How to Light Wood Stove??

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TomRC

New Member
Mar 3, 2021
35
KY
Going into my 2nd winter with a wood stove (Kuma Tamarack). Last year I started my stove by taking splits and then splitting them down into thin kindling strips with my Kindlin’ Cracker and a 5lb sledge hammer. Worked great, stove always started up with ease and pretty fast. However, been having some problems with my right arm / shoulder and I’m no spring chicken anymore and just not sure I’m going to be able to use the 5lb sledge hammer and the Kindlin’ Cracker this year to make kindling.

Are there any really good wood stove starters that you can buy online or DIY ideas ? I’d like to buy some starters in bulk that will light my main splits from the top down without having to add kindling or newspaper to the process. Thanks in advance!
 
Going into my 2nd winter with a wood stove (Kuma Tamarack). Last year I started my stove by taking splits and then splitting them down into thin kindling strips with my Kindlin’ Cracker and a 5lb sledge hammer. Worked great, stove always started up with ease and pretty fast. However, been having some problems with my right arm / shoulder and I’m no spring chicken anymore and just not sure I’m going to be able to use the 5lb sledge hammer and the Kindlin’ Cracker this year to make kindling.

Are there any really good wood stove starters that you can buy online or DIY ideas ? I’d like to buy some starters in bulk that will light my main splits from the top down without having to add kindling or newspaper to the process. Thanks in advance!
amazon and big box stores sell those little kindling sticks, Im sure they would work ok if you did largest at the bottom, small at the top then store bought kindling at the top, however if you light a fire frequently then you'd really burn through a box of that very quickly.
 
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I'll check out Super Cedars. Don't want to have to buy kindling or anything from the big box stores if possible or go buy a newspaper every other day. I don't mind having to wait a little longer for it to fire up, just want something I can stick on top of or under my main splits, light and be done with it.
 
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With good dry doug fir I can start a fire with 1/4 chunk of a Super Cedar disk.
The Hearth.com discount code for Super Cedars is Hearth2022

If you have a friend that splits a lot of wood, ask for a box or two of splitter trash to dry out for kindling. Also, cabinetry and trim shops often create barrels of scrap that make great kindling.
 
Thanks, got 5 cords of main splits stacked and covered and my Kindling Cracker and the sledge hammer does a great job of making kindling from it just a lot of strain on my shoulder and arm. Towards the end of last winter I got to where I dreaded the weekly routine of sitting down for an hour and splitting kindling to get me through the next week. I think that's what aggravated my shoulder problems, that and age!

Sounds like Super Cedars are the answers.
 
Thanks, got 5 cords of main splits stacked and covered and my Kindling Cracker and the sledge hammer does a great job of making kindling from it just a lot of strain on my shoulder and arm. Towards the end of last winter I got to where I dreaded the weekly routine of sitting down for an hour and splitting kindling to get me through the next week.

Sounds like Super Cedars are the answers.
yea, I can relate.
Im sick of cutting grass. Especially now it's growing super fast. With any luck, in 5-6 weeks the cold will stop it until spring.

Last year I was pretty sick of hauling wood, splitting kindling. I have to figure out a new system. 1' of crusty old snow/ice, hauling from the main area to my back deck a face cord, then dragging that wood inside.

Then my wife lets the fire go out. DOH.
 
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Sorry about the shoulder pain. I hope it's not too serious. I've had both shoulders freeze in the past 20 yrs. due to repetitive stress. It's no fun, but gets better with proper exercises and patience.
 
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yea, I can relate.
Im sick of cutting grass. Especially now it's growing super fast. With any luck, in 5-6 weeks the cold will stop it until spring.

Last year I was pretty sick of hauling wood, splitting kindling. I have to figure out a new system. 1' of crusty old snow/ice, hauling from the main area to my back deck a face cord, then dragging that wood inside.

Then my wife lets the fire go out. DOH.

Sick of cutting grass huh???? Fortunately I don't have much grass to cut, ONLY about 4 to 5 acres PER WEEK. Between swinging a 5lb sledge hammer to make kindling half the year and bouncing around on a tractor 6 hours per week cutting grass the other half of the year my body feels GREAT :):)
 
SuperCedars as mentioned. You will never look back. 1/4 puck is all I ever need for a successful light off on a full load.
Park the 5lb sledge and cracker for good:cool: Enjoy.
 
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Sick of cutting grass huh???? Fortunately I don't have much grass to cut, ONLY about 4 to 5 acres PER WEEK. Between swinging a 5lb sledge hammer to make kindling half the year and bouncing around on a tractor 6 hours per week cutting grass the other half of the year my body feels GREAT :):)
Our grass has been brown and dormant since August. It will wake up sometime in October. Hopefully, it will only need one or two cuts before the cold slows it down again.
 
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I have a large garbage bag of white birch bark. Its one step away from pouring kerosene on a fire (Kerosene is definitely not recomended)
 
Super Cedars.

Highly recommend !
 
