Cleaning stove glass with abrasives

In regards to cleaning the glass, I can't help you. I have never come across any glass that couldn't be cleaned with wet paper towel and ash. I've bought used stoves with the glass coated with a thick, shiny black layer of creosote and the paper towel with ash worked it clean. Took a while, but it worked.

 

What happens if I install the glass with the coating to the inside?

 

+1
They advertise that exact thing at Home Despot.
It seems to leave a light invisible coating of something that resists further smoke buildup. Good stuff.

 

The IR shield will slowly deteriorate. IR Radiation has some detrimental effects on eyes & skin. I am not sure there is that much radiation from a wood stove at normal viewing distances or all manufacturers would add the shield. This is probably something to ask Jotul.

KaptJaq

 

If your glass is hazy and you can't clean it with ashes or stove glass cleaner, try this it works very well.
My glass has a big hazy spot that I could not remove, tried ashes, Rutland cleaner, plastic polish, nothing worked.

I ordered a 3" backing plate, polishing discs for a right angle grinder, and some cerium oxide glass polish and went to work.
As you can see from the before and after pics the glass now looks like new.

The polishing does take some time so you must be patient. I found it best to polish for 5 or 10 min
take a break and let the glass cool down (it gets hot form the friction) and then polish some more.

It is not necessary to remove glass from the door, some masking tape will make clean up easier.

 

Thanks Wes. I've already started with the abrasion process, I guess at this point I have nothing to lose. One of the nice things about this Jotul (602) is that the glass comes out easy; just a couple of screws to loosen.

How long in total did it take you?

*edit* I remember that some toothpastes contain cerium oxide. I might give this a try.

 

Probably took about an hour or so, do it a little at a time.
Picked up the supplies from Ebay I think it was.

 

The Rutland glass cleaner works pretty well. If the glass is really dirty, remove the