Holy Smoke

[csmfrie]

This weekend I experimented with adding additional fuel to the stove as it (the fuel quantity) burned down. What surprised me was how extremely hard it is to add fuel after the original fuel goes to the charcoal burning stage. Not hard to add, just hard to re-ignite and for the stove to function properly. (And yes, I only added small amounts of additional fuel; perhaps a couple Tablespoons of wood chips in volume.) One would think with red hot coals and a forced airflow that the added fuel would burst into flame. No such thing, just copious amounts of smoke. Even my dogs were choking. I never did get flame - I always had to power off the fan, add a little more fuel to get the level completely up off the coals, squirt on some starting gel and ignite the gel, essentially restarting the whole process.

[admin]

That is an interesting result. One thing I've found with these stoves is that if the flame is snuffed out or extinguished and are smoking profusely, that you have to 're-ignite' the smoke. The smoke has the combustible gasses mixed in with it, hydrogen, and carbon monoxide mixed in with the tar which is the smoke particles.

If you do the experiment again I bet you could take a match to the smoke and get the flames going again. But you probably need to find a happy medium, adding enough fuel to generate sufficient smoke to sustain combustion once relit and flaming again.

[csmfrie]

During my initial experimentation, I did try re-igniting the smoke but could not. In that case I was using a common Scripto BBQ lighter (the long, 6-inch type). The lighter's flame was, in every attempt, extinguished and therefore never re-ignited the gases.

I experimented some more this past weekend. I still could not re-ignite the smoke with a lighter. Next I tried kitchen matches. Normally it took about four matches (four attempts) before the gases re-ignited. It appeared it had more to do with a certain amount of time that needed to pass before the smoke would re-ignite. Perhaps the newly added wood chips needed to achieve a certain temperature to produce the proper conditions. At any rate, the matches did work.

Next I tried igniting the smoke with a propane torch (thank you for the idea, dumpf). I noticed the same time delay that I had with the matches before I could re-ignite the smoke. Sure, the torch did produce some flames rather soon but before the smoke would maintain flame on its own, that same amount of time needed to pass. Fascinating.

So if you do not have a propane torch handy and you need to conserve your supply of matches then your best bet is to add your additional fuel when you still have a healthy flame. You need to add it in small amounts and you need to let a short period of time pass before you add the next (small) batch of wood.

One day my XL stove and I will understand each other. In the meantime, I am having fun learning.