2020-21 Blaze King Performance Thread (Everything BK)

[Dustin]

Do it right or don’t do it at all.

someone paid someone else a lot more money than our stove costs to design the thing. If they say it needs an 8 inch flue, and 8 inch flue it gets. I have a tall chimney and mine runs great in an 8 inch flue. No way I would even try to run this thing on something smaller. It’s not designed or engineered for that.

It’s like the guy that tells you it’s okay to run a 20 amp circuit on 14 gauge wire. Yeah “they” “say” you should use 12/2 but what do they know?

I’ll trust blaze king on this one.

This is the way.

 

[Diabel]

How do you guys find the paint on the BKs (excluding enamel). My Princess only gets used part time, but man the paint job is weak. I admit that i can only compare it to my VC stove which is cast and i painted 4 years ago and the stove gets double the amount of usage. The ash lip on my Princess got poked with the poker few times (lightly) the paint came right off and i can peel it off some more with my fingernail. Last weekend i dried some wild mushrooms in a flat aluminum tray on top of the stove. My wife shifted the tray couple of times lightly (the tray is supper light)....scratches everywhere!
Is there a way to order some touchup paint from BK via dealer?
It is not a big deal but at this rate i will be repainting the stove in couple of years. I will make sure to be a bit more generous with the spraying than the manufacturer....

 

[kennyp2339]

@Diabel - stove bright black paint. I need to touch my princess up next spring, poor stove has some scratches and faded paint, more or less my fault, I would take the shop vac and cleaning the stove out and lightly clean the stove top with the plastic nozzle, made a lot of scratches with that thing lol.

 

[stoveliker]

How do you guys find the paint on the BKs (excluding enamel). My Princess only gets used part time, but man the paint job is weak. I admit that i can only compare it to my VC stove which is cast and i painted 4 years ago and the stove gets double the amount of usage. The ash lip on my Princess got poked with the poker few times (lightly) the paint came right off and i can peel it off some more with my fingernail. Last weekend i dried some wild mushrooms in a flat aluminum tray on top of the stove. My wife shifted the tray couple of times lightly (the tray is supper light)....scratches everywhere!
Is there a way to order some touchup paint from BK via dealer?
It is not a big deal but at this rate i will be repainting the stove in couple of years. I will make sure to be a bit more generous with the spraying than the manufacturer....

I have to agree here; when I opened the door on the new Chinook I have, I opened it all the way. I did not bang it, but just all the way. The door then touches the part of the side assembly that protrudes beyond the plane of the (closed) door. I immediately had exposed metal on the door where the door touched the side.

I also have some (faint) scratches on the top from a vacuum cleaner. Maybe I was not smart there, but still. I'm being very careful with my ecofan - as in, never move the thing...

 

[Highbeam]

BK paint quality is definitely no better than the rest of the companies doing it. I had some missed spots too but you had to look up from under to see them. Welds are good, paint is not as good. I also caused some top scratches by wiping dust off of the cold stove and my wedding ring dragged a bit.

New Bk stoves have a lot of metallic flake in the paint. They switched paint in the last 5 years. So be prepared to paint the whole panel.

 

[begreen]

@Diabel - stove bright black paint. I need to touch my princess up next spring, poor stove has some scratches and faded paint, more or less my fault, I would take the shop vac and cleaning the stove out and lightly clean the stove top with the plastic nozzle, made a lot of scratches with that thing lol.

I may be wrong, but I thought BK used different paint.

2019-20 Blaze King Performance Thread Part 1 (Everything BK)

Take one of your pieces of wood that is split, then split it again and stick your moisture meter in the fresh face in 3 spots (see below) Link Removed [/QUOTE] Booyaaa. Please do this on a random set of splits that are up to room temperature (70f or near it) and advise the group what you are...

www.hearth.com

 

[jetsam]

If you flip the cat lever and the flames go out the cat is plugged.

My BK does have a ledge behind the cat and chimney sweepings do fall down there.

