Fred, if you come for some wood you will also leave with some Super Cedars as I have some samples for you.
How do you start your fires???
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I am still brain storming on getting a large enough trailer BackWoods and thanks for thinking about me. I just brought home last face cord of oak from my Wood Buddies. They have an AWESOME product. They give me more than a face cord of nice, sized, split oak. I am paying $50 bucks per face cord which I think is a fair price for quality oak.
By next week or the following my Ash man is bringing over 6 face cord and if I like what He brings I am having an additional 6 face cord delivered.
Fredo
By next week or the following my Ash man is bringing over 6 face cord and if I like what He brings I am having an additional 6 face cord delivered.
Fredo
One split in front, one in back, four or five rolled/wadded lengthwise sheets of newsprint at the bottom in between, three or four scraps from my woodworking, small splits on top, one full sheet loosely wadded newsprint placed on top as a sacrifice to the flue draft gods, and one match. Almost never fails.
Just discovered that if you place the largest splits at the bottom and smaller ones on top, the large splits will get buried underneath and not burn completely, causing large coal buildup in the morning.
Fredo said:
Super Cedar is a product available for sale that as far as I can tell uses cedar shavings and highly refined paraffin in these magical little hockey pucks that make starting a fire wicked easy . . . heck, most folks only use a quarter of one hockey puck to get their fire going.
If you want to try a free sample Fredo stay posted . . . typically sometime in the Fall Thomas (the owner and a member here) gives out two free samples to anyone who e-mails him . . . well anyone that hasn't used the Super Cedars.
No need to stick around until fall Jake. There are a couple places you might find a super cedar or two. One is at my place so if you'd like to pay a visit, come on over. Maine is not that far. Fredo may also be coming for a visit and he also will walk away with some samples. If not, then [email protected] just might do the trick. If all else fails, going to the super cedar site you can click on Contact Us and fill in name and address and asking for a sample. Who knows, Thomas might send a couple.
Hey Jake and Backwoods,
Always great to hear from you both and now that I know what SuperCedar is I am going to try and get a hold of some.
As I was traveling home today a Wood Burning Store had a HUGE stack of pallets in front of their store. I know it was for anyone to pick up but with my back issue I am going absolutely CRAZY.
If I was healthy I would of picked these pallets up in a heart beat but I can not lift anything at the moment, Arhh!
Take care my friends...
Fredo
Always great to hear from you both and now that I know what SuperCedar is I am going to try and get a hold of some.
As I was traveling home today a Wood Burning Store had a HUGE stack of pallets in front of their store. I know it was for anyone to pick up but with my back issue I am going absolutely CRAZY.
If I was healthy I would of picked these pallets up in a heart beat but I can not lift anything at the moment, Arhh!
Take care my friends...
Fredo
Thanks Thomas. For some reason I had a problem recalling your email address. But on the web site there is also a way of contacting you too.
I build a little "lincoln log" house with 4 small splits (2 N-S, 2 E-W), 1/4 Super Cedar in front, 1/4 Super Cedar in the back. Has worked every time so far.
I don't use kindling anymore. 1/2 puck of Super Cedar and big splits right over it. Of course, it's all that EVIL pine. Super dry and takes off nicely.
In the spring I buy a box of Duraflame firelogs when they go on clearance. Cut them into 1" wide pieces and store for next Fall.
Toss in some kindling any which way and 1-2 Duraflame pieces, light it and in 30 minutes or so I have a roaring fire.
Right now my kindling consists mainly of cut-up sections of my old garage door that I replaced last year.
Toss in some kindling any which way and 1-2 Duraflame pieces, light it and in 30 minutes or so I have a roaring fire.
Right now my kindling consists mainly of cut-up sections of my old garage door that I replaced last year.
Wads of newspaper. A crib of fine cut pine kindlin', a sequence of small to larger oak/walnut, a few pieces of newspaper on top, a match and Bob's your Uncle. I've never used accelerants.
I am another Super Cedar user. I also use about two fistfuls of kindling - Red Cedar, Pine, or Aspen usually, split into very thin pieces. I use 1/4 or less supercedar, a whole bunch of kindling not just on top but also between the larger splits, and I crack the door 1/2 inch to get max draft. I also try to use small or medium splits and avoid the oak and Black locust, which seem to start slower than softer woods.
Fredo said:
Top down fire . . . I put a few large to medium splits at the base . . . medium to small splits on top . . . a few pieces of kindling and a quarter Super Cedar on top or go old school and ball up some newspaper. Air control open all the way . . . side door ajar . . . light match.
I usually use fire-turds.
I bought a case of duraflame wax/sawdust logs years ago. On a summer day, I leave one in the sun, and then chop it up with an ice breaker. 'Don't use much per light: -- maybe enough to roll up to the size of a large marble, and no more than a golf ball. Then I roll'em length-wise, until they look just like, well... you know. With the tapered end, they light easily and fit between splits near the top of the firebox for top-down starts. One and a half dura-flames easily last a burning season.
My wife thinks they look revolting, but they smell fine.
Regards,
I bought a case of duraflame wax/sawdust logs years ago. On a summer day, I leave one in the sun, and then chop it up with an ice breaker. 'Don't use much per light: -- maybe enough to roll up to the size of a large marble, and no more than a golf ball. Then I roll'em length-wise, until they look just like, well... you know. With the tapered end, they light easily and fit between splits near the top of the firebox for top-down starts. One and a half dura-flames easily last a burning season.
My wife thinks they look revolting, but they smell fine.
Regards,
Jackfre said:
Back in the day, I never would have used accelerants either. I'm a pretty cautious type. Used to go with newspaper. Worked my way through various waxy starter types. The waxy ones can be problematic. A forum member in Texas suggested kerosene soaked pine cones, since I had been fiddling with melting old candle stubs and dipping pine cones in that. Very labor intensive. I'm sure glad I tried his method. Works great!
Kerosene is about the only accelerant that is even remotely safe IMO. I've logged a lot of hours with this method now, and am fully satisfied they are 'adequately' safe, the way I am using them. Very easy to prepare them. Very, very effective starters, virtually failure proof. Work every time for me, and they are so quick and easy to prepare. You leave a few soaking in a larger size coffee can until needed. Shake off excess, build fire over them. Pine cones are really not all that porous, so you're lighting off only a very small volume of fuel, but what a difference it makes in the initial startup. A plain pine cone burns miserably, by contrast.
I would never use other accelerants such as charcoal lighter, paint thinners, alcohol, gasoline (shudder). Only kerosene has a slow enough flame spread to be usable this way. It's nowhere near as volatile and explosive as the others. I would not use it in a catalyst type EPA stove, however- might ruin that expensive cat.
I suppose you could get yourself in trouble even with kerosene if you were really careless about it. Yes, there are risks. In the event of a house fire, it could turn on you and decrease escape time. OTOH a big stash of any of the waxy products could also take off pretty strong in a house fire. You pays your money and you takes your choice.
And that's the thing- pine cones laying on the ground: free. Y2K kerosene, multiple gallons of it, useless for much anything else, other than auto parts washing: free! Works for me. Works well.
BTW paraffin (wax) is an accelerant. It's just got still lower flame spread and volatility.
Just received my free sample of Super Cedars this week. Until this point I've tried most all of the firestarter on the market. These things are by far the best. One quarter in front of air intake with kindling and small splitts. Three fires thus far and each time I've had a roaring fire within 5 minutes. Fatwood wood take forever just to get it lit and it is slow to take off. Will be ordering some of these this weekend. Looks like I'm going to have to take a trip to the recycle/dump to get rid of the 5 bags of newspaper laying on my porch!
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