Quote from: kramarat on September 07, 2012, 02:11:40 PM
I don't use a grate. No firebrick either. It's basically a cast iron box with a door and a damper.

I load it up with fairly large, split oak, and use a small piece of one of the starters in the link, to get it going. In the morning, I use a poker to push the hot embers to one side of the stove, shovel out the ash, push the glowing embers back in a pile in the center, stack wood on top of them....................and I'm back off to the races.

Forgot the link.
http://www.pinemountainbrands.com/pages/firestarters/26.php

I don't use firebrick -- no need. But I like my grate. You can get by without one as you describe, but with a grate you can clean out the ashes pretty much any time you want. There's no substitute for air circulation around your fire, and the absence of a grate means NO air from 180 degrees below the horizontal plane. (Is that scientific or what?!  )

I like split oak as well as the next fellow, but I take what I can get. Right now, I'm cutting off a neighbor's woods, working behind what might be the laziest, sloppiest logging crew of all time. These guys wanted LOGS, and nothing but LOGS. They didn't clear-cut, but selectively cut the largest trees, apparently with little regard for species. They clearly favored oak, but also took hickory, cottonwood, even hard maple. But as they went, they left HUGE tops, some of them 24" in diameter, and devastation in the form of damaged and/or killed trees at every (poorly planned) felling. Lots of collateral damage.

Happily, there is also a bountiful harvest of standing and downed deadwood, much of it red oak. This woods hadn't been logged for 25 years. I guess my point is that I take what I can get -- for free, too. 

The grate in my stove makes it much better for me trying to burn such a wide variety of hardwoods. While oak will lie in a bed and burn to marvelous coals on a flat surface, cottonwood won't, and hickory, as hot as it likes to burn, wants more air too. Maple is not a wood of choice for me, rather a wood that I wind up with. It too wants lots of air, especially if it's a bit on the green side.

Quote from: kramarat on September 07, 2012, 02:41:08 PM
Yeah. I don't buy anything without checking craigslist.

Heating with wood isn't a huge deal, but it does take time to perfect everything................from getting the wood, to how to start the fire, to how to burn the fire most efficiently and not blowing too hot, or smoking out out all your neighbors. None of it is hard, but there's a little science to it.

I try to get all my wood together for the following winter, in the spring, while it's still nice out. Got lazy a couple of years, and was out getting wood in June, in temperatures in the 90s. Not fun.

Looking back a handful of decades ago, I learned the hard way, on an old mini Franklin that had been overheated many times, it leaked, couldn't keep it low, and when a downdraft hit the stack, I'd get smoked out.
I finally got a real stove, that was 1978, and I still have it today, but we replaced it last year, it was just too small and if you didn't feed it every seven hours, you woke up cold.
Now we have a huge one, the Performer from Northern tool, has a built in fan, puts out 119,000 BTU, more than we need, but it's there if we ever need it.
I would have bought a different brand, but the Ca EPA only allows ones with, of all things, catalytic converters, which I promptly ripped out to open up the firebox.
Did I mention, I hate lib stupidity?

Quote from: tbone0106 on September 07, 2012, 04:12:22 PM
I don't use firebrick -- no need. But I like my grate. You can get by without one as you describe, but with a grate you can clean out the ashes pretty much any time you want. There's no substitute for air circulation around your fire, and the absence of a grate means NO air from 180 degrees below the horizontal plane. (Is that scientific or what?!  )

I like split oak as well as the next fellow, but I take what I can get. Right now, I'm cutting off a neighbor's woods, working behind what might be the laziest, sloppiest logging crew of all time. These guys wanted LOGS, and nothing but LOGS. They didn't clear-cut, but selectively cut the largest trees, apparently with little regard for species. They clearly favored oak, but also took hickory, cottonwood, even hard maple. But as they went, they left HUGE tops, some of them 24" in diameter, and devastation in the form of damaged and/or killed trees at every (poorly planned) felling. Lots of collateral damage.

