It would be wonderful if the manufactures would post the bell curve plot of the stoves operation, wouldn't it?
BK does a pretty good job. Average BTU's over a given amount of time on a defined setting with a known species of wood is about as much transparency as one could realistically expect.
The other method of using the last reading before the stove melted is flawed IMO. Ok, that's an axaggeration, maybe? But the way I've heard many stove mfg achieve there max output numbers, well, they wouldn't do it in MY living room!