Rebuild Keystoker A125 Furnace-Few Questions

Hello:

We just purchased an ancient Keystoker hot air furnace with a missing hopper. My brother in law is fabricating one for us- but we are not sure of the design- we see the exterior pictures- but since I have never seen one in action-and this is our dormant Iron Giant- Can anyone tell us.... does the hopper part that attaches to the stoker have to have a certain shape so that the coal enters a certain way? In other words..is there a flange at the bottom of the hopper that only lets coal slide down behind the stoker than just pouring in anyway? I don't know if this makes sense. Better yet can anyone give me dimensions of their stoker- or a picture -that would be awesome. I can't find our digital camera or I would be posting pictures of our work. Also any advice on getting her up and running is more than welcome.

Thanks!!

I don't have any good pics, but I did find a few of my stove hopper - basically it just sits on top of the stoker and the bottom of the hopper does have a "lip" that is turned down about 45 degrees that sort of sits in the stoker top opening. It's just formed by cutting the hole a bit too small, then notch the corners back, and then fold the 'flaps' down a bit. If you look real close at the picture with the "gopher hole" in the coal, you can see the hopper lips sitting in the stoker.

The stoker is held to the stove by some 3/8" studs welded to the stove body, and there are some large "fender" washers under the nuts to spread the load on the thin sheet metal of the hopper.

The back of the hopper does have an additional "funnel" piece pop-riveted in place that slopes the coal down to the stoker, but as you can see it doesn't work that well with damp rice coal.

So, it's pretty much up to you how to build it. I did stuff some fiberglass rope gasket around the stoker to hopper joint, as it really wasn't a good fit and didn't want coal dust sifting out, etc.

Good luck!

Chris

Thank you so much - the pics do help!(and your explanation) This is a big project for us- I really appreciate your response.

I've attached a couple of photos of the Keystoker Koker. The first shows the shape of the hopper. If you look closely you can see the body washer and the weld stud near the top, inside.
The second shows the cutout in the bottom of the hopper and how the "flanges" were created to lead into the stoker bed. I hope this helps.
-Len