Hey Manny.
I have been very busy and not on the boards much, but hear you. I am likely going to upgrade my RMWH to an 8".
My bench is a lot smaller than yours so does heat up, but I am gone for 10-14 hours a day and the little burn chamber that could needs more attention than that. So I am with you on the 'sigh' business. Essentially I built a working prototype that functions well but I'd like to step it up!
My bench isn't clay (it's field stone and sand) so it'll be easy to disassemble (albeit messy, I'll likely wet it first) and my chimney will not need to be modified. Sorry to hear that about yours...
Looking forward to seeing your new core construction. I look forward to refining my first core, realistic trip wire and a bigger better turbulator, and like you, hope a p-channel manifests from some garage beer drinking creation!
Thanks for keeping us posted! It has been a brutal winter but I am amazed at how little wood I've burned. I'd be burning more if I were home more but it's good to have the work to pay the bills and such.
Steady on, oh one more thing. Did you see the original thread where the p-channel and tripwire were essentially "invented"/created? I book marked it a while ago as I kept going over it. It's pretty amazing, watching it evolve. It takes a bit to read it all through but that helped me get my head around it all...
http://donkey32.proboards.com/thread/355?page=1Stay warm, spring is around the corner!