In any event, I'm glad you had a double check underneath, and hope you can gain some control of the stove.
There's a round disc welded to the "ceiling" that stops the slide between the two angle iron supports from going too far back. To the right of that is the pointy end of a triangle that is the air inlet. It isn't closing it off completely. It might be a "safety thing" to stop a user from choking a fire down to nothing and creating creosote. Great in a test lab. In the real world it might not work as needed. That's what I'm seeing.
There is a thin piece of sheet metal that guides the primary air handle. It was bent a bit from when I picked up the stove from the previous owner. He used a small tractor and straps to lift it on to the truck bed. I noticed it was bent a bit but never thought much about it. I dont know how I've overlooked this for so long
Well I took some before I saw this post so I'll put them up anyway haha. Here's a pic from the front. The handle itself was bent slightly as well. I got that taken care of. Dont mind the cat in the background.... Here is a pic from the rear of the stove. As you can see it is not factory straight but better than it was. I didn't take pics of before I "straightened" it so you'll have to take my word that it was worse than this. Got the dog in the background of this one... Apparently my pets like to photobomb
I see the real problem, your selfish pets were camped around the warm stove blocking you from getting a closer look at things. But definitely look into getting a smaller flame icon.
Well after doing some bending and such I thought I had it figured out last night. Before bed I loaded her up thinking I was good to go. Boy was I wrong! I was up til about 230 babysitting the stove. Then I was back up around 6 with the house temp measuring 63* I placed a magnet over part of the primary air hole that is open even with the air totally closed. It is not completely covered but it seems to have made quite a difference today. We'll find out tonight. Throughout today I've been doing small loads cause I've been kinda gun shy. That leads me to another question. How do you guys handle your coal bed? Say its 1100 PM and you just got home from being out somewhere. Its 65* in the house so you want to load up and go to bed but the stove isn't ready to load yet. Now what? Asking for a friend.....
In the winter is mostly about timing , How much heat do you need for how long until you want to load the next load , and load your stove Accordingly . Even if the temperature is where you need full loads every time It is about timing . If you do end up with a lot of coals You need to Get rid of , You can burn them down by raking all your coals to the front And putting a Small to medium size split Across on top of the coals And open air up all the way , like this, So you can fit more wood in
I load er up and light the fire front n center...then let things heat up until the air can be cut back and still have sustained secondary fire. In others words...you don't have to load on hot coals...
Are ya still getting the rocket down in front Marvin? Up in Rocks picture he has the same thing going on but with the air full open.