Re: Wood-Coal Burning Stoves
Originally Posted by James McMullen
Dear Jay,
The Stone Horse Sloop I’m planning to buy has one of those Tiny Tot stoves in it. I want to beg a little help from you on lighting and stoking techniques and such since I really don’t have much experience with little bitty solid fuel stoves like this. I do, however, have a ready source of hardwood scraps… . piled up behind my bandsaw at the end of every day. Do you use wadded up paper and kindling or lighter fluid or a wax firestarter or what to get the stove burning? I’ve gotten all sorts of conflicting advice so far, but none of it was from someone who actually owned one of these little stoves. It seems to me that the firestarter you can make yourself by pouring melted parrafin wax into a paper dixie cup full of wood shavings would be the safest yet most utterly foolproof way to get the stove burning bright off of a single match. It just so happens that I might be able to come up with some wood shavings too, somehow. What say you?
Ah… here’s where the generation gap starts to show. Growing up, we heated our house with a coal fired furnace and one of my earlier chores was keeping the furnace going in the winter. I didn’t need to join the Boys Scouts to learn how to build a fire! Just remember, start small and add to that until it gets to where you want it. These days the best short-cut way to build a fire in a small ship’s stove, or any other for that matter, is to use a bit of fireplace log. What you want are the waxy treated ones that are advertised as “self-starting.” The dry sawdust ones aren’t any better for starting than a real piece of wood. You can saw them (a bread knife will work) or, easier, just chop off a piece with a hatchet. Knock off a 1” round and put that “puck” in your stove and light it. Once it is going well, add whatever else you are going to burn and the log piece will get it going well. Don’t “drown” the thing with added wood, briquets or whatever. Just add a bit until that gets going and then larger pieces as you go along. This is the difference between “starting” a fire and “building” a fire. Remember that and you’ll have no problems.
Beware of squirting lighter fluid, kerosene or other combustible liquids in a stove. You can end up turning it into a bomb! Besides, such liquids burn off quickly and don’t transfer much heat to your primary fuel load, resulting in a fire which quickly goes out.
