After our cardboard model, we buckled down and measured, cut, folded, riveted, taped, and screwed. The five of us never worked together at one time outside of class. We worked in shifts, mostly coming in two or three at a time. This method led to some confusion, and some re-doing of previous work.
After about 30 combined hours of labor, this glorious beast emerged.
Troubles:
~We had some difficulty riveting the two sides of the aluminium sheet together to make the chimney pipe. Using the machine drill we always got a hole that was too big for rivets. We realized that if we put several layers of tape over the area we wanted drilled, and we made sure the two pieces of metal were super close, we got a nice drill. For the holes that were already too big, we used screws to fasten tightly.
~Chimney: Our original (cardboard) design was bits of triangular prisms connected by tape. Our first metal design was more of a jointed elbow, which didn't stand up and allowed smoke to escape from its joints. Our final design was a simple pipe extending straight up. We might have some smoke leaks around the seal, but we can address that problem in later versions of the stove.
~Riveting: We planned to rivet the sides of the boxes together using the flaps we allotted for that purpose, but at first it was too hard to drill holes, so we used aluminum tape to secure EVERYTHING. When we started using the hand drill (1/8" bit) instead of the machine drill, we could rivet properly and didn't need the tape.
I'm rather pleased with our design and overall result. More importantly, I learned about ~¡400!~ new skills that I feel confident with now, including:
*folding with a giant folding machine*hand drilling*riveting*drafting*brainstorming*machine drilling*wire cutting*teamwork*aluminum taping*first-aid*helping*adapting from inevitable failure to ensure moderate success*
This afternoon we'll test our stoves with real live charcoal.
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