Happily, there is also a bountiful harvest of standing and downed deadwood, much of it red oak. This woods hadn't been logged for 25 years. I guess my point is that I take what I can get -- for free, too. 

The grate in my stove makes it much better for me trying to burn such a wide variety of hardwoods. While oak will lie in a bed and burn to marvelous coals on a flat surface, cottonwood won't, and hickory, as hot as it likes to burn, wants more air too. Maple is not a wood of choice for me, rather a wood that I wind up with. It too wants lots of air, especially if it's a bit on the green side.

Your access to wood sounds like a little piece of heaven! I've got the same deal here. Almost nobody heats with wood. It's considered garbage. The tree guys have to pay to dump it. Needless to say, I don't try to talk people into heating with it. I've got my varieties separated. One to start, one to get it hot, and one to keep it warm all night. I love it!!

So Kari, this is a little forward, but I think you're among friends. What happened? Why can't you walk?

Just tell me if it's none of my business. My hip came apart in 8th grade................crutches until 10th.

My Mom died, (colon cancer), just when I was healing up.

A few years later, I fell 40 ft. Hit the ground so hard, I broke my back, and my knees broke my sturnum, (chest bone).

I'm fine now, but if you would like to share your story, please do. You are an awesome contributor to the forum. I don't know about anyone else, but I'm glad you are here. Hope I didn't offend.

Not offended at all.  It is a bit of a long story, so like you, I will abridge it.

In '99 my husband and I were rear-ended in a parking lot, that is where my good neuro says it probably started.  I was ambulanced to the hospital, told them my lower back hurt and they insisted it shouldn't, that it would only have hurt my neck.  So they didn't look st it.  After that, my sciatica started, then from there went to numbness in my toes.  That was when I started seeing a neuro, he did every test he could think of (I am sure my insurance loved him) the only thing he could find was slight bulging in one of my discs in my low back, but he didn't feel that could cause the numbness or should be of concern. He told me that numbness was not pain, and so I should be fine, he sent me home, that was in '01.

Fast forward 6 years, by now both feet are completely numb.  I can't lift much or my lower back goes into spasms.  I am sitting on my sofa wrapping gifts for Christmas when I felt a pop in my back and got a jolt of the worst pain I had ever had (and I had had two kids by then).  I eent to the ER, they gave me meds and set me up with a good neuro, he finally looked at my low back and confirmed all my issues stem from that bulging disc, he removed part of my vertebrae to make room for thte swollen spinal cord, and contained what he could of the disc fluid I had left.  The surgery worked, I got to lead a fairly normal life from from '07 to '11.

Dh was laid off in '10, times were really tough, we could not even afford a curriculum for the kids to start school.  I looked everywhere for a job in my field (psychology) or someplace with minimal lifting/bending, I looked for seven straight months,finally I realized if I wanted to get books for the kids, I needed a sure bet, time had run out.  I applied at Walmart and they hired me that day.  I worked in jewelry, so it shouldn't have been a big deal. I even signed a sheet that said I wouldn't have to lift more.
than 15 lbs.

One night we were really short staffed, and help was needed in infants, I helped lift a crib.  My back went pop again and I was down.  My neuro had warned me to be careful, that anything could put me in a wheelchair, I shouldn't have been lifting.  I filed workman's comp.  The doctor did not believe I was hurt, thought I was there for drugs, refused to take an ex-ray.  I was stuck, couldn't work, no insurance of my own,  and now not only is it a pre existing condition, it is a pre existing workers comp condition.  No one will touch my back with a ten foot poll.  If I could have surgery to repair the damage again, it would have to come out-of-pocket.

I manage to hobble around with a cane for short distances, but walking st all is excruciating, I have not had a pain free moment since re injuring it.  The pregnancy aggravates it, but that will be done soon.  So in a nutshell, I can't walk because my L4 and L5 are completely screwed.

Thank you for the kind words, I do feel like I am among friends here, and I am sorry that you have been through so much physical pain too, also sorry about your mom.   

Thanks for sharing Kari. I'm not going to bother saying I'm sorry or anything, nor should you for me.

Glad to have you around here.