Jotul Castine inner side plate re-sealing.

I am trying to figure out what could be causing short secondary combustion times with my stove. I removed the secondary assembly, the rear plate and three fire bricks behind it. I then unbolted the inner side plates for an inspection. A bit of the stove cement on the back of the plates had crumbled, and there was rust where the seal was lost. The chamber with the rectangle opening is for feeding secondary air.

Both plates had the channels scraped, wire brushed out and a quick damp cloth wipe. The receiving raised casts we done the same. All the crevices were vacuumed out and the plates cemented and bolted back. I also changed the gaskets at the top of the inner plates where the secondary assembly sits.







This is looking at the right side outer plate. The left chamber feeds the secondary air and the right is for the airwash.




The door glass was removed and I re-cemented a small section of the glass gasket as well as a small area of the door gasket.

The last part of the project was adding a plate damper above the stove. Since there is little room to reach the damper lever, I forged out a new extended one from 1/4" steel rod. I flattened a small curl at the end. When the handle is up, the damper is open.

The new one is at the top.



I like the minimal look of the lever.

 

Heard of it, never tried it. I found some stainless steel brushes at the big blue box store that took the rust off pretty well. I wonder about residuals from the jelly and cleaning it from the cast iron pores.

 

So here is an update. I ran the stove two mornings on wood blocks. I closed down the primary air in increments after about 20 minutes. The flames were above the blocks with air pushing out the secondary assembly holes. It burned like this for over an hour and no visible smoke out the flue cap. This should work even better with colder weather in a few weeks.

Re-sealing the inner side plates made a huge difference in air control.

 

Wish I had found this a week ago. Still,found out about the same for myself. Looked to me like possibly condensation damage to cement while out of service, but simple fix. Not quite so simple to drill out sheared off M6 retaining bolts however (bottom) both sides. I recommend copperslip or similar anti seize compound on replacements.
Air slide cover ( doghouse ) appears to be intended to allow some air feed direct to front of grate ? Any experience of blocking this ? As I have no problems lighting up at start, I am going to try blocking this in the hope of having a little more air to glass. My initial thoughts of this new to me stove is that I have a slight imbalance in air to reburn tubes and air to glass (with the bias toward the reburn ). Any thoughts on adjusting this ?
Otherwise, VERY nice.

 

Under the doghouse cover, there are two holes to let primary air into the firebox. I don't think there would be any benefit to restricting these holes.

Re-sealing the inner side plates improved the secondary combustion for me, but I still get hazy glass in the lower corners. From reading reviews, it seems to be the nature of the stove design.

I could never find an air path diagram for the Castine, but I believe the primary air comes in from under the primary air lever. This may need to be verified.

 

Well, having had it apart fairish, I can throw some light on the air path for this stove.
Incoming air to stove enters body at rear through a 2 1/2'' dia hole in bottom of base. this can be setup to draw air from outside, but otherwise is open and facing downward. this air passes around ash box inside crafty twin walled base of stove. At front, it rises from this chamber and passes through twin hole shutter slider which is controlled by lever in front of door and over ash lip. If this shutter is open, the air rises through it , splitting to left and right [( here, some air is also allowed to flow directly to fire through small slots both above and below slider cover (doghouse) ] and into base of side fire cheeks where it is again divided into air to reburn and air to glass airwash. There is no method of altering the balance of these two flows ( other than blocking up some of the reburn holes ) Some I understand block off flow to reburn holes completely.
I intend now to find out what happens if air is prevented from escaping directly to fire from doghouse area, hopefully providing a little more for airwash. Admittedly, this is a minor amount, of which perhaps only half is sent to glass. Thats my take on it anyway.
It is clear this is a quality stove design, by a world leader. I can see that the designer could not have done much else in the way of balancing the two flows for "Joe public ". however the experienced furnaceer may wish it had. There is ALLWAYS a way. When I have burnt mine for a year I shall have a better idea of whether it is worth further investigation. It most certainly puts out some heat which is its main purpose.

 

Very good information posted there. I put a short leg kit on mine and it had the bottom heat shield, so I never saw the 2 1/2" hole for the outside air.

But yes, a little more airwash would be nice. I've read a good hot fire can clean the glass up.

I've owned a F-100 and F-3 previously. The F-3 was a great stove to run. If they could have up sized the F-3 to the Castine size and BTU capacity, that would be a great stove. The F-3 just ran easier, and the startup air in the lower door was great. The large glass in this stove line is really nice.

 

Update. I don't know if this is of actual interest to anyone, but I think the airflow path I posted may not be entirely correct. Only in so much as it seems to me that air to reburn tubes may not
actually pass through variable shutter. It does however still enter stove through rear bottom hole, but I think that it is drawn from air proceeding to draught shutter, as when stove is out on a windy day the draught noise from hole at back is not reduced by opening or closing the variable shutter. When I get a chance I shall do a simple smoke test as I am curious. This would make a serious difference if the chimney was alight. Someone who reads this will already know the answer to this. Please put a note on here.

 

I wonder if the parts schematic on the Jotul website would give any insight?