Emptying Ash - Dealing With Dust

Yes - the Harman shaker mechanism on the left side would get in the way. I had the luxury of being able to cut my "drop tines" off of my grates and using my center "truss" system to connect my grates together. With the Harman, you don't want to go cutting on the cast grates and changing things. That's the beauty of my home-made stove - I can weld, cut, change, etc and feel OK about it. If all fails, I go back to my original design and I still have a working stove.

One idea on the Harman would be to put a funnel on the right side only, and shove your ash pan all the way to the left side of the stove (or almost if it hits the grate connector. The drawback I see to this would be that the funnel on the left would have to be pretty long, and may not be able to be set at an angle steep enough for ash to slide off.

I also tried building some flaps on the side of my ash pan. I found an old metal crisper drawer from a junk refrigerator at the dump. it measured 15"x15"x6". I attached some hinged flaps to the right and left sides of the pan, each about 5"x15". I could then insert the pan into the stove, shove it to one side of the stove, flip one flap up, shove it to the other side, flip that flap up, and then center the pan. It worked good too. The size of the flaps has to be tailored to the stove dimensions. I'll try to get some pics.

Good luck.

Steinke