Accidentally deleted. I guess you can't use boiling water or high pressure air high pressure water because the item is fragile particularly fragile when it's outside of the stove. I saw something in the instructions about not allowing Flames to enter the catalyst cuz that would damage it I guess it calls it firing.
..."Light Off Temperature: CO conversation (conversion?) in the Applied Ceramics catalyst begins at a very low temperature. Usually, a normal start up to produce a coal bed will produce more than sufficient temperatures
I was talking about BUCK INSERTS not wanting to confuse with BK instruction I always though all cats must be the same my Bad.
The information I quoted came from the Buck 91 manual. No problem. It is always best for the OP to perform his own research and seek confirmation to satisfy his own interest.
Have you checked for leaks around the door and glass? Your chimney is not very tall so i dont think you should be over drafting. It really sounds like a leak to me.
According to this manual on page 21, Ash is considered "fair" in "starting" and "good" for in coaling. Could it be the Ash is not fully started and then gives you that "ramp" in temperature?
Yeah, they pretty much are the same.
I think this is the root of the problem, one I worked to address with the 91...I couldn't cut the air enough so that I could slow down the rate of gassing, or even stall the cat if I had desired. This made for several cases of soiled undershorts, when the cat temp kept rising past 1800, even with the air cut as far as I could. One potential problem area is the ash pan gasket...you have to have a good seal there or you can see the coals glowing over the ash dump lid, signalling that you have air coming into the box there. The other tweak to be done is to get the air control plates to seal off more tightly when fully closed.
Right, that's exactly what would happen to me. I'd have the stove up to temp, bypass closed, cat temp looking good at 1200 or 1400...then later as more wood got to coaling and gassing, the cat temp would go higher than I wanted. It wouldn't happen right away after I closed the bypass. I don't think bark on the splits is a problem, it's just that we can't cut the air as much as we would like so that we would have total control over the burn and the cat temp. I don't think you'll hurt the stove by the cat temp going high, other than damaging the cat, as you said. I think that the "overfire" they are referring to in the manual would be with the air wide open, either with the bypass open or closed. With the bypass open, and a roaring fire in the box, you can glow the liner red and eventually damage it. You might also get the area around the bypass opening glowing red, which you wouldn't want. With a roaring blaze in the box and the bypass closed, you could possibly get flame impingement damage to the cat (flame directly hitting the face of the cat.) But I had some pretty lively flames going at times with the bypass closed...I could see by looking just above the heat shield that the flames weren't getting close to hitting the face of the cat so I think flame impingement damage would be hard to do with the 91.
I'd almost be tempted to come over there and have a shot at your 91, just to see if that final tweak would give us the level of control and the ease of operation that we've been seeking. But dammit man, that's a long haul from here over to where you are..like half a day's drive! 
Yeah, they pretty much are the same.
This is manual on the Buck website..a bit different from the one in the link you posted, VirginiaIron. Within the first several pages, it describes "Catalytic Light-Off." Yes, it does mention a time frame..."about 20 minutes," but the main point is that "The temperature in stove and gases entering combustor must be raised to between 700o F to 900o F for catalytic activity to be initiated." This is pretty much how I lit the cat in this stove, and it's what crater22 has been doing. Boiling wouldn't hurt the cat temp-wise, obviously, but might crack the ceramic if it got to bouncing around in vigorously boiling water. There are only a few cat manufacturers...Buck and BK get some of theirs from Applied Ceramics. I think Woodstock uses Clariant for the steel cats and BK may, as well.
https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/feab5fd5-59f3-4766-9ab0-8865ab9d825f/downloads/1blqg2t2v_885681.pdf
I think this is the root of the problem, one I worked to address with the 91...I couldn't cut the air enough so that I could slow down the rate of gassing, or even stall the cat if I had desired. This made for several cases of soiled undershorts, when the cat temp kept rising past 1800, even with the air cut as far as I could. One potential problem area is the ash pan gasket...you have to have a good seal there or you can see the coals glowing over the ash dump lid, signalling that you have air coming into the box there. The other tweak to be done is to get the air control plates to seal off more tightly when fully closed.
Right, that's exactly what would happen to me. I'd have the stove up to temp, bypass closed, cat temp looking good at 1200 or 1400...then later as more wood got to coaling and gassing, the cat temp would go higher than I wanted. It wouldn't happen right away after I closed the bypass. I don't think bark on the splits is a problem, it's just that we can't cut the air as much as we would like so that we would have total control over the burn and the cat temp. I don't think you'll hurt the stove by the cat temp going high, other than damaging the cat, as you said. I think that the "overfire" they are referring to in the manual would be with the air wide open, either with the bypass open or closed. With the bypass open, and a roaring fire in the box, you can glow the liner red and eventually damage it. You might also get the area around the bypass opening glowing red, which you wouldn't want. With a roaring blaze in the box and the bypass closed, you could possibly get flame impingement damage to the cat (flame directly hitting the face of the cat.) But I had some pretty lively flames going at times with the bypass closed...I could see by looking just above the heat shield that the flames weren't getting close to hitting the face of the cat so I think flame impingement damage would be hard to do with the 91.
Crater, I know exactly what you mean about "loving the big hunk of steel." Even when I was fighting to get more control of the air by doing various tweaks, I was still mighty fond of that sweet machine...620 lbs. of bad-arse stove.
It's a shame I never got to implement the final tweak, which I think would have given me total control; Bending the right slider rod up slightly, as I described above. That stove would be one sweet rig if a guy had total control. And I bet you would gain a few hours burn time in the bargain.
You do realize there are people who m aske a living helping people get their systems running right dont you? Have you had a pro out to help diagnose the issue?
