How much kindling?

Unless you have a stove with a shaker grate. The damn nails would get stuck in the grate of my mom's cook stove and I'd get in trouble because it was my job to remove the nails from the wood. All the ashes ended up in the garden and dad didn't want the nails going in the tractor tires.

Agreed . . . unless you miss one or two when scattering the ashes on your ice covered driveway . . . or in your garden.

Some folks in the past have expressed some concern with nails with stoves with cats or the gassifiers . . . I cannot remember if the majority of these particular folks felt the concerns were truly valid or a moot point though.

WOW Some of you have some real nice looking kindling. I'll see about getting a pic of the scrap that I have saved up. It all burns though!

just split a little over 1/2 cord of pine - cut and split very small figure this and 1/4 super cedars i should be fine

my insert is very small (qf2100i) so most times i re-light every night - weekends = 24/7


for the neighbor lady - i left my ryobi splitter at her house. i fill one of those large rubbermaid bins for kindling for her every other week

You can never have too much kindling. If you have a small firebox and don't burn 24/7, you are going to go through quite a bit....had 2 large trash barrels full, and I ran out in Feb, as I don't get overnight burns. Big fireboox/overnight burns, you won't need nearly as much.

My dad uses his ash in the garden and he has a large magnet near the stove that he uses to get the nails out. He has an old smoke dragon and I have not been able to convince him to upgrade yet. He has been doing this for 40 years without any problems.

I agree you can never have enough kindling. As long as you have somewhere to store it. My buddy had his property logged and he gave me 3 bags or more of cutoff poplar ends. They were great for getting my basement furnace restarted after overnight. Sometimes it would burn down so far and there wasnt much left, and throw in a few piceses of poplar and back in bussisness

Shipper

My experience is that it's not that you can never have too much, but that you will never have quite enough.

True. I have only so many 5 gallon pails and they take up too much space on the floor.

I've been thinking of using a pail to make a round bundle that I would bind with giant rubber bands made from inner tubes. That way I could just pull them from the pail and put them on top of my regular stacks in the woodshed.

I've also thought of making single portion bundles of 6 pieces wrapped up in the quantity of newsprint I use to start the fire.

Invariably, I often procrastinate making more and usually run out on a cold miserable windy day. I don't have anywhere indoors that I can make kin'lin but have thought about making a mini-splitter that I could use right at the hearth.

One of theses guys would work for that http://www.improvementscatalog.com/product/id/115614.do#

as mentioned my Ryobi 4 ton splitter has been reassigned to neighbor lady’s hearth – works great for making kindling

Nice, but I doubt the wife would let me park it on the hearth.

maybe in glossy black with aluminum wheels

Hey Backwoods - I now have a splitter so I would love to see how you make kindling... would you mind putting together a "how-to"? Thanks!

Okay Woodsman. I'll see if I can do that tomorrow....or very soon if possible.

My son tried that, and I don't know if he wrapped the paper too tight or what, but it didn't work well.

They would only be wrapped up for storage. I would unwrap and crumple up the paper to light the fire.

I have a 35 gallon can full, and from there put the small stuff in the wood pile to take as I get to it. Wife and daughter pick it up and seem to hoard it at certain parts of the pile for kindling. It has worked in the past. Just use the crap that comes off the end of the splitter.
Chad

I use the Ryobi 4 ton splitter for kinlin in the basement But that were my furance is.
That setup works great for me,

My chunk wood and kindling pile. I can easily split all my kindling for the year in about an hour with the splitter.

WoodButcher

I guess different folk have different ideas of what size wood is considered kin'lin. I split mine down to less than an inch. Can't see myself using a 20 ton splitter with blunt wedge to do that.

I'm with you. I use a 3.5# single bit ax (with most of the handle tucked under my arm and my hand near the head) and sometimes a hatchet. My actual "splitter" weighs much less than 20 tons, it's only 6 pounds and I wouldn't even think of using that for kindling. I'm not sure I could swing one that weighed 20 tons! ;-)

1/2 to 1 inch size works nice. I make it out of my seasoned oak. I used to use pine for kindling but I like the fact that the oak kindling makes better coals. Pine kindling doesn't make as many coals. With the oak, by the time the kindling is done burning it's already beginning to make a little bed of coals. Pine goes POOF.

I box up the small scraps from splitting, along with the dead branches that fall from the giant oak tree next to the house. When that gets low, I use oak pallets, which are by far the best way to heat up a cold stove.

I just collect fallen branches. Anything from 1/4 inch to 2 inches as long as it is really dry. I snap the smaller pieces and cut the larger with a handsaw. I usually try to keep a rubermaid tub full of it. When I start running low, it's back into the woods to find more branches on the ground. Works wellenough if I plan ahead. I occasionally get caught running out during an extended rain or snow period and then I have to let it sit for a day to dry.