affordable?
2. We don’t have the chutzpah to think we can produce a stove design that will make everyone happy.  So, how do we make a flexible design that can harness our owners’ creativity?
3. How can we have fun with this product? How can our owners have fun too?

Part of the answer is that the Design Challenge Stove will offer custom design on the sides, the andirons, and the cooktop.  You can choose from our design book (being developed), submit your own design as a graphic, or suggest a concept to us for review and execution.

Here’s an example of how we think this will work.  Recently the Kopp family from Johnstown, PA sent a request for a design with a Fleur-de-Lis pattern on the stove.   Here are a few of the images they sent to us.

We sent them the preview below, and asked them to send a couple of sentences explaining why this design was important to them.  Here’s the preview that we sent to the Kopps:

Click image to enlarge

The Kopps asked us to remove the stars on the hinges, make the fleurs on the andirons a little bigger, and change the colors on the stove.  We are using our blog to publish the revised design for approval - and here it is...

Click image to enlarge

Below is a video generated by our SolidWorks program showing the custom design elements:

Our plan is to credit each design to its originator, in this case Marie Kopp.  We plan to retain designs and make them available to other stove buyers.  Ideally, we will generate a design community on line.  If the design contained a highly personal image (profile of a loved one, for example) we would not make it publicly available.

We are “beta-testing” the design/review process, as well as the mechanics of the stove. We are becoming quite adept with both the art programs and CNC programs we are using in this process, and we expect to be able create personalized stoves quickly and at very affordable costs.

We’ll show a number of designs from our employees over the next few days.  We’re having fun doing this, and we hope our customers will, too.  Many thanks to Brian, Sue and Marie Kopp for being our first test subjects!

Glenn Sperry with first test cut for Bird of Paradise pattern

Labels: New Stove, Steal Hybrid, Wood Stove Design Challenge, Woodstock Videos Posted by Woodstock Soapstone Co. at 9/20/2013 02:06:00 PM

[Brian Kopp DPM]

I don't know how many fellow FReepers heat with wood, but I thought folks might like to see the new stove and design we are Beta testing for the Woodstock Soapstone Stove Company. We currently heat with a Woodstock Fireview 205 stove. This is a great company that manufactures well designed excellent quality wood stoves.

[Jane Long]

Nice. What is it about soapstone that makes it a great wood stove material? Thanks for posting this.

[Brian Kopp DPM]

It evens out the heat. Instead of heating up rapidly and cooling rapidly the soapstone absorbs the heat and radiates it off long after the fire has died down. Some people say its a softer heat for that reason.

They’ve been building soapstone woodstoves in New England since the 1800s (maybe earlier) because of those properties.

[mylife]

I love soapstone stoves.

[AKinAK]

I own a Woodstock Soapstone stove and it is a fine retainer of heat via soapstone’s heat retention characteristics.

Saying that, I have two negative comments: When you put the draft control to CLOSE, it does NOT CLOSE all the way. Normally , closing a draft control would starve the stove of air and the fire would go out. There’s no way then to put out a fire in this stove! I called the company and they said the fire department told them they could not manufacture a stove with a draft that fully closes!!!

The other concern is removal of the catalytic convertor (a great feature BTW). The hardware is almost welded in and it is one BIG sooty mess getting it in and out.

Good stove! I’d buy another, especially with the fantastic artwork !

[sarasota]

I used to heat with an Ashley. Looks like wood heat has come a long way!

[mylife]

The problem with soapstone you cant see your lay out marks if you use soapstone on soapstone... DoH!

[muir_redwoods]

I’d love to find a small to very small wood stove that would fit into an existing fireplace. I’ve seen a few and the ones I’ve found are too big and about two grand.

[gorush]

We just added the "Kitchen Queen" to the bunker.

[gorush]

http://www.discountstoves.net/Kitchen-Queen-480-p/kitchenqueen480.htm

[Brian Kopp DPM]

Nice!

I actually bought a Baker’s Choice wood cook stove as a second stove but didn’t install it yet. The Woodstock Fireview I currently have is rated at about 55,000btu and just wasn’t quite enough for our drafty old house. I thought a second stove in the back of the house would be a good solution. However, when Woodstock started designing this new model, with a three burner cook top and a much larger wood box (3.2cu ft) - which should translate into an 80,000-90,000btu rating - I decided to just upgrade and keep one stove and sold the cook stove.

[Brian Kopp DPM]

This new stove is a hybrid. It uses both secondary air as well as a catalytic combuster to burn up all the particulates in the smoke. That wrings the most possible BTUs out of the wood and drastically reduces particulate emissions. That makes the EPA happy, which doesn’t concern me, but it also means I get more heat out of the same or a smaller amount of wood. That’s most important to me.

[afraidfortherepublic]

Lovely!

When we lived in WA State we had a “Tile Fire” stove. That little guy could heat a 4000+ sq. ft. house if the temp was above freezing — no problem. When the temp dropped below freezing (seldom out there) we added a fire in an Olympic Fireplace insert in another room. The house was cozy as can be, and the stoves doubled as cook stoves during power failures.

The creativity with a “Tile Fire” began and ended with choosing the design of the tiles placed on the sides.

BTW, we moved the Olympic Insert with us to Wisconsin where we are still using it nearly 30 years later. I don’t think they make them any more.

[MomwithHope]

We’ve been heating primarily with wood since 1984. We have a LP furnace for a backup. We chose a Lopi stive and it has held up really well. It’s a good sized one and we liked the glass door so we can watch the fire if we want.

[Mamzelle]

Daydream—a soaking tub made of soapstone tiles. Can you imagine how long the water would stay hot?

[Brian Kopp DPM]

Friday, September 27, 2013

Design Challenge Odds and Ends & Video

We haven’t posted much this week because we’ve been so busy!  It’s getting cold and we have to take care of our customers (who all wait until the first frost to order stoves, ask for advice, or order parts).

We are scheduled to send our Design Challenge stove out for EPA testing at the end of next week, so we’ve been doing final tweaks to the combustion design and sending the stove through our internal testing regime most of this week - continuing into next week.  We should have EPA test results around October 16-17, and will publish the results here.  We expect quite good results.
 There’s a short video below of part of today’s high burn test.

The picture below shows the test cutting of the Fleur-de-Lis for the Kopp family.

Trial cut for the Fleur-de-Lis

Trial cut painted gold

We also cut a detachable Fleur-de-Lis pattern that allows for easy changes of color, and future changes of design.  You can see it below on one of our test stoves.  A lot of our employees are designing their own stoves, and we’ll start posting some of those designs next week.  We also hope some of our prospective beta testers will contact us with their ideas!

Detachable Fleur-de-Lis pattern on the end of the stove allows
for color changes and design changes.  (pardon the obvious mismatching colors in this test stove)

We’re having fun with this stove!  More to come next week.  Have a pleasant weekend!