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Ok, seeing peeps keep asking me for my Boatman Stove review, here it is in a thread all of it's own. (I originally posted it in the iPhone 5 thread ) Ok, you've prompted me to write my promised review of the Boatmans Stove... Now I've used it for a few weeks I have to say the £299 price tag remains very attractive and represents good value for money, but it will irritate the hell out of the 'more discerning stove user' like moi. Eddie runs Northern Fabrications. He is a lovely bloke who makes them personally, one at a time, to order and will deliver each stove personally too, to wherever you are within reason for a pittance. He drove mine down to me from Manc to Banbury for £35 and pointing out the downsides in this review feels very disloyal but there we are, that's life and that's business. If Eddie reads this and fixes all the faults, his stove price will have to rise, I'd guess, to close to the £900 or so a Squirrel costs. But I'd still buy one from Eddie because his stoves are welded steel not the splitty cracky cast iron Squirrels are made from. And he deserves the business. Ok, here we go. First impressions are it is a lot smaller than the cracked Squirrel I removed. Eddie told me his stove chucks out just as much heat as a Squirrel though, and I agree with him on this despite the much smaller size and smaller firebox. The small firebox brings a different irritation though. Although the Boatman Stove stays in all night ok, that's as far as it goes. If you lie in until midday (not that I ever do this, obviously) it WILL have gorn out by the time you get up. The old Squirrel would stay in for 24 hours easily, sometimes even 48. On the upside the stove is neat and tidy-looking, and the matt black finish is superb. I chose the cheap basic fittings but Eddie will supply it with brass bits and bobs, and a fiddle rail too IIRC. The glass in the door is kept clean with an airwash control on the top of the door which Eddie set for me and I've never adjusted. After a few dozen hours of burning the glass is a bit grubby but that's fine with me. It just looks used, that's all. Still see the fire inside easily. Another GREAT feature is the feet come with lttle angle brackets welded on so one can screw the thing to the floor to comply with BSS. I don't know of any other stove with this, meaning one has to devise a way of fixing down any other make of stove. Not simple or easy for some peeps. Eddie makes it easy with the brackets. Next, the Squirrel had separate firebox and ashpan doors. The Boatman has one single door covering both, so to get the stove roaring hot quickly, one no longer has the option of opening the ashpan door alone and keeping the firebox door shut to force feed a newly light fire with air. Not a big problem but a faint irritation all the same. Next, a much bigger irritation. The ashpan is only about half the area of the space under the firebox. So 50% of the ash falls around the ashpan, not in it. Grrrr. And shoveling up the loose ash which missed the ashpan chucks up a load of ash dust into the air which messes up the inside of my already messy boat. I want my Squirrel back. Another thing the Squirrel does better than the Boatman is griddling out the ash. Basically, the Boatman doesn't have the externally operated rotating griddle the Squirrel has, so you have to open the (single) door and manually poke out the ash with a poker. And more ash puffs out into the air and wafts around one's boat before settling on all one's crap. Now another detail thing that doesn't matter, but does. The three bars across the front of a Squirrel to retain the coal are flat bars sloping inwards at about 45 degrees, so ash on them falls back into the firebox. The Boatman bars are not like this and let ash fall freely outwards, again puffing up into the air and settling al over all my guitars, hifi, and other general crap in mebote. Further, any ash falling outwards on a Squirrel is caught on the little shelf that sticks out to catch it. I never noticed this little shelf on the Squirrel until I missed it's presence on the Boatman... The Boatman ash falls right down onto the floor and puffs up everywhere once again messing up all my mess in my cabin. I now really appreciate that little sticky-out shelf on the Squirrel. So much so that I'm considering buying another Squirrel, or something with all the features of a Squirrel which are missing from the Boatman, but fabricated from steel. (The Big Problem with Squirrels is the body castings crack when heated up rapidly as I like to do. Fabricated steeel stoves like the Boatman don't do this.) Anyway, in summary, it's a great little stove for £299. But if you want to compare it to a Squirrel, don't be a cheapskate like moi, and buy a flippin Squirrel... Tin hat on now.... MtB (Edit to correct errors appearing after pressing 'SEND'.)