After a few days of trial and error, I am beginning to understand my new hearthstone "heritage".
I now have it igniting fairly quickly with kiln dried wood, upon which I then place 18 month wood with no problem.
Once it is going strong (about 2 hours), I can burn a mix of 18 month and 6 month wood with little or no visible smoke from the stack.
The key to the entire effort was to overcome the fear of over-firing. The stove's user manual is largely devoted to listing in detail all the terrible things that can happen if the stove is over-fired. As a result, I was in terror all the time. I now believe that the amount of air that can get into the stove is limited in such a way that over-firing cannot happen even if I loosely fill the entire firebox.
Next, I should apologize for the inexcusable poor attitude that I displayed to friendly people who were merely trying to help. After many years of enjoying a self sufficient wood heating lifestyle, I was simply in terror that all of that was going to end (with 7 cords going to waste in my back yard). That is an explanation, not an excuse. At my age, I should have know better. This is not a world where that many people take the time to help each other, and I should have had the maturity to set aside my frustration which, after all, had nothing to do with any of you.
Thank you for your helpful suggestions, and I am truly sorry that I did not have the grace to keep personal frustration where it belongs, inside me.
By the way, my wife loves the new stove. She loves how it looks, she loves how the fire looks in it, and she loves that ash cleanup is so much less messy. I cannot say that any of these things really matter to me, but making her happy makes it all worth it. It may take a few months for me to forget the $5000 cost (my 8 inch pipe flue had to go along with the old Jotul combifire 4 that fed it), but I am once again looking forward to a cozy winter season of "the good labor". The "heritage" produces much less heat than I am used to, but it is so easy to keep it alight pretty much all the time, I can compensate for lower heat output by having longer duration.
Thanks again,
A repentant and (mostly) happy fellow wood burner.
