How do you start your fires?

iceman said:

i take a starter log break it into a million pieces take a couple of those with 1 biobrick with 2-3 splits and poof 10 minutes inferno

Click to expand...

******************************************************************************
Iceman,

How , exactly, do you break the starter log into a million pieces. Please tell me because I want to do it, too.

I really can not recommend this to anyone, because it could easyily be very dangerous, unelse you are extreemly careful.

Last night I loaded two huge full sized trunk slices, about 22 in in diameter & 12 inches thick into my firebox & surrounded them with 2 x4 & 4x4 from pallets & now I am looking at all this wood & wondering how I am going to lite it because there is no room for kindling.

The stove was dead cold---- no smoldering embers at all------------------------------------- which was the only reason, aside from me being too lazy to remove some wood to make room for kindling, that I felt safe to use this method.

Well, those trunk slices were really heavy & tough to move.!

Dead cold stove , no embers. So I emptied a windex sprayer, fill with #2 fuel oil, grab 3 sheets of newspaper, as that was all the room left inside a 12 cu ft firebox, just room for 3 sheets of newspaper, & I lightly squirt everything inside the stove with #2 fuel oil.
I use the stream setting of the windex, not the mist setting.

Long fireplace match with door cracked 1 inch & me hiding, mostly behind the door.

It lit quite nicely, like a barbique with starter fluid, & I left the stove door cracked about 1/4 inch with a wieght behind it so it can't swing open & enjoyed a cigarette while I watched the wood become nicely engaged with flame. Before I finished the cigarette , it was time to latch the door & close down the primary air, as stack temp had reached 650*
The stove settled down nicely to a 450* burn, in about 8 minutes & held steady, so I went back upstairs 2 watch tv.

Again , i can't recommend this to any one ,it is dangerous & I won't do it at all if there are any chance of live embers being present & i wont do it either if i can use kinding without having to rebuild the fire.

But me move 90 lb trunk rounds to make room for kindling when i can just go squirt, squirt,squirt, no way,Jay!

I still want to know how to break a starter log into a million pieces because I much rather would have rather done that ,instead. %-P :lol:

That starter log sounds a whole lot safer to me & i am going to buy two, today, so someone better tell me how to break them into a million pieces , BEFORE I start experimenting with them with no idea what I am doing or how to do it. :lol:

Just reminded me that I have not started a fire in, ummm, a couple of weeks.... more actually. Am managing a constant fire and using coals to bring a load back up to firing. I need to bookmark it, but somewhere on this site in the last couple of weeks was a link to a gov. web site in Canada with a short video on how to build and manage fires in EPA stoves.

Found it... Added: http://www.ec.gc.ca/cleanair-airpur/default.asp?lang=En&n=8011CD70-1

While I was doing almost all of it, there were some tweaks to techniques that made a big diff to managing a stove on a daily basis, and over time. My burn times are 1/3rd more, am using less wood, and less work. Anyone know of the link I am talking about? It was very helpful.

To your question... I purchased a box of Firestarter 'Squares' by Rutland from Walmart. Something like 144 small squares that light up and will start a stove loaded and ready. Bottom up. They are dandy things as I would break off a chunk from a larger brick as some starter fuel and it would work, but this was just right. $9 methinks. And since I have adjusted my techniques, I have only used them a couple of times in the last several weeks.

I've adopted a method of placing a faster burning split like a pine on the bottom/back of my store (Napoleon 1400p). On top I place a harder, slower burning split or full round, like an oak or a pinon, or when warmer, elm which is not as ideal but I have gobs of it and it coals up and keeps things humming along.

I do the same for the next two placements of splits, either a faster bottom and harder/slower top, or I may do two hard/slow in this second layer (that is moving towards my glass door.

