New Woodstock Stove: Beta Testing CUSTOM STOVE ART

[BrianK]

This is the stove that Woodstock is designing for my family so I hope its OK to post their blog entry here:

Friday, September 20, 2013
Beta Testing CUSTOM STOVE ART with the Kopp Family

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The Woodstove Design Challenge has focused our attention on questions that we hadn’t really addressed before:

1. Can we make a really high performance woodstove that is completely affordable?
2. We don’t have the chutzpah to think we can produce a stove design that will make everyone happy. So, how do we make a flexible design that can harness our owners’ creativity?
3. How can we have fun with this product? How can our owners have fun too?

Part of the answer is that the Design Challenge Stove will offer custom design on the sides, the andirons, and the cooktop. You can choose from our design book (being developed), submit your own design as a graphic, or suggest a concept to us for review and execution.

Here’s an example of how we think this will work. Recently the Kopp family from Johnstown, PA sent a request for a design with a Fleur-de-Lis pattern on the stove. Here are a few of the images they sent to us.
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We sent them the preview below, and asked them to send a couple of sentences explaining why this design was important to them. Here’s the preview that we sent to the Kopps:

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The Kopps asked us to remove the stars on the hinges, make the fleurs on the andirons a little bigger, and change the colors on the stove. We are using our blog to publish the revised design for approval - and here it is...

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Below is a video generated by our SolidWorks program showing the custom design elements:
[Go to the Woodstock blog link to view the video]


Our plan is to credit each design to its originator, in this case Marie Kopp. We plan to retain designs and make them available to other stove buyers. Ideally, we will generate a design community on line. If the design contained a highly personal image (profile of a loved one, for example) we would not make it publicly available.

We are “beta-testing” the design/review process, as well as the mechanics of the stove. We are becoming quite adept with both the art programs and CNC programs we are using in this process, and we expect to be able create personalized stoves quickly and at very affordable costs.

We’ll show a number of designs from our employees over the next few days. We’re having fun doing this, and we hope our customers will, too. Many thanks to Brian, Sue and Marie Kopp for being our first test subjects!

Glenn Sperry with first test cut for Bird of Paradise pattern
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Labels: New Stove, Steal Hybrid, Wood Stove Design Challenge, Woodstock Videos Posted by Woodstock Soapstone Co. at 9/20/2013 02:06:00 PM

 

[stihly dan]

Woodstock is a great stove. I will be getting one in a few years for ambiance, and a little heat in fall and spring. wood furnace will still be my heat.

 

[BrianK]

Update from the Woodstock blog:


Friday, September 27, 2013
Design Challenge Odds and Ends & Video
We haven’t posted much this week because we’ve been so busy! It’s getting cold and we have to take care of our customers (who all wait until the first frost to order stoves, ask for advice, or order parts).

We are scheduled to send our Design Challenge stove out for EPA testing at the end of next week, so we’ve been doing final tweaks to the combustion design and sending the stove through our internal testing regime most of this week - continuing into next week. We should have EPA test results around October 16-17, and will publish the results here. We expect quite good results.

There’s a short video below of part of today’s high burn test.

The picture below shows the test cutting of the Fleur-de-Lis for the Kopp family.

Trial cut for the Fleur-de-Lis


Trial cut painted gold

We also cut a detachable Fleur-de-Lis pattern that allows for easy changes of color, and future changes of design. You can see it below on one of our test stoves. A lot of our employees are designing their own stoves, and we’ll start posting some of those designs next week. We also hope some of our prospective beta testers will contact us with their ideas!


Detachable Fleur-de-Lis pattern on the end of the stove allows
for color changes and design changes. (pardon the obvious mismatching colors in this test stove)

[Go to the Woodstock blog entry to see the 4 minute video of the secondary burn in the test stove.]


We’re having fun with this stove! More to come next week. Have a pleasant weekend!

 

[zogger]

That's pretty slick! I'd like to get a cookstove again some day. Actually have a place to install one in the kitchen, but right now my GFs grandpappy made custom china cabinet is sitting there...it would take some fancy maneuvering on my part to relocate it elsewhere in the cabin.