Yep it's official I have woken up another old smoke dragon. After nearly three months of searching, reading, lurking, waiting, waiting, waiting, and wasting time waiting I was able to fire the stove up last night. I had good intentions on waiting till Friday night to burn, but last night I thought what the heck. It was a small fire that was more of a test fire than anything. I was quite impressed with the results for such an old beast. In the firebox I put in some pine kindling and some red oak on top of that, lit a firestarter and shut the door. It sure was neat to sit and wait and watch the fire keep growing and growing. Over the course of the next hour I bet I ran this routine 6 or 7 times, it goes as follows. Get up grab the flashlight, run outside, look at the chimney, look for smoke, run back inside check the firebox, look at the stove temp, feel the stove pipe, feel the ceiling support box, feel the trim collar, feel the drywall on the ceiling, feel the walls, then last check the temp on the wall. The stove got up to a temp of 350 after about an hour of burn time. I closed the damper and shutair down and took a shower after about a half an hour the stove was at 160 degrees with the stove pipe warm but not hot to the touch. Mission accomplished. I was even able to sleep not worrying too bad about first timer thoughts. I would have burned it longer, but work rolls around pretty early in the morning. I'll let it rip tonight and see what happens. Looking forward to a warm winter. Does that make any sense?
