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I am doing maintenance on the following cooking stove:

enter image description here

The top deck is composed of three cast-iron (or steel, not sure) tablets. All three are in direct contact with flames from the bottom; hence they were all covered in soot. After removing this soot, I see that each tablet has circumferential grooves and protrusions which neatly fit into each other. The fit is not perfect, however.

Do I need to seal the gaps between the tablets themselves and between them and the stove? If so, can I use fire rope? Should I glue it to the tablets themselves, to the stove, or it doesn't matter?

enter image description here

Recently I was using fire rope to seal the door of a fireplace, and I intentionally left a small gap. The air rushing in through this gap keeps smoke away from the glass pane, which stays clean longer. Are the gaps in these cast iron decks also intentional? Perhaps also to let the air rushing in slow down the formation of soot?

UPDATE: I tried out the stove without sealing and it works fine - no smoke or carbon monoxide detected. Thank you!

Martin Drozdik
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2 Answers2

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I suspect that they are designed not to be sealed. Otherwise, there would be an asbestos-style rope to form a seal. They are called fire-rope nowadays.

If you were to seal it, the fire may not burn properly. I would leave it unless smoke is escaping into the room from the gaps.

gnicko
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Rohit Gupta
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Those gaps do not need to be sealed.

Why you ask, well the draw created by the chimney is more than sufficient to drg all the combustion fumes up the chimney and that also means that a tiny amount of air is drawn through those gaps.

Had several similar stoves growing up and even when opening to put in a log the smoke would still not come out.

Solar Mike
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