SOME LIKE IT HOT (IN OUR HOMEBUILT SAUNA)

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Tom made a new door for the sauna from one of the old outhouse doors and hung it using the original hardware. Reroofing the structure was then simply a matter of nailing the old roof boards (which we'd taken off prior to mating the two halves) back on and trimming off any overhang.

Next, we worked on the sauna's interior. First, we added 2 X 4 bench braces to the walls (Fig. 1) ... then-after rounding the boards' edges and sanding their surfaces smooth (no splinters!) - I laid out the bench boards, spacing them 3/4" apart for good ventilation (Fig. 1), and spiked the boards in place with finishing nails driven deep. (Note: Not being sadistic at heart, I decided to countersink all the metal hardware inside our hot house. Believe me, if you were to sit on a set of 170'F nail headsand 170OF is a minimum temperature for most saunas-you'd go screamin' through the roof clutching your branded fanny in both hands!)

At this point, we placed a three-sided metal tray (which we'd found inside an old sugar shack) on the floor in one corner of the sauna, then lined the inside rim of the tray with two layers of brick. Then we placed our stove (which has a grill in its bottom) on top of the bricks so that ashes would fall directly into the tray below as the fire burned.

You're probably wondering about the stove. After all, it's usually the most expensive part of any sauna, right? Well, Tom and I put our heating unit together?believe it or not—for the price of two metal hinges (about $2.00). Tom cut the rest of the stove's pieces out of some 1/16" scrap steel and had an apprentice welder (who needed the practice and didn't charge us anything) weld the pieces together.

A trip to the local junkyards turned up no usable stovepipe, so we ended up spending $2.35 at the hardware store for what we needed. We ran the 4-diameter pipe from the stove to a 5"-wide hole in the sauna's roof. (I strongly recommend that you use a "stovepipe thimble"?cost: about $2.50?to ensure proper insulation between the pipe and the roof. We didn't know there was such a thing when we built our sauna and instead improvised a collar from some galvanized sheet metal.) After installing the stovepipe, we nailed two-by-fours in front of the wood-burner to act as guard rails.

Next, we set about looking for some stones to put atop the heater. As you probably know, the best stones to use are those that've been worn smooth by Mother Nature (since smooth rocks are less prone to crack than craggy ones). Rounded stones from the bottom of a stream or lake are ideal. [Be sure to let such stones dry completely before you heat them. Even the smallest amount of moisture trapped inside the rocks can make them shatter-perhaps violently?when they're first used in a sauna.MOTHER.] Chris was able to gather a rucksack full of suitable stones on the beach in a half hour.

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