Today, I stopped over at Greg's house again.
I didn't get too much done. I wasn't there long, but I did do up the grill tabs.
I cut some angle iron into three 1" pieces to put around the top edge of the grill. I arranged the tabs, clamped them in place, and Greg hit them with his arc welder.
These three tabs will hold a round grill, just below the top edge of the stove. That way, there's something to keep my sausages from rolling right off the grill!
Also, I'm getting a little jealous of Greg's fancy oak sideboard, so I dug up some materials at home that might make a nice little tabletop mounted to the stove.
(For scale, the aluminum square on the left is roughly 9", the wood table on the right is about 4' long.)
From left to right:
1) Aluminum plates with deck tread pattern - good for the industrial look. Thick enough to be pretty sturdy.
2) Stone (bee-zon stone?) A hunk of stone from the outside of a building that I got from a mason friend. I have more bigger pieces of it, and he says it's easy to cut. About an inch thick. Heavy.
3) Slate. Two natural edges, two cut edges. I really like the color. That might go great with the rusty steel look of the stove. Pretty big piece too. Not sure of the best way to cut it.
4) Hunk of wood board room table. Originally part of my "Pirate Bar", which no longer exists because my current home doesn't have a basement. I don't remember what species of wood it is, but it's a great color. Potentially, I could actually cut a hole the size of rocket stove right in the middle of this table top, and have the whole thing surround the stove.
The other thing I was considering is to use the threaded ports on the side of the stove to mount a table top. I would run a short section of pipe out to an elbow to a vertical section of pipe, to a pipe flange, which would hold the countertop material.
I don't have the pipe, nor could I hold the chunk of aluminum and the camera properly at the same time, so you will have to use your imagination while looking at this photograph.
Just imagine pipe coming out of that left port, then turning up to support the aluminum, which would of course be over more to the left, rather than actually sitting on top of the stove!
If I used the big wood counter top, I most likely would weld some mounting tabs right on the stove and mount it to multiple points on there.