The third layer, closest to the door, I will place a faster burning single like a really ready pinon, juniper, or pine... this single third layer is my 'starter'. I either have coals raked forward, or will place this little starter square under the front of this front split, ensuring there is at least a tunnel in the middle of this front split for air flow. The way my stove works, the air wash and an inlet on the bottom move air along the front bottom, heating this first split. By placing these splits in this configuration, east-west, the fire moves through the stove and I can control the speed and intensity. I of course do not use 5 splits all the time, depending on the outside temp. Sometime will just use one or two. Regardless, using this method, I am getting upwards of 10-12 hour burns and residual heat. This in an 1800 sq ft, 100 year old not completely tight Victorian home, and am quite comfy.

IMO, the key is to take what everyone here is saying and apply it to some concepts on how you stove handles air flow. Coupled with properly seasoned wood, these stoves can really deliver I have found... my next stove will be a CAT, like a Blaze King which looks fantabulous, but for now, things are going swimmingly.

narutojp said:

I'm just wondering how others start their fires. I use four different boxes of wood to help build our fires. I use a hand planer to shave off curls of wood, which are the first addition to the wood stove. Next, kindling that consists of dried branches or wood chopped to finger-size width or smaller. Once the fire is going with these two items, larger kindling is added and finally the largest pieces are added to the stove. My goal is always to start the fire with one match. I guess this comes from a magazine article I read a few years back, about a woman living up in northern British Columbia. It seems she was lost in the woods during a snow storm, about minus 20 C outside, and stumbled across an old trappers cabin. She found a bit of timber and a couple of matches in the cabin. She was able to get the fire going and survive the storm. I've always been impressed with getting the fire going with only 2 matches, knowing that the fire was a matter of life and death. In my rather comfortable life by comparison, how many times had I used more than one match to get the fire going? Well, now I've got it down to one match. I'm interested in other's techniques and stories.

Click to expand...

newspaper, fire starters, kidnling, logs, open the draft, when I feel the heat 8 feet away near my computer, I turn the draft down and add more logs

Super cedar fire starters. I break them in quarters which comes out to about 15 cents every time I light the stove. Well worth it. So easy to start compared to the troubles in the past with newspapers kindling and the like.

Tom might still give out free samples. Look around this website.

carpniels

Here's how I do it, and it doesn't cost me anything!
:coolsmile:
https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewthread/9812/

I use sawdust & wax mix that has been set in cardboard egg crates. (old firestarters from Boy Scouts) One of these under larger kindling and easy fire... so easy, my wife even does it! (and she doesn't like to!) We had plenty of candles left over from our wedding reception (almost an entire rubbermaid tote filled) and plenty of sawdust laying around. My wife enjoys melting the wax and mixing in the sawdust... but I get the joy of pushing the mix into the egg cartons (and usually burnt by the hot wax in the process). The ratio is about that of oatmeal... just enough wax to hold the sawdust together. I have made a couple dozen each for family and friends to use in their fireplaces or while camping. Thanks to that, they have provided us with ample cardboard egg cartons for making more.

eernest4 said:

I really can not recommend this to anyone, because it could easyily be very dangerous, unelse you are extreemly careful.

Click to expand...

Irresponsible and dumb to even post it! Close to starting the stove with the propane torch.

Off my firebox,
Jim

You can call me irrresponsible, dumb, or lazy, but I have been using propane and mapp gas for years soldering and sweating copper pipes and I too use my mapp gas to start my fires if (rarley) they do go out. I see no reason for not doing so other than it may be thought as taboo. Yes I agree it would be silly for one to store their tank next to the wood stove but there is supposed to be a non conbustable clearance arround the stove anyways. And as far as the leaky fitting you shouldn't store the bottles with the igniter attached anyways. If my wood stove goes out this winter I will go to my plumbers kit and grab my torch and have at it. This also keep curious little hands from finding lighters and matches in the kitchen drawer. Saw dust with a small amount of wax mixed in is not that different than some of the commercial firestarter logs you find in the store. Some of these logs too use wax mixed with organic subsances, I would not do this for one my wife would kill me if I melted down her candles for the fire but as long as it is not causing a safty issue why couldn't someone else. This is a forum for sharing ideas so that everyone can learn from each other. That is why this forum works so well. I think there would be a lot of grumpy old wood burner in the world if this forum went away and personally I don't see the need for the random bashing of people's ideas. Maybe we would ask the webmaster to put in such a room? would probably be pretty lonley in there. Now if there are legitimate saftey concerns there are ways to educate people. Lets try some legitimate evidence or reasons why they are not good ideas rather than that was "dumb".

