Slick trick for starting a fire.

[Zodiac45]

Good old cedar for me. I get one pickup load a year. Buck it and split it into slabs. The slabs then can knocked with a small axe or just rip off a few wheelbarrow full on the splitter.

Every morning, it's 4 pages of rolled newsprint, 4 sticks of the cedar crosshatched, bingo. Almost as soon as it's lit I can toss a couple splits of maple or birch on top and she off too the races. I keep a pail of the kindling in back of the stove so it's plenty dry and light as balsa nearly.

The old timers around here used kerosene in a squirt ketchup bottle!

 

[gasman]

The 'top down fire' method is what I use and it works great.... of course dry kindling helps and fire starting method.

The top down method starts with the big wood on the bottom....smaller wood on top of that and then kindling on top of that. The top gets going very nicely and starts the secondary combustion process(in stoves so designed) and this burning kindling and small wood just lays down on the larger wood on the bottom all the while staying in the secondary combustion mode.

For two decades I would start a fire in the bottom of the stove and after the kindling got going add larger wood on top. This does not work nearly as well as the top down method.

Of course if you have a flamin' bed of coals going.......anything goes! But for starting a fire in a cold stove the top down method is far superior and the quickest way to get your stove into the 'no smoke out of the chimney' zone.

How about putting some wood on one or two SIDES of the kindling pile? I wonder if good heat is getting out sideways that could be reflected into the central combustion. I tried this with a campfire a couple weeks ago and it seemed to really help.

 

[Marc]

How about putting some wood on one or two SIDES of the kindling pile? I wonder if good heat is getting out sideways that could be reflected into the central combustion. I tried this with a campfire a couple weeks ago and it seemed to really help.

Wood is not a good reflector or emitter of radiant heat, so probably not. Letting the kindling pile vent less might help the pile heat up faster, that might be where the effect comes from.

But of course, it always helps to get a fire going faster to place pieces as vertical as possible, because fire will spread much faster up a vertical surface, due to the convective bouyancy of the gases. Think about it like this- take a piece of plywood hold it flat and get one corning flaming- it'd take a while to spread across the piece. Now hold the same piece vertical with the lit corner on the bottom. Much faster flame spread. With a fuel like wood that has a high ignition energy and relatively low radiative HRR fraction (compared to say, a fossil fuel), using convection to your advantage helps a lot.

 

[gasman]

Wood is not a good reflector or emitter of radiant heat, so probably not. Letting the kindling pile vent less might help the pile heat up faster, that might be where the effect comes from.

But of course, it always helps to get a fire going faster to place pieces as vertical as possible, because fire will spread much faster up a vertical surface, due to the convective bouyancy of the gases. Think about it like this- take a piece of plywood hold it flat and get one corning flaming- it'd take a while to spread across the piece. Now hold the same piece vertical with the lit corner on the bottom. Much faster flame spread. With a fuel like wood that has a high ignition energy and relatively low radiative HRR fraction (compared to say, a fossil fuel), using convection to your advantage helps a lot.

Thanks. I need to think more in terms of hot gases and convection as opposed to radiative heat.

 

[czeigler]

I Start Wood Fires With Hand Held Propane Torch Works For Me

+1 AND Gel Firestarter

 

[Festus Haggen]

The top-down fire works less by radiant heat, more by the embers falling down onto the bigger wood.

If you really feel the urge for accellerants, try some cooking oil on newspaper. Burns like a torch for 5 minutes or more before it consumes the paper. Use that to light my charcoal in the chimney starter. Learned that trick from Alton Brown on food tv a long time ago.

 

[Lairry]

I use corn cobs soaked in diesel for outside and soaked in charcoal starter for in the house. Works great for me!