Best start-up method to burn in a cast iron non-cat

[arkyheat1]

I can confirm that the soapstone stoves take longer to heat-up. Based on my experience they are a little harder to overfire as well. Get a lazer thermometer to check you stove temps and don't reload above 400 and you should be fine. Do you have a blocking plate in your chimney? They really help the stove efficiency in terms of heating the space.

By blocking plate do you mean blocking the damper space where the stove pipe runs through? If so, I don't have a plate, but I've stuffed it with insulation to keep less air from escaping into the chimney.

 

[Grisu]

Tightly stuffed Roxul insulation will have a similar effect but better would be a block-off plate with some Roxul on top: https://www.hearth.com/talk/wiki/make-a-damper-sealing-block-off-plate/

 

[Woody Stover]

Try a top down fire and damp down sooner. I was surprised how much faster my stove warmed up and went into secondary burns which is where a majority of the heat comes from....Think of closing the primary air down more as trapping the heat in the stove

Yeah, you don't need a big blaze to heat the stove. From a cold start, with a big blaze you are more likely to overheat your liner than you are to over-fire the cold stove (but certain areas can get hot, like around the bypass opening if your stove has one.) I adjust the air to get a lively fire (not a blaze) with the least amount of air, so that heat stays in the stove. You'll have to cut the air as more wood catches to maintain that sweet spot.
I'm burning one load a day now, starting from a cold stove. I'll put a couple chunks of left over charcoal in the front bottom to let air circulate around the wood well. A few medium-small splits, cutoff chunks, what have you on top of the charcoal, then the kindling and a couple small SuperCedar chunks. I like to see the flame concentrated around the front/top of the box, but it works its way back into the load a little as well. I usually load the stove all the way first; You don't need a coal bed with dry wood and a top-down start. As you see in this thread, there are a lot of different approaches. Play with it and see what you end up liking. You may end up using multiple methods, depending on what you need that day. That's some of the fun of it!
I wouldn't bust up any splits if you can go out and grab some small, dead Tulip Poplar or other fast-burning wood that's pretty dry. Tulip is real easy to split into kindling and takes off a lot faster than Oak kindling will.