You can buy baby fences that go around the wood stove,
but to provide enough clearance, they usually end up
cutting off quite a large part of the room.
So what I thinking of making instead is some kind of
fence that fit's fairly close to the stove
and has a fairly tight mesh in the sides.
I'm making it out of bed frame angle iron,
which isn't the best material but it's what I have at hand.
I'm using a piece of square stock
to help hold the angle iron at the right angle
while cutting the miters on the ends.
Got to grind the paint off for where I'm gonna weld it.
With two frames made for the sides, I'm checking
how it will fit together.
This is where the wood stove store goes,
so there's a door that goes on here
to correspond with, but when that door
is partially opened, it pulls down a bit like that,
which will want to make the whole frame go a bit like this,
so I need to stiffen that up, which I could by welding
all these on here, but that makes it awkward
to move, so I think these two down here
are gonna be a separate frame to give that front stiffness.
This block of hardwood, as a welding jig,
has worked out really well, because just welding things
straight through, no tacking ahead of time, I don't seem
to be getting any appreciable distortion
because this is the fourth corner of my frame,
and it comes in within a few millimeters,
so I'm pretty sure I don't have a lot of distortion
from the welding.
Totally square. And, with the frame down here,
it's totally stiff against rocking side to side.
The back is not stiff, but that will be attached
against the wall.
These bed frames are really hard steel.
I need to drill them with a drill press
and even if I drilled pilot holes, I can only get
about four holes before I need to resharpen the drills.
Getting these pieces on the drill press is very awkward.
I couldn't get very good
low speed control on that drill press, so I decided to
try the hand drill after all. And with us one,
I can push on the end of it very effectively,
so actually that one worked out better.
Now, the door's gonna go on here, and I need some hinges
to mount on there. But, I don't feel like drilling
any more holes in this stuff so I'm just gonna weld
something on here.
I think that should work.
After tack welding, and checking the fit again,
I welded the hinges on, real good.
For the screens to go in the frames,
I'm planning on using hardware cloth,
which would perhaps ideally be screwed in,
but that would require drilling more holes,
so I think I'm just gonna try welding it on,
which I have to be very careful about
because this is galvanized steel, so the fumes from that
are poisonous.
Hmm.
Well, it looks like I've been foiled.
This stuff it just melts away. Maybe the coating prevents it
from being welded. It's not a week later
and I bought a 4 by 8 sheet of this screen,
which is much stiffer than what I was gonna use.
And the holes are still small enough
that toddler's hands can't fit through there.
I brushed the rust off of the screens,
then went over all this with an angle grinder,
and then with a flap disk to prepare for painting.
I love how these look right now,
but I don't think I can leave them like that.
I drilled holes. Two along the bottom
of these frames, and then one in the back
for screwing it to the floor and to the wall
but then I realised it was gonna be really difficult
to get in there with a screwdriver, especially for when
I take this thing if there's dirt behind it.
So what I've done instead is I put the screw here,
just on the inside edge. So, that keeps it from sliding
back and forth, and also the lip holds it down a bit.
And then the screw on here, that one fits into a slot,
and the one up here is in a diagonal slot,
but I can still get it off, without taking the screws out,
just by first unhooking the one on the bottom,
and then I can lift it and get this one out.
And with both sides unhooked, I can pull it forward,
spread these things apart a little bit,
and it will nut the thing whole thing off.
But, what I hooked in place is plenty sturdy
to do gymnastics on.
And, I haven't thought of anything for a door latch
so I just took a magnet and stuck it in here,
and that's enough to hold it shut.
So, we finally had a day cold enough to actually
fire this wood stove up on.
And, the stove at this point is plenty hot,
but the baby fence is still quite comfortable
to the touch, so I think that it will be safe.