Jim McCollam didn’t only set out to reinvent himself after the local construction economy took a dive four years ago.

The longtime siding contractor also decided to reinvent the wood stove.

“I just kept looking at my wood stove and I said, ‘This just isn’t made right.’ There were just too many engineering failures.”

So McCollam, who said he has inventive tendencies inherited from his father, started building and marketing stoves under the Made Right Stove Co. brand in his shop west of Kalispell about a year ago.

He is marketing the stoves through his website and he also has given his business exposure by taking the stoves to places such as farmers markets, the Plains fair and gun shows. He emphasizes the “survival” qualities of his wood stoves since the heat-blowing devices don’t require any electricity and they also provide a cooking surface.

Made Right stoves are designed to squeeze as much heat out of each unit as possible and increase wood-burning efficiency in the process.

To achieve those goals, he started out with aluminum, one of the best heat-conducting metals, for both the box material and for use in fins that extract heat that would otherwise go up the chimney.  

“Every engine has fins to extract heat,” he said. “The fins are needed to get rid of the heat.”

Each stove is built with a special chamber to control the exhaust and trap the heat in the top of the stove, allowing the fins to do their job.

McCollam also doesn’t build his stoves with insulating brick on the inside, which he said makes no sense since bricks are used in kilns, for example, as a classic insulator for trapping heat. Brick is an optional feature for use on the outside of his stoves, though, to store the heat and release it later.

With thinner walls and no brick taking up room in the wood box, McCollam said the fire boxes provide more room and, most important, depth, than those he’s seen in other wood stove designs. With a loaded stove and the right damper adjustment, McCollam said his stoves will burn for 10 to 16 hours. He also said he used as much wood this winter in two stoves heating his house and shop as he did in one stove the previous winter.

“I’ll go in the house at 5:30 [p.m.]. and when I come back at 10 the next morning, I’ll still have wood burning,” he said of the stove that he runs in his shop.

The wood stands up tall and stays bunched longer than in a traditional box in which the wood is stacked sideways.

“Wood burns apart in a wider box, and as it burns it keeps dropping into the fire,” he said. “A tall stand of wood stays contained and tighter.”

The Grizzly Bear model, his biggest, offers 6 cubic feet of space in its fire box. Made Right models come in three other sizes — Papa Bear (5 cubic feet), Mama Bear (3.75 cubic feet) and Cub (2 cubic feet).

The heat-radiating surface of his medium-sized stove is 7,000 square inches, which McCollam said on his website is three times the 2,000-square-inch surface area of most average wood stoves.

McCollam said he easily heats his 3,000-plus-square-foot house with the Papa model.

The stoves are lightweight and easily transportable, ranging from the Grizzly Bear’s 195 pounds to the smallest Cub at 110 pounds. The price range is from around $1,000 to $2,000-plus, and each comes with a five-year guarantee.

Though the stoves can be painted, the aluminum on the Made Right stoves offers the sleek look of a stainless steel appliance. He said that one of his relatives wanted a glass door on her wood stove to be able to watch the fire, but to him the glass door only means lost efficiency.

“They’re great if you want something cosmetic to sit and watch the fire and a movie and eat popcorn, and you’re not dependent on it to keep your house warm,” he said. “Otherwise, it doesn’t make sense.”

As each stove is manufactured in his shop, he can customize the models. He made one stove for a customer who was going to have it placed between two rooms, so he made sure to make it was equally attractive at all angles.

McCollam has also used his ingenuity to create a few wood-stove accessories. The Heat Bandit is a stove pipe heat reclaimer that uses the fin concept. The aluminum device, that fits easily around any stovepipe, captures and releases the heat that normally escapes up the pipe.

He also has came up with a hand-powered blower, using a controlling mechanism that sends a regulated amount of air through a long tube. The blower is used in Third World countries, he said, where it is often mounted on charcoal ovens for coal starting.

He put a long tube on the device to make it practical for wood-stove use, but he hasn’t yet found the right size of tube in the quantities he needs to market the device.

Another idea he would like to develop is a thermal electric generator, using the heat power from the stove to produce electricity with 3- by 3-inch squares.

For more information on Made Right Stoves, visit www.maderightstoves.com, send an email to maderightstoveco@centurytel.net, or call McCollam at 752-4472.

Business reporter Heidi Gaiser may be reached at 758-4439 or by email at hgaiser@dailyinterlake.com.