How to Make Small Clay Firewood Stove to Stay Warm This Winter

Hey Guys, Welcome to my Instructables I'm extremely happy to share this project here let me tell you why!

In this project i made a Firewood stove from clay!

Note: I'm not a ceramicist But still i made this work of art using clay! and i want to show it to the world.

WHY I MADE CLAY FIREWOOD STOVE?

In these days most of the people are less aware of the traditional methods used in the ancient days to stay warm every winter.

From my project i want to bring back the old traditions of using clay for real life applications, Hope this gives ideas to the readers of this article.

Ever wondered how people survived the chilling winter when there was no electronic appliances like heaters?

Well there is no need for me to explain types of heaters available in the markets now, lets not talk about this as we are thriving by using these technologies on day to day basis.

WHAT TO EXPECT FROM THIS PROJECT?

Beat the cold using naturally available resources(Firewood)

Working on clay has been a lost art! By hands on experience by working with clay you will gain some grip on basics.

By doing this project you cause no harm to nature!

A very good outdoor activity

Apart from all of this you can stay warm outdoors even on those chilling cold!

Now as we are done with the basic agenda of our project we will head on to building this project.

Supplies

Cardboard Disc of Diameter 20cm
PVC pipe or a used ear swab container
Clay ( I bought it from my neighbor's rice field)
Masons Trowel
Some patience to work outside!
Some basket to mix clay
Gloves
Firesticks and Matches

Cardboard disc is used to give a steady base to the fireplace, its of 20cm in diameter and a wall of 1.5cm thickness.

You can just cut a circle of radius 10cm and add a strip of 1.5cms to its corners.

Step 1: Cleaning Clay

You can put the clay on a container and start cleaning it.

Just start with the basics like taking out all the stones and the roots of plants that are left over, This wont take much longer and these step is very important.

Make sure to remove all the roots, stones and other form of residues.

At the end of this process you should have a clean clay that is ready to be worked upon.

Now pour some water on the clay, don't pour all at once as this might harm the consistency of the clay strength.

Mix it well after pouring water in installments, at the end of this process you should have a clay that is not too hard or not too soft.

To make it more clearer i will give you what it should look like.

It should look like a dough used to make Tortilas!

Just keep in mind that clay should hold the shape.

Step 2: Giving Shape to Clay

You might be thinking why am i using a bucket here.

That is because the land where I'm working is not flat, so using the bucket fixed the problem for me.

If you have the same problem use the same technique.

Now place the cardboard disc and add some clay.

Spread it evenly on all areas, Do it till the cardboard is filled up

I will be using a masons trowel to get the levelled shape on top, if you don't have it you can use any flat shaped objects for this purpose.

After you have the flat shape take a lump of clay and give it a shape of small plum cake!

Now add this plum cake on top of the flat surface.

Step 3: Making Fire Area

After you place this mini plum cake sized clay use a cylindrical tube (PVC tube or a Ear-swab container) that will the burning area of our firewood.

To do this just press the PVC tube until it leaves a mark on the clay, now remove all those excess clay from within.

Now i gave a proper shape to the inner walls using my hands itself, all it takes some basic movements.

Keep in mind that the top layer should remain flat.

Now cut small piece(shown in 4th and 5th image of this steps) and flatten the edges.

In the end you will have a firewood stove that looks very good as i have shown in the last image.

Step 4: Finishing

After you have done all the above said steps, you can keep this for drying.

I used sun for this work and i recommend doing the same for you too.

I kept it in outdoor sun for around 18 hours and i got the fully dried model.

After you have the sundried fireplace you can remove ṭhe base that was added earlier to give a base.

Step 5: Testing Our Fireplace

Now the moment of joy!

Gather some firesticks and place it on the burning area

To start the fire i used diesel,(To be safe i mixed diesel with 30% water) this may sound weird but i did it anyways.

Use matchstick to start a fire.

Allow few minutes for the fire to stabilize.

Now apart from using this firewood stove to beat the cold you can also place a small pan/vessel to cook something!

Who says no to a coffee on cold days!

Well that was all about making this clay fireplace, Hope you liked the idea, if you have any queries on this kindly drop it on the comments box, i will reply to those shortly!