Vermont Castings 1977 Vigilant, noob

that stove should be the same as my defiant. if you want to make sure that the secondary is running shut down the lights in the room and look into the secondary air inlet next to the side loading door and you should see a bright light from the fire ranging from yellow to i seen whitish blue. one thing i did in my defiant to help cushion the temp in the secondary camber was to slide in a brick in the hole on the right side of the stove where the secondary chamber is and sit it under the air manifold. on the defiant it fit perfect and it helped with secondary so much that i can interrupt the burn for more wood and close it down again for relight. and the brick helped keep the stove from turning red in a small spot on the side of the stove with the secondary fire.

the secondary is on the side near the back, not getting a visual

is there any vigilant owners, out there, that can confirm they can see burn it secondary?

thanks i will give this a shot when i stop burning

If you are looking into the stove at the fireback, you will see a chamber at the lower right rear corner. This is the secondary burn chamber. The air supply for the secondary burn is located on the left side of the stove (outside) in the lower rear corner. There is a round hole covered by a "teardrop" looking cover. This hole should be open when burning the stove to supply air to the secondary burn chamber.

Ya but can you actually see burning in the little hole, with teardrop cover, on the Vigilant?
apparently you can on the Defiant

Yes you can see it, especially when you first close the damper.

If the five holes in the lower fireback are not plugged up and are kept free of ash AND there is not a big build up of ash back behind the fireback, there is nothing more you can do. If you're still having a slow, smoldering fire it's most likely due to poorly seasoned wood.

How are you keeping your primary set? I close up my primary and secondary at bed time and the stove burns hot all night long leaving me some big hot coals in the morning.

Don't get too wrapped up in accomplishing a secondary burn. That "secondary flap" is just another source of air. Not a source of fire.