I'd first try cleaning the cat (pull the flame guard and brush the surface of the cat with a soft paintbrush, then shop shopvac it). In my stove, I can reach up and feel the area behind the cat. See if you can get your vac hose up there.

If you have a freestanding stove, you can also just take the pipe off the top and look in.

If not, you can pull the cat and clean it, but you need to regasket it when you put it back.

[Edit: And that's what happens when you don't notice that you are looking at page 16 of a 25 page thread...]

 

[Brentwood]

I suspect you will be wanting all eight inches of chimney diameter working for you during the bake down phase. Starting from a cold stove, once the combustor reaches the active zone you'll want to engage the combustor and run the throttle wide open for 30 minutes.

This is what I think of as the "bake down" phase. As the fuel in there gets hotter and hotter you will be baking the last of the moisture out of the cordwood, literally _baking_ the fuel not on fire yet _down_ to zero moisture content.

For this phase you need a lot of heat in the chimney to lift the weight of all that water, and you want the chimney hot all the way up so you are ejecting water vapor, not having a bunch of condensate form on the inner walls of your chimney.

M2c

Thanks, Poindexter. I like this kind of reply. You're talking about principles, not just reciting rules. I like that. I've seen a lot of things done that people were sure couldn't be done. Some of those people never took the time to question the conventional wisdom or to contemplate the ultimate goal of whatever it was they were doing.

If I could speculate a bit...

If one of the purposes of the chimney is to carry water from the wood out into the atmosphere without a lot of condensation in the chimney, is a bigger chimney necessarily better suited for the job than a smaller one?

What if, instead of 6" vs. 8", we imagined 2" vs. 12"? Which one would expel water better?

If the two chimneys have identical layout and rise, and if they are being fed by identical stoves burning the same quantity of wood at the same temperature, then they should have identical pressure, right? (Please ignore for now the fact that the stove won't be able to "breathe" anywhere near as well with the 2" chimney, and so won't be able to burn the same fire as the one with the bigger chimney.) The bigger one just pulls a greater volume of air at the same velocity, right? This isn't a rhetorical question. My knowledge of physics comes almost entirely from experience rather than from formal training.

Intuitively, I'm gonna say that, all else being the same, the bigger chimney will run cooler than the smaller one, and will therefore be more likely to have condensation. But, maybe, since the bigger chimney is allowing the stove in "inhale" more air, the humidity of the exhaust is lower.

I will also say that it seems likely that the stove hooked up to the chimney of a size and type *that its designers specified* is more likely to run optimally.

I realize that the engineers who designed my stove probably know a lot of things that I don't know. I haven't even seen a stove like this run, so I'm sure I have something to learn. Part of my willingness to cut corners here is the instant vs. delayed gratification. I'd hate having to make a place in my garage for that Blaze King and then have to dig it out next summer. I'd rather put it in my living room and start playing with it now, but I really would rather wait until summer to climb up on my roof.

But this is probably all academic. I am about this far from ordering the chimney and everything else I need for an 8" install. Everything's in the shopping cart. It'll be a fun install. And I won't fall off the roof. I hope.

Thanks for the helpful reply.

Brent

 

[JKanor]

Quick opinion please... I pulled my cat to do the vinegar bath until Midwest gets more ceramics in. The front of it looks good but I see some peeling at the back. Is the flaking on the back center delamination? I tried to get a decent pic of them.
Hoping the bath buys me a month or so until I could get another, otherwise I'll be getting a steel one.

 

[Hobbler]

I just picked up a lightly used Blaze King stove. It's the King model, KE1107. I've read the manual, and I know the manufacturer's recommendations. This is my first post, but I've read a lot of the posts here over the last year or two, as I've thought about upgrading my stove.

I've been running a Fisher Papa Bear as my main source of heat for 30 years. The exhaust exits from the back in a 90-degree elbow. There is five feet of single wall 6" stove pipe directly above the stove, and 15 feet of Class A double-wall pipe above that, all vertical. I bought the Blaze King with the idea of storing it until next winter, and then replacing the current 6" pipe with 8" next summer, along with some other remodeling projects in the stove room, but I'm tempted to put an 8" x 6" reducer on the Blaze King and start using it this winter.

