russ_alabama
ArboristSite Lurker
The barrel approach works real well. My dad used that approach on some mature oak stumps that were cut from down to the ground on up to 1ft above. Probably 50-60 of them. He used a several-hundred-gallon drum and cut it out on both ends. He always put a 6" or so sized rock under a side toward which the wind was blowing, to aid the draft effect of the "chimney." Took about 1-2days per stump. He said of it that the trick was to always shovel the hot coals of the last stump to the next one (that the first stump was the hardest to get going of the lot). He sowed seed over the spot those stumps were on and you couldn't tell they'd been there in a year's time.