It's the "in between" that has me stumped!

[soupy1957]

"Load it up, light fire starter, open air fully, 20-30 minutes later, air down for cruise."

If I did this with my new EPA stove, I'd expect the fire to smolder.

Define: "fire starter" (perhaps you're dumping a cup-n-a-half of gasoline on the logs?

-soupy1957

 

[Jags]

"Load it up, light fire starter, open air fully, 20-30 minutes later, air down for cruise."

If I did this with my new EPA stove, I'd expect the fire to smolder.

If you CAN'T do this with your EPA stove, you have a weakness in your system. Wood/draft - something.

Firestarter = Super Cedars or breaking a chunk off of the starter blocks you can get at the home improvement stores. Pine cones, fat wood, etc. Whatever you use to get the stove to light off.

Go here: https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/53191/ for all the discussion you care to see on fire starters.

 

[Dakotas Dad]

"Load it up, light fire starter, open air fully, 20-30 minutes later, air down for cruise."

If I did this with my new EPA stove, I'd expect the fire to smolder.

Define: "fire starter" (perhaps you're dumping a cup-n-a-half of gasoline on the logs?

-soupy1957

Stove is a new Hearthstone Homestead. Wood is mostly cherry split and stacked last spring post ice storm. The fire starters are the compressed wood chip and wax "starter log" things that I bought at Lowes, They come in a box with 40 starters, but I split them in half, so 80 starts in a box. I lay one down in the bottom of the stove , (I used to put it on newspaper knots, but it doesn't need it, was just an old habit from the fireplace) Stack my load around it, light it up the starter with a long match and air full open, and in 20-30 minutes it's fully involved. Close air down to a level we want.. let her run.

EDIT TO ADD: don't get me wrong, I can start a fire from scratch, Eagle Scout, grew up in between Desolation Wilderness and Yosemite, in a very outdoors family, 20 years combat arms, which is the part of the Army that "camps" a lot, and just general camping, hunting and hiking all my life. But I have found that I no longer need to start a fire with kindling and patience.. We have also finally, at 50+ decided we no longer need to sleep on the ground in a tent.. so we have a travel trailer.. and all the no digging cat holes life style that involves.

 

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

That might be the difference. The wax-based starters act as that intermediate wood-size.

I usually collect the thin fragments around the splitting block to serve as kindling. The newspaper serves to catch these fragments, which then burn long enough to catch the rest of the logs.

More recently we made our own wax-based starters by saving the spent waxpaper cups from the bathrooms, filling them with paper shreddings from the shredder, then pouring melted wax scraps from spent candles. These fire starters burn long enough that we did not need kindling. Just newspaper, a wax firestarter, split logs.

It also depends on what one means by "starting". There's starting a fire when there's a bed of charcoal kind of starting. And there's starting a fire after you've just shoveled the stove out clean - kind of starting.

When there's a bed of charcoal (even if the charcoal is dead cold) I find that a few sheets of newspaper is enough to catch the charcoal and get the draft going. Most often that charcoal then serves as the intermediate kindling to catch the fuel logs afire.

Intermediate kindling OR wax-starters are a must when starting from an ice-cold, cleaned out stove.

 

[karri0n]

That might be the difference. The wax-based starters act as that intermediate wood-size.

I usually collect the thin fragments around the splitting block to serve as kindling. The newspaper serves to catch these fragments, which then burn long enough to catch the rest of the logs.

More recently we made our own wax-based starters by saving the spent waxpaper cups from the bathrooms, filling them with paper shreddings from the shredder, then pouring melted wax scraps from spent candles. These fire starters burn long enough that we did not need kindling. Just newspaper, a wax firestarter, split logs.

It also depends on what one means by "starting". There's starting a fire when there's a bed of charcoal kind of starting. And there's starting a fire after you've just shoveled the stove out clean - kind of starting.

When there's a bed of charcoal (even if the charcoal is dead cold) I find that a few sheets of newspaper is enough to catch the charcoal and get the draft going. Most often that charcoal then serves as the intermediate kindling to catch the fuel logs afire.

Intermediate kindling OR wax-starters are a must when starting from an ice-cold, cleaned out stove.

I've found some crumpled up newspaper in with the spits, then spraying a few sprays of waste vegetable oil from a windex bottle onto the paper and the splits works pretty well too.

 

[Dakotas Dad]

It also depends on what one means by "starting". There's starting a fire when there's a bed of charcoal kind of starting. And there's starting a fire after you've just shoveled the stove out clean - kind of starting.

When there's a bed of charcoal (even if the charcoal is dead cold) I find that a few sheets of newspaper is enough to catch the charcoal and get the draft going. Most often that charcoal then serves as the intermediate kindling to catch the fuel logs afire.

Intermediate kindling OR wax-starters are a must when starting from an ice-cold, cleaned out stove.

My guess from the OP's question was he was talking about a cold stove start, not any kind of reload.