I can imagine that it's possible that the 6" chimney won't make enough draft to make the Blaze King work properly. I haven't measured my draft, and I don't have experience with other stoves and chimneys, so I can't compare it to anything, but most of the time, I can fire up my stove from a cold start and get the single-wall pipe to 500 F. in a few minutes, so I think my draft is good.

I realize the difficulty of recommending to someone you don't know to do something not approved by the manufacturer, but I'm going to ask because it's inevitable that someone will know something I don't. What am I not considering? What dangers might I learn about the hard way? What don't I know that I ought to know?

Thanks!

Brent
Odin MN

I have an 8”x8” tile flue.
I had a stove with an 8” round pipe attached there since 85, but needed to replace it. I wanted a King KE40. My installer said, hold on a sec, and he explained the issue. He said he’d call BK to double check and we both looked at each other. BK said no.

I said check on the Green Mountain 80. They said NP.
I said, thats an easy choice.

I got the princess.

 

[Highbeam]

Quick opinion please... I pulled my cat to do the vinegar bath until Midwest gets more ceramics in. The front of it looks good but I see some peeling at the back. Is the flaking on the back center delamination? I tried to get a decent pic of them.
Hoping the bath buys me a month or so until I could get another, otherwise I'll be getting a steel one.

Photos are great. I’ve had some peeling like that before but not quite as bad and while it can’t be good, the cat provided the expected 10-12k hours. Resist the urge to peel it off manually. Just leave it be if you’re going to boil and reinstall.

The only time the vinegar boil makes sense is in your current situation where you can’t get a new one for a month or two. Kind of no other choice.

 

[BKVP]

@Diabel - stove bright black paint. I need to touch my princess up next spring, poor stove has some scratches and faded paint, more or less my fault, I would take the shop vac and cleaning the stove out and lightly clean the stove top with the plastic nozzle, made a lot of scratches with that thing lol.

We do not use StoveBright paint. A dealer can order a can of our paint and have drop shipped to your home. The paint we use comes from Germany.

 

[JKanor]

Photos are great. I’ve had some peeling like that before but not quite as bad and while it can’t be good, the cat provided the expected 10-12k hours. Resist the urge to peel it off manually. Just leave it be if you’re going to boil and reinstall.

The only time the vinegar boil makes sense is in your current situation where you can’t get a new one for a month or two. Kind of no other choice.

Thank you for all your quick responses. I dont mind doing research myself but quick answers like you fire out are worth their weight in gold for us OCD people.

 

[Nealm66]

Can this paint be sprayed airless or hvlp? If hvlp , what to thin?

 

[Nealm66]

Thanks, Poindexter. I like this kind of reply. You're talking about principles, not just reciting rules. I like that. I've seen a lot of things done that people were sure couldn't be done. Some of those people never took the time to question the conventional wisdom or to contemplate the ultimate goal of whatever it was they were doing.

If I could speculate a bit...

If one of the purposes of the chimney is to carry water from the wood out into the atmosphere without a lot of condensation in the chimney, is a bigger chimney necessarily better suited for the job than a smaller one?

What if, instead of 6" vs. 8", we imagined 2" vs. 12"? Which one would expel water better?

If the two chimneys have identical layout and rise, and if they are being fed by identical stoves burning the same quantity of wood at the same temperature, then they should have identical pressure, right? (Please ignore for now the fact that the stove won't be able to "breathe" anywhere near as well with the 2" chimney, and so won't be able to burn the same fire as the one with the bigger chimney.) The bigger one just pulls a greater volume of air at the same velocity, right? This isn't a rhetorical question. My knowledge of physics comes almost entirely from experience rather than from formal training.

Intuitively, I'm gonna say that, all else being the same, the bigger chimney will run cooler than the smaller one, and will therefore be more likely to have condensation. But, maybe, since the bigger chimney is allowing the stove in "inhale" more air, the humidity of the exhaust is lower.

