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8. Wood
Cooking & Heating
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Woodstove cooking does
not necessarily require expensive wood stove ranges. Above
left is a 1950's "trash burner" I salvaged. The trash
burner takes long but slender wood, and will burn branches
quite well. Above right is a Clipper Ship Captain's
cabin stove. I installed it on the hearth next to the
fireplace. While originally designed to burn coal or
charcoal, it will burn short pieces of wood or briquettes very
well. (The thick, heavy-duty stainless steel oval-to-round
adaptor was made by master craftsman Daniel York at
Dan's Rugged Pipe in Maine.) Neither stove above has
an oven, but can fry, steam and boil up very nice meals.
Both stoves are very efficient and provide a nice heat output
without being overpowering. |
By Miles
Stair
Ultimately,
we will all probably be cooking and heating with wood stoves.
But in any type of emergency scenario, it would be much safer
to cook and heat with kerosene stoves and heaters. Wood stoves
radiate a huge thermal plume visible to infrared detectors, so
anyone with night vision goggles, or anyone looking down from
a helicopter or airplane, would definitely be able to spot your
location in a flash. During daylight hours, the smoke is visible
for miles, sort of like a neon sign advertising "free hot
food here for the taking." No thanks. It is better to keep
out of sight, out of mind until the dust settles, and use kerosene
heaters and cookers.
Before a wood stove is
used, the chimney should be checked for leaks, as the last
thing you need or want is to have wood smoke in the house or
worse, a fire. DO NOT USE WOOD TO
TEST A STOVE AND CHIMNEY!!! It is very difficult
to put out a wood fire, and the object is to test the chimney with
smoke, not fire. Crumpled up sheets of newspaper burn
quickly but put out voluminous quantities of white smoke. If
there is a leak, it will be readily visible.
Cold air is dense and
heavy, and sometimes a column of cold air inside a stovepipe
will prevent lighter, warm air from raising up through the
chimney. This is a particular problem with fireplace inserts
which use the fireplace chimney as a flue, as the brick or masonry
chimney has a considerably greater volume than a stovepipe in
which to trap cold, dense air. This problem leads to a stove
smoking when first lit, and if a wood fire is started, a lot of
smelly wood smoke billows into the house. The stovepipe or
chimney can be warmed by burning a few crumpled sheets of
newspaper, then a wood fire can be built without
fear of smoking up the house.
Cooking with
wood stoves is pretty tricky. That was an art handed down from
mother to daughter for generations! The
instruction manual for
my Monarch Wood-Electric Range is quite detailed.
Regulating the temperature of a real, honest to goodness wood
cooking range is hard enough: regulating the cooking surface temperature
of a makeshift stove is much more difficult. Generally, the use
of trivets to elevate the cooking pots
and pans above the stove surface will allow more air circulation
and lower the temperature, and that is easier to regulate than
the temperature of the stove.
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Stanley Wood fired Kitchen Range. For
years this was the only heat we had for our downstairs,
about 1,000 square feet, in Southern New England near
Latitude 42 degrees. We bought this from
www.lehmans.com 20
years ago. The large oven is wonderful for roasting meat and
potatoes, but like all wood ranges, it takes a little
practice to bake bread in it. – FARMERIK in Connecticut.
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It is now
almost impossible to find real wood cook stoves, but so-called
"trash burners"
(photo above) can still be found and can be used for cooking. Some types of
fireplace insert stoves have a small cooking surface, but the
availability of them varies greatly by locality. Wood heating
stoves often have a small cooking surface, but since their primary
design function is to heat, indoor
cooking
in the summer is extremely uncomfortable. In that case, a
small wood cook stove located out of the living area, even in
a greenhouse, would be a much better idea. And you will
need non-electric tools and
equipment for cooking.
For those
on a budget, an extremely good
thermal
mass wood heating stove can be assembled at a very good price.
Once of the great advantages of this type of stove is that it
does not have to be assembled and installed until it is actually
needed. All you need are all the parts and pieces, the stove pipe,
etc, assemble it now just be sure you are not missing any important
items, then disassemble it and store in an outbuilding, shop,
whatever.
No matter
what type of wood stove you use, the proper
chimney
cleaning and
ash removal equipment
is required, and standard safety precautions must be enforced.
Most hardware stores carry 6" and 8" round chimney brushes and
segmented rods to clean the longest chimney.
Sept. 18, 2006. Note from
reader Sam: From bitter experience I can offer a couple of safety
hints: secure each joint with three small screws spaced 120"
apart, the next thing is use "T"s instead of elbows, This will
make cleaning out creosote and soot much easier and quicker.
Thanks for all the good information offered on your web sits.
Sam
[Sam is right, and this is
so obvious that I overlooked mentioning it. My stove pipes
are secured with three small sheet metal screws, and "T's" are far
better than 90 degree elbows...how do you remove creosote from an
elbow? Pre-drill all holes in stovepipe!]
Wood
stoves require lots of fuel --
better have plenty of
tools to handle it!
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Wood stoves,
of course, require wood fuel. What kind of wood? That depends
upon the locality. The ideal is a mixture of hard and soft woods.
Those to avoid would be dogwood, wild cherry, or any pithy soft
woods, as they do not store well for extended periods of time.
Virtually any fruit wood makes a great fire, and can also be used
in a smoke house for curing meats. And, of course, you
will need woodcutting tools.
The firewood
must be cut, split and
stored
properly. And that must be done prior to any anticipated use,
as the wood must be seasoned (not "green") and also
be dry to burn efficiently. This is all manual labor - hard work!
- but you should have at least a cord of wood ready for use at
any time. Always wear safety glasses when cutting and splitting
wood. The eyes you save could be your own.
You will need
the proper tools for this, of course, and they must be
on hand well before a time of emergency -- or you will not find
them at all. It is still possible to find crosscut saws in antique
and junque shops, as the files to sharpen them are available in
most hardware stores.
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Mauls are designed to split wood - axes are NOT. The best
mauls are designed for sledge hammer handles - not "axe eye"
type mauls. Fiberglass handles are exceptionally sturdy,
whereas wooden handled axe eye mauls break with amazing ease
and regularity. The maul on the left has an 8 pound
head, while the maul on the right has a 6 pound head.
See more information on cutting tools in
"Woodcutting."
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Even though
a maul has one flat side, DO NOT use it to drive wedges to split
chunks of wood. Mauls are tempered to hold an edge, and are not
designed for steel-to-steel contact. The steel splinters can put
out eyes dozens of feet away! Sledgehammers are tempered and annealed
for steel-to-steel contact, and are the proper tool to use for
driving wedges. There is a good reason why different tools are
used for different purposes!
For
those who want more information, there is an Internet forum
devoted to wood stove use.
http://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/
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