Moose said:

You can call me irrresponsible, dumb, or lazy, but I have been using propane and mapp gas for years soldering and sweating copper pipes and I too use my mapp gas to start my fires if (rarley) they do go out.some legitimate evidence or reasons why they are not good ideas rather than that was "dumb".

Click to expand...

Read the warning label on the BenzoMatic bottle! :coolhmm:

Enuf said!

My favorite way to start my fire is with dried pallet wood pieces, cut with a circular saw, hunks of cardbaord and a propane torch. If I can't have a fire in there in under ten minutes there is a major problem.

Unless you enjoy the process you are doing it sounds like way too much work to me.

vasten said:

My favorite way to start my fire is with dried pallet wood pieces, cut with a circular saw, hunks of cardbaord and a propane torch. If I can't have a fire in there in under ten minutes there is a major problem.

Unless you enjoy the process you are doing it sounds like way too much work to me.

Click to expand...

Vasten,
You being a first year stove burner and "woo hoo maybe I am starting to figure this stuff out.... ", maybe you should start by reading the label on the BenzoMatic bottle and also your stove manual. Flammables near or around a stove are a definite No-No.

Maybe you don't care about the safety or welfare of yourself or your family, but think of the poor firefighters who will come to put out a stove/chimney fire. Think about the shrapnel of an exploding propane tank along with the fireball?

Jim,

Fair enough, just so you know I do proceed with caution and use it very much like a lighter, and remove it once there are signs of a fire. Then it is stored safely away from the stove.

But point taken.

Paper? Torches? Yikes. How will you survive when the newspaper quits coming and the hardware stores go out of business? I don't have any newspapers or really much paper at all besides printer paper. I have a torch somewhere but I only use it to solder broken pipes. Even if I run out of kitchen matches I have my trusty flint tool. This is the best little fire starter I've ever seen. It consists of a flint, a magnesium rod and a small section of a hack saw blade attached to the handle with a leather loop. You shave off some magnesium with the saw blade (you can shave curls from the wooden handle too) then you strike the flint to ignite the magnesium. Then you have a few seconds of the hottest kindling imaginable. You know what to do from there.

The opening post in this tread reminded me of one day back in '95. I wasn't lost or struggling for survival though. This was 5 guys getting drunk in the wilderness during a Pennsylvania freezing rain/snowstorm. My buddies were freezing and spent hours trying to build a fire. They burned up every piece of dry paper they had; they had exhausted all but one Bic lighter and they hadn't even made smoke yet. These 4 guys were self-described 'woodsmen' because they managed to sometimes kill an unfortunate deer...anyway... once I started to get cold I told them to back off. In 15 minutes we had a roaring campfire.

Although I was drunk as a billy goat in a late fall apple orchard, I started by whacking a fallen beech into 5 lengths. My friends had been wailing on that log to little effect for a long time, they were trying to make kindling out of it. I cut it into firewood as they looked on and questioned my methods. "Why make a stack of firewood when we can't even get a twig to light?" Then I stacked a tee-pee in the campfire pit and used bark to shelter it from the freezing drizzle. Then my friend handed me his Bic lighter and said "I bet you can't light it."

Then I walked over to a huge rock that was eroded underneath. It looked like chipmunks and squirrels must have lived in there. I reached under there and brought out a fist full of bone dry tinder. I shaved some magnesium curls onto it, I struck the flint a few times and I WAS A HERO! I had to physically threaten one guy who was determined to poke it with a stick long before it needed any poking.

Jahfre Fire Eater
Today: 7 degrees expected high, wind gusts to 90 MPH. Just another fine day to be inside by the Fisher.

Jahfre, sounds like a cool place to live!

JimBob, that was a GREAT thread you did.

Thanks! :coolsmile: