Geez, you must be right, Woody. Hundreds of BK owners have all met and agreed to lie about burn times. We even had a secret meeting to agree on what the numbers are... you weren’t invited?
No..if I
was invited, I'd be concerned for my safety!
I should have fleshed out my statement, but didn't want to say anything that anyone could base an argument on.
I was really talking about the larger myth of how the BK stoves are "the best." I don't dispute the burn time claims at all, but the main BK advantages (burn time on low, and the thermostat) aren't that high on my priority list. Neither is the BK blower, since we have an open floor plan, but in a cut-up layout the blower is useful to move more heat to other rooms.
Let's take today in So. IN, low 50s now..shoulder weather. I loaded the little 1.5 cu.ft. Keystone box about 12 hrs. ago, and still have a big pile of semi-intact split chunks in there. I haven't touched the air control. It's 73* in here, I have only the storm door closed so I can see outside better and I'm wearing a tee shirt. Stove top is 225. It's only going down into the upper 30s tonight so I won't need to load for another 12 hrs, off the coals that are left. "24-hr. burn," and house temp will have only varied maybe three degrees. I don't have the stove cut to a super-low burn. In fact, I've never bothered to see how low I can run this stove. I'm more concerned with the amount of heat it will put out when it gets very cold out.
The other BK advantage is the thermostat, which would be useful to me to automatically open the air on the coals in cold weather, to keep stove temp up slightly higher, and make more room in our little stove for the reload. Usually though, either my wife or I am here to open the air once toward the end of the burn. If not, no big deal except when it's real cold and we are working harder to keep room temp up in this leaky house with un-insulated walls. Because my stove has an ash grate in the bottom, I can just swirl a poker through the coals and drop the ash into the pan to get back quite a bit of room in the box. And I don't have to work at shoving coals around and shoveling out the ash while trying not to release any dust in the room. Making more room on the fly in this way is handy when it's cold out and I'm running the stove harder and trying to get fresh loads in quicker for higher output.
Another nice thing about my stove is that it will rear-vent into the fireplace, avoiding the "elephant in the room" look of the vertical black connector pipe. These things are higher on my list of priorities than are the BK strengths. So are heavy-duty quality components, top-flight engineering, and build execution.
Yes, I had a seam air leak on my new stove, so Woodstock isn't perfect either..but c'mon, you're really gonna sell a plate-steel stove for $3000+,
and then to save even more production cost, you are going to glue in the door gasket with dabs of silicone instead of a continuous bead, causing the buyer of the new stove to have to re-do the gasket immediately to reduce smoke smell?? Or you leave weld spatter in the flue collar? Good Lord.
All I try to do with my BK comments is to inform newbies that there's more to the story than long burn times at low output, and a thermostat. I think anyone considering spending a substantial amount of money should get up to speed on the ins and outs of burning wood, then try to make an informed decision according to their
own priorities, which may well differ from mine. I am
not trying to start arguments with adherents to the BK mythos.
Besides, you answered your own question when you used the word 'myth.' 
