How fast can you safely fire up a cast iron wood stove?

[mmichaud]

While I was making a fire tonight a thought came across my mind. How fast can one safely fireup a cast iron wood burning stove? I tend to bring the fire up gradually, over a period of an hour or so to 400-500 degrees. The stove itself would let me do it a lot faster if i let it. This action is probably the result of many years of working around high pressure boilers where I was always told to warm them up slow. Grant it, not the same, but still dealing with heating up different types of metal to high temperatures. I am curious to what others do when firing up their stoves.

 

[webbie]

While I was making a fire tonight a thought came across my mind. How fast can one safely fireup a cast iron wood burning stove? I tend to bring the fire up gradually, over a period of an hour or so to 400-500 degrees. The stove itself would let me do it a lot faster if i let it. This action is probably the result of many years of working around high pressure boilers where I was always told to warm them up slow. Grant it, not the same, but still dealing with heating up different types of metal to high temperatures. I am curious to what others do when firing up their stoves.

I think you can fire it up just about as fast as you can do it (using normal wood, etc.)

The time to be cautious is usually only when the stove is new and the parts all have to expand and contract and seat into each other. After the break-in period and regular use, you can probably treat it like a steel stove or fireplace.

Consider the cast iron manifolds on your car engine - from -10 degrees (on a cold day) to 500+ degrees in a few minutes thousands of times with no problems.

 

[begreen]

So far it takes about 30-45 minutes to bring the Castine up to temps. That was about what it took for the 3CB as well.