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Sick of cutting grass huh???? Fortunately I don't have much grass to cut, ONLY about 4 to 5 acres PER WEEK. Between swinging a 5lb sledge hammer to make kindling half the year and bouncing around on a tractor 6 hours per week cutting grass the other half of the year my body feels GREAT :):)
Lol damn that's a lot. I had to cut that for awhile. Half the property sold off. I have to hit three 1 acre lots now. Parents, my house and cabin. Cabin the grass doesn't really grow there much. I might cut 4 times a year. At home though it's up to twice a week now.
 
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1 wooden "kitchen" match + 1/4 SuperCedar. It's all I ever use.
 
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When I had BK King I used to just have box full of branches and used newspaper under them. Worked everytime and no effort to have branches from the trees. Old dead ones work great too. If I could get it I would use some Cedar Rounds and split them and throw piece of one of them in. Mill ends worked great too for starting (don't overdue it). Any small pieces I had split up worked great to get things going too. Since I burn nothing but Pine very fire was easy (WA State Evergreen State)
 
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Last year I lit the stove from the top down (per instructions) using kindling on top of my splits. With only splits in the stove I'm guessing it will be a bottom up light with the Super Cedars??
 
1 wooden "kitchen" match + 1/4 SuperCedar. It's all I ever use.
I bring dishonor to my family if I used more than one match.
No fire starters usually. Ball of whatever and if whatever doesn't exist it's paper towels. I have alot of whatever though.
Wifey bought some fire starters. I'm worried about the chemicals though.
 
I use a light 2lb mini maul and a 1lb hatchet and make my own from cedar cut on my land. I can make a generous winters supply and then some in under two hours. Having had my own cedar for 23 years now, I think I had forgotten how handy that is.
 
I wish I had access to presumably white cedar from Maine, hard to beat for fire starting. You are lucky you have them (except that they usually grow near or in wet ground).

I need to strip weathered red cedar siding off one side of my house one of these years, its not painted and expect I will have lifetimes supply of kindling from that project if I can figure out a way of storing it.
 
Last year I lit the stove from the top down (per instructions) using kindling on top of my splits. With only splits in the stove I'm guessing it will be a bottom up light with the Super Cedars??
Stick that chunk of SC anywhere you can fit it between splits. Top. Left. Right. Or right up zee mittle. Makes little if any notable difference. I prefer placing it towards the center and low.
 
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Last year I lit the stove from the top down (per instructions) using kindling on top of my splits. With only splits in the stove I'm guessing it will be a bottom up light with the Super Cedars??
Wifey bought some fire starters. I'm worried about the chemicals though.
Yes. Bottom up. I experimented with the top-down gimmick one season, and it works, but I really didn't see any point in it. Note that folks like Poindexter, dealing with the smoke Nazi's in Fairbanks, may have a legitimate reason for it. But for the rest of us, it's just a more tedious and less reliable way to do what folks have been doing for tens of thousands of years, if not longer.

WRT chemicals, SuperCedars and fatwood are the only two I've ever purchased, and both are completely free of any chemicals that will harm your cat. The SuperCedars are just cedar sawdust compressed into a puck with a paraffin binder. The fatwood is just high-resin conifer stumps split into pieces the size of pencil.
I bring dishonor to my family if I used more than one match.
In Boy Scouts, Order of the Arrow, we were allowed two. If you couldn't get something lit with the second, you slept alone in the dark. But in my own living room, with no wind or rain, it's pretty rare to need more than one.

Side note, my wife keeps buying these stupid Scripto grill lighters. She likes them for lighting deep jar candles, and thinks they'll be useful for lighting stoves, especially since none of our local grocery stores carry regular wooden matches anymore. But I'm pretty sure I've never gotten more than a dozen uses out of one of those grill lighters, before it stops functioning reliably. I would guess that nearly every one of those I've tossed in the trash still has 75% to 95% of its fuel remaining. This is a good example for some of our threads on wasteful single-use plastics, as these lighters are very nearly so. My matches never fail.

All this talk of lighters just reminded me that I have one of my grandfather's old stainless Zippo lighters sitting in a cupboard in the garage. Might dig that out today, put a new flint and fuel in it, and put it in the glovebox on the tractor. Lighting the outdoor firepit on windy days to burn off splitter waste is one place where a lighter is sometimes better than a match.
I use a light 2lb mini maul and a 1lb hatchet and make my own from cedar cut on my land. I can make a generous winters supply and then some in under two hours. Having had my own cedar for 23 years now, I think I had forgotten how handy that is.
I did this for several years. Now I just leave the cedar big, and stack it in the rack I used to use for kindling, to be used to burn down oak coals before the evening reload.
 
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I make fire starters out of paper egg cartons and wax and use one egg section per fire. I used to fill the egg cartons with dryer lint before putting melted wax on top. They smelled like burning hair since my kids seem to shed worse than a golden retriever. I've also used pine needles or sawdust for a substrate too. I can't remember if it was on this site or somewhere else in the depths of the internet, I read that you can just use an egg carton and put about 1/2" of wax in the bottom. In my comparisons, this method does not burn as long as the stuffing the cartons with something, but it burns more than long enough to get splits going. The lint-stuffed egg carton burned for about 10 minutes with a nice 4-6" flame. The simpler method still burns for about 6 minutes.
 
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