I will also say that it seems likely that the stove hooked up to the chimney of a size and type *that its designers specified* is more likely to run optimally.

I realize that the engineers who designed my stove probably know a lot of things that I don't know. I haven't even seen a stove like this run, so I'm sure I have something to learn. Part of my willingness to cut corners here is the instant vs. delayed gratification. I'd hate having to make a place in my garage for that Blaze King and then have to dig it out next summer. I'd rather put it in my living room and start playing with it now, but I really would rather wait until summer to climb up on my roof.

But this is probably all academic. I am about this far from ordering the chimney and everything else I need for an 8" install. Everything's in the shopping cart. It'll be a fun install. And I won't fall off the roof. I hope.

Thanks for the helpful reply.

Brent

Might as well do it right the first time, might as well plan for everything to be way more of a pita than it should be while your at it. Least that’s my experience

 

[Highbeam]

Can this paint be sprayed airless or hvlp? If hvlp , what to thin?

The new paint has a lot of flake. I’m sure it’s easier and cheaper to acquire cans and shake well. High heat, low gloss, paint is very easy to spray from a can.

 

[stoveliker]

Thanks, Poindexter. I like this kind of reply. You're talking about principles, not just reciting rules. I like that. I've seen a lot of things done that people were sure couldn't be done. Some of those people never took the time to question the conventional wisdom or to contemplate the ultimate goal of whatever it was they were doing.

If I could speculate a bit...

If one of the purposes of the chimney is to carry water from the wood out into the atmosphere without a lot of condensation in the chimney, is a bigger chimney necessarily better suited for the job than a smaller one?

What if, instead of 6" vs. 8", we imagined 2" vs. 12"? Which one would expel water better?

If the two chimneys have identical layout and rise, and if they are being fed by identical stoves burning the same quantity of wood at the same temperature, then they should have identical pressure, right? (Please ignore for now the fact that the stove won't be able to "breathe" anywhere near as well with the 2" chimney, and so won't be able to burn the same fire as the one with the bigger chimney.) The bigger one just pulls a greater volume of air at the same velocity, right? This isn't a rhetorical question. My knowledge of physics comes almost entirely from experience rather than from formal training.

Intuitively, I'm gonna say that, all else being the same, the bigger chimney will run cooler than the smaller one, and will therefore be more likely to have condensation. But, maybe, since the bigger chimney is allowing the stove in "inhale" more air, the humidity of the exhaust is lower.

I will also say that it seems likely that the stove hooked up to the chimney of a size and type *that its designers specified* is more likely to run optimally.

I realize that the engineers who designed my stove probably know a lot of things that I don't know. I haven't even seen a stove like this run, so I'm sure I have something to learn. Part of my willingness to cut corners here is the instant vs. delayed gratification. I'd hate having to make a place in my garage for that Blaze King and then have to dig it out next summer. I'd rather put it in my living room and start playing with it now, but I really would rather wait until summer to climb up on my roof.

But this is probably all academic. I am about this far from ordering the chimney and everything else I need for an 8" install. Everything's in the shopping cart. It'll be a fun install. And I won't fall off the roof. I hope.

Thanks for the helpful reply.

Brent

I hope you go with the 8" flue and chimney. Why? Because indeed, regardless of how much we know, how much experience we have, we were not there when the design decisions were made that filtered thru to the installation requirements. Experience can in general *not* be extrapolated from one case to a different, next case. Experience is knowing how that one case goes that you experienced. It does not tell you how the next case will go, when circumstances, boundary conditions, and the starting point are different.

Reasoning from experience when things can simply be calculated (given *all* and *the correct* data), is bound to get to the "hold my beer and watch this" stories.

I remember questioning my dad when I was a teenager that thought he knew physics (I did become a physicist in the end). But my dad was an airline pilot, after having flown fighter jets in the airforce for 15 years. Questioning "but why...?!" in my teenage years thinking I knew better (an affliction that may not have disappeared from my personality...), often resulted in him writing down a phone number, with the remark: because people thought about it, calculated it, and determined (in the flying business through sweat, tears, AND blood!) that this is the way to go, and if you don't believe me, here's the phone number of the company (Boeing, in that case).

I note that the person behind that phone number has already given the answer here - without you having to actually dial the number. Talking about service

'nuf said.
I'll step down from my preaching stool now, with apologies if this offended people. (For context: I get frustrated when I see people on their phone in planes, texting and calling, i.e. on the network, when everyone was told to put that *#($( thing in airplane mode. Clearly the idea is "it's gone well the past (thousands?) of times... But, clearly that rule was made because there might be a case when it does actually have an effect. And no one wants to be there when that happens...
Anyway, I promised to step down from this preaching...)

I do hope you get to enjoy a good working and safe stove. It's a fantastic experience.

 

[Dustin]

Overthinking OCD wood burner post inbound....

When should I load?

I work swing shift. The wood stove is our primary heat source here. I can achieve 24 hour load cycles with the KE40. I’m trying to manage not overheating the house as well as keeping the wife happy.

I struggle between two different theories.

When I reload, I always let the stove burn on high for about a half hour. When I do this, she really cranks out the heat. So, loading before work puts the hot fire right in the early afternoon. I worry about overheating the house while doing this.

loading when I get home requires staying up longer.... but the hottest fire is around midnight or so.

anyone else struggled with this really simple question? Am I crazy?

 

[MacinJosh]

Hmm, so my concern wasn’t correct. I’m going to give a call and see if too late and what the actual price difference and if the extension brackets will work for 8” on my overhang. Should open at 10. Not sure I really need the crazy long burn times but if it doesn’t effect the creosote issue wth

This is exactly why I went with the King over the Princess. I wanted the biggest “fuel tank” there was. Longer burns, less fussing. Works like a charm and my first year of burning had almost no creo. So much in fact my sweep told me if I keep burning seasoned wood like this, he only needs to come every other year.

 

[moresnow]

Overthinking OCD wood burner post inbound....

When should I load?

I work swing shift. The wood stove is our primary heat source here. I can achieve 24 hour load cycles with the KE40. I’m trying to manage not overheating the house as well as keeping the wife happy.

I struggle between two different theories.

When I reload, I always let the stove burn on high for about a half hour. When I do this, she really cranks out the heat. So, loading before work puts the hot fire right in the early afternoon. I worry about overheating the house while doing this.

loading when I get home requires staying up longer.... but the hottest fire is around midnight or so.

anyone else struggled with this really simple question? Am I crazy?

I'd like to say load at midnight. However. I'd never be able to stay up long enough!

 

[Nealm66]

This is exactly why I went with the King over the Princess. I wanted the biggest “fuel tank” there was. Longer burns, less fussing. Works like a charm and my first year of burning had almost no creo. So much in fact my sweep told me if I keep burning seasoned wood like this, he only needs to come every other year.

Installer is coming out today, wife is going to meet him to make sure everything will work.I’ll have here ask about the king but it likely add 6 more weeks and could cause global devastation in the supply chain. I also have a feeling if bkvp says it’s a nope, it’s probably a well placed nope.

 

[Nealm66]

Fan question, I don’t need an eco fan but I’m definitely going to buy one because I think they are cool. I didn’t realize there were so many options. Some are for low heat etc. which one would work best for the princess? I was looking at Home Depot website but where is the best place to purchase?

 

[BKVP]

Installer is coming out today, wife is going to meet him to make sure everything will work.I’ll have here ask about the king but it likely add 6 more weeks and could cause global devastation in the supply chain. I also have a feeling if bkvp says it’s a nope, it’s probably a well placed nope.

NOPE

 

[BKVP]

Fan question, I don’t need an eco fan but I’m definitely going to buy one because I think they are cool. I didn’t realize there were so many options. Some are for low heat etc. which one would work best for the princess? I was looking at Home Depot website but where is the best place to purchase?

So the Eco fan is cool but not a s cool as the Sterling!

Amazon product ASIN B00R89OIAY

 

[Nealm66]

NOPE

Lol, dang that’s harsh! That fan looks awesome though