Building the Charcoal Stove

Constructing a charcoal stove out of sheet metal was an incredibly new experience for me, as I had never worked with metal before. Though my group had conceived of our prototype with cardboard and duct tape, building a stove out of sheet metal and rivets required a new mode of thinking and came with new challenges. Initially we began to build by focusing at one part at a time, but we very quickly learned that we needed to meticulously plan out each step of the process beforehand. For instance, if we bent our metal into a box before drilling the holes for the rivets, it would become very challenging to maneuver the drill in that space. 

Therefore, we planned out our tasks chronologically and drew diagrams of different parts: 

Cutting and shaping the sheet metal was tricky, although it was quite thin. We used a sheet metal shear for the major cuts, and olfa knives and tin snips for the smaller cuts. In order to bend the metal into parts with 90 degree angles, we used a metal press or weakened the metal with an olfa knife and then carefully bent it over a table ledge or a heavy square piece of metal.  

                   

Since we obviously couldn't bind our stove together with duct tape in the final model, we used rivets - metal mechanical fasteners used in aviation - to connect our sheets of metal together. To join two pieces with a rivet we had to create tabs that would overlap with another sheet of metal. We also had to drill holes in the metal for the rivets.                                                                                                                                                             

                      

One of the issues we encountered was how to attach our grates to the bottom and top of the charcoal container. Initially we attempted to wedge the bottom chicken wire grate between the walls of the container and secure it with rivets, but this distorted the form of the trapezoid too much, so we rebuilt our side wall pieces to have tabs on the bottom and riveted the chicken wire to the tabs.   

After making side wall pieces with tabs and rivet holes, we cut out an air vent and covered the gap with radiator covering so that someone wouldn't be able to stick a hand into the vent while cooking, and also so that there wouldn't be excessive air flow to the fire. While we initially wanted to create a cover that could slide over the vent partially to regulate air flow and thus alter the intensity of the fire, we were not able to figure out the logistics of this design given time constraints.

      

We bent our metal into a rectangle, added the sides, and then riveted it all together. Unfortunately we had the mishap of making the long sides of our stove an inch short on both sides, so our short sides were an inch too tall. We fudged the difference by adding a long strip of sheet metal to cover the gap on either side, but the structural integrity of our stove certainly suffered from this mistake.

    

We hinged a grate made of radiator covering to cover the charcoal holder and made a top for the oven. It was surprisingly challenging to line up all of the wholes needed to hinge the grate to the stove.

Finally, we attached the stove door with a hinge and created a simple latch with a hook and eye latch.

   

At long last, our shiny aluminum stove emerged from the ashes looking quite like the cardboard model we had created!