Now is NOT the time!!!!

The design of these stoves just makes sense to me. Everything up top is removable and replaceable. The brunt of the heat is on the firebrick (not too expensive) and on those steel supports.
Other baffles (welded steel, stainless, mineral fibers, etc. ) have their place, but the brick design is efficient and not bad to service.
If you can weld or know a welder, make up a couple yourself. If not, price out the replacements from your dealer. A jamming bypass isn’t a good thing, so make it right when ya can.

 

I have a non-existing bypass
To get the fire going I just crack the door open 1/8 to 1/4 inch Gap.
I don't have a problem with smoke coming out when I open the door, I just simply open the air all the way before I open the door and open the door slowly.

I take out the bricks and the supports and the tubes, clean the stove once a year when I clean the chimney, but like I said, I never take that big back plate out, no reason for me to.

That sucks to have that thing get stuck when it's so cold out, glad you got her operating properly.

What were your stove pipe temperatures running when your bypass was stuck?

 

My old stove had air controls to but it also had a damper in the stove pipe to control the fire

 

This is not exactly related to this subject, but I am reminded of an incident from 20 years or more ago. At 2:00 in the morning the chimney on our Rite-Way stove plugged up and filled our house with smoke. There was 1/2 inch of ice on everything because of freezing rain. The usual way I cleaned the chimney was to stand out on a upstairs dormer and run a brush down the chimney from the top. I eventually got a 100 foot extension cord thrown over the peak of the house and tied off to a porch post. I tried using a rope but I couldn't get it far enough over the house. I used the extension cord get up the ice covered roof to the dormer, then went out on the ice covered dormer to clean the chimney. I don't think I would do that today, if faced with the same situation.

 

Wow!! Glad you got it swept out without going for a ride!! That’s serious hardcore FHC member action right there

 

No clue on the pipe temp since it’s sleeved in the masonry chimney. On that note do they make a temp gauge you could get a probe through the brick or something?

 

I don't know what I was thinking, I sure wasn't thinking, insert
as far as some kind of a probe for that, I don't know, I guess if there is a will there's a way

 

Well it was around 450-500 stove top. What’s the pipe temp in relation to stove top normally I wonder?

 

hot spot on my stove top right now is 690, stove top thermometer toward the front of the stove is 600
probe inside the stove pipe is reading 680, the magnet mount thermometer on the stove pipe is 340

 

Wow I get worried when I start pushing on 600! That makes me feel a bit better hearing your temps. I’ve got a magnetic on top of the stove right at the front edge is all. How high up the pipe are you reading 340? That’s neat to see the cooling temps as it climbs the pipe

 

When I fired this load up, inside stove pipe went up to 820 for a hot second

 

Yyyyyeeeeeaaaaaooowwww! Just makes me think of the line from Dave Dudley “six days on the road” when he’s says “there’s a flame from her stack and that smokes rolling black as coal”

 

Yeah reading the temperature where your thermometer is at 600, if you could read the temperature in the center of the top, it would probably be around 700.
My magnet Mount and digital prob stove pipe thermometers are at 16".
My digital magnet Mount thermometer is in the center hotspot on top of the stove

 

If things are going to fail, they'll do it during the most extreme conditions. Unfortunately that includes frigid temps.
Too bad about the Dewalt. But I suppose if you can't afford Milwaukee... ...

 

I use the Dewalt on the roof Incase it goes down the chimney off the edge