Hey all - This one is a bit tangential, but I thought some of you folks might have something to say on the matter.
Has anyone heated their “workshop” area with a wood stove? likes, dislikes?
Any other creative and/or practical uses (besides the obvious heat) as it relates to jewelry manufacture?
Wood heat is a plus anywhere!..but, I have fired PMC in my fireplace…if that is a plus for you!
I have had a pellet stove for 12 years, love it !
You’re just trying to figure out how to use up the small forrest you chain saw’d up last week…
Bring the heat.
Best,
J
I am looking at adding one in my basement, where I do most of my work 
Just have to find time to drive myself up to New Hampshire to pick this baby up!
I had read an old thread about someone using a wood stove not only to heat their shop but also questioned the potential application of the catalytic combustion plate to be used as a solder block to conduct heat!
Yes indeed… my neighbor had a tree service take down 12 dead ash trees, and I spent the weekend cutting 
I live off grid so I use wood heat. My studio is pretty small. My only complaint (besides hauling wood in plus it’s messy) is that my polishing is set up next to the wood stove - I have to time my polishing for when the fire is dying down!
Were off grid too, and like you , use wood as a heating source.
Most of us who are off grid are where theres plenty of wood available, we are! we actually grow our own, mostly oak, and have enough acerage to last us indefinately by natural renewal.
Keeping up with the low calorific value of wood for todays home and w/shop needs takes time. how we do this is another story.
however, im interested in where you are and how you provide the other essential, ie electric power?
Doing metal work efficiently needs modern tools and thus the helping hand of electricity.
Can you make enough to do all you want? including how you live?
Are there others who are off grid? here on this forum?
Ted.
Cool! I like to hear from other off grid artists and craftsmen! I’m south
of Santa Fe, NM. I’ve been here for 35years. I buy firewood since there’s
not much around here. I’m going through about a cord/season. My house is
passive solar adobe. Works pretty good!
I have 4 - 285W panels coming into a Midnight charge controller at 50-70V
dropped down to 12V. I have a 2,000W
ProSine “cheapo” pure sine wave inverter. (when it dies I’m going 24v).
I have an electric fridge, flat screen, high speed internet w/Roku and
steaming movies etc. plus my shop. I have a
polisher w/modified outside suction,
a kitchen hood over my soldering station, last but not least a
Star Diamond 8" lapidary machine that I use mostly for sanding silver. Hope
I didn’t bore you with all this - just thinking back to when we moved out
on our land in a 17’ travel trailer, kerosene lamps etc.
I feel pretty lucky!
Where are you? Have you been off grid long? Do you have a lot of equipment
to run?
Were cent/southern UK isolated farmstead. Nearest other h/stead 1m away.
off grid since I came here 44 yrs ago
do need lots of power on accasion, so have diesel gen sets as follows
6kva 240v s/p for general use connected into an “Outback” charger inverter 3kw.
Feeding into an alkali battery bank at 48v 200 amp hrs. These came from the standby signalling setup from British rail. Have a life of 50 yrs.
Into this bank also a 2.5kw solar array. when sunny! fills up our b/bank in 4 hrs.
Then a 25kva 240v s/p when i need power to run a 200amp welder
also a 12kva 3/p 440v set to run 3/p some equipment a mill and a lathe.
plus several others down to small honda 2kw portable sets.
Need lots of power if and when I do minting, tho most of my motors are 1 to 2hp. s/p.
we cut wood to 24in length, then split with a farm tractor home made splitter to 3in dia. stack on palletts cover for 18months to dry out then cut to firebox length with another tractor driven rocking bench cordwood saw. 30 in tc blade of 90 tooth.
time to process enough for a week for 2 24/7 stoves in winter some 2 hrs.
solid fuel here is $600.00 a ton. delivered.
Our central stove
I too have a wood burning stove in my workshop…its generally fantastic - the only negative being that the heat rises so much that when its roasting in the workshop I practically faint when I stand up. My workshop is made from an old shipping container so think I get the same problem as on a boat that the floor is quite cold.
I have found that a stove fan placed on the top of the burner helps disperse the heat around the room better.
It is a lovely dry heat which is great in this damp uk climate!
Hi! I have my studio in the house which is woodstove heated. I love it! Hydro in Ontario is crazy expensive, so wood was a good choice for us. Our wood stove has a room between it and my studio. It still gets nice and warm. As my fuels are in the house, I have started disconnecting my propane and moving it to our boot room which is more separate from our wood wood and gas stove when not in use… in case I ever have a leak (we have a gas stove in room next to it with a pilot light). Was taking it out to the garage, but it is freezing out there and I think it was effecting my regulator and the propane took forever to heat up. We also have a wood heated garage I use for polishing and melting. It is a big space so it takes a bit of time to heat up and so the gas also needs time to warm. Guessing your basement wouldn’t be that cold!
I heated both a workshop and a house with wood stoves for around two years in Seattle. There were mountains of free pallet wood available and all it took was the labor to break them up. Sometimes, particularly in my small house (a converted double garage) the wood stove got so hot I had the windows and doors open in the middle of winter. I think this is more my own inexperience at using a wood stove than anything. It’s worth remembering that 100 years ago , coal and wood were really the only heating sources available, and they got some fine work done them too.
One note of caution: A friend once gave me some charcoal briquets to keep my fire banked all night long. They worked fine (I was using them at home, not in the shop) for their purpose, but they covered everything with dust. From what friends who have burned coal in their wood burning stoves along with wood say, I would also avoid coal. It too leaves a layer of dust. I’m not sure how they got around this in the old days when they used coal considerably more than now. I suspect they had the stove in another room.
Hi @Bill.Tokyo It’s funny, I am actually re-purposing an old flue that was for the original owner’s coal-fired boiler. Our house was built in 1926. I had the pleasure of removing at least 20 years worth of coal dust and residue just to get access to see what’s up there 
It looks pristine – they really knew how to build a chimney back in those days.
You make a really good point about heating 100 years ago – seemed to work just fine before all the gadgets that seem to run my heating system now. All of which have useful life of 15 years if I am lucky.
In our zeal to “improve” things, it can be easy to forget that some of the “old timers” actually did know a thing or two about how stuff worked. And they built things to work well for a long time, and be repaired (instead of replaced). As I’m getting a little bit older, I’m starting to learn the value of things like “wisdom” and “experience”
Have a hankering to build a Rocket Stove Mass Heater in my workshop this summer.
Hello there.
I grew up in a house heated by a wood stove. That was quite a bit of work since we were cutting the wood, but i can’t think of a better way to feel relaxed and comfortable, even while working. Be careful when choosing which wood to burn, some are not healthy.
I miss it today, i wish i could have one to replace my crappy electrical heater.
The rocket stove idea is very long to get working, but that’s the best way of burning wood, some people even use it as a small aluminium foundry, or as a water-tank heater, we built a small one once with some friends, with recycled gas tanks, meant to be a small outdoor aluminium foundry. It practicaly emits no visible smoke, we even saw a big flame coming out of the exhaust pipe. It could melt aluminium in a steel can, but did not get hot enough to use it with a crucible. There are lots of videos on the internet explaining both indoor and outdoor rocket stoves,
Stoves are perfect for annealing large plates or large diameter wire of scrap copper too.
Hadn’t thought of putting it to use as a tool, I did think of adding a hot plate if the upper drum was too high. There are so many designs on the internet and youtube in particular. They do seem to use a tiny amount of fuel and are particularly useful to burn tree trimmings.
We’ve just had a multifuel stove installed in our living room and as it is so new it is proving to be great competition to the tv.