I suspect the reason is that they are only "almost" identical. The crucial difference is that Halfie's has a removable baffle plate. The baffle plate is where the soot that's dislodged by sweeping the flue collects and a removable one makes the job of soot removal easy, as Halfie describes.
Here is Halfie's shot of the inside of his Villager Puffin:
See how the baffle-plate sits on runners for easy removal.
And here's the inside of my Villager Heron.
I'm not alone in having a stove to this design. Nev on Percy has he same problem.
In the meantime,in between sticking a camera up the inside of the stove, crew member Ken and I have rescued Starcross from Uplands Basin and are now at Middlewich - destination Marple.
3 comments:
I don't have any practical experience to fall back on, but just looking at the pictures I wonder if it's possible to put a sheet a cooking foil (perhaps folded double), across the top of the plate before sweeping starts. After sweeping has finished, pulling the foil out should bring 'most' of the soot with it.
I appreciate that if the soot quantity is large some of the sweepings may be stored in the chimney, only to fall out and refill the baffle plate when the foil is removed. In this case I can only suggest two pieces of foil, one protruding to the left, and one protruding to the right, so that as the first is removed the second lot of soot sweepings fall on the second layer of foil.
Foil food trays, or disposable barbecue trays, may supply a source of more robust soot trays, but they have to be flexible enough to fold down the side space between the baffle and the side of the stove.
HTH, Davidss
Thanks for the suggestion. I'll certainly give it a try next time.
I see your problem now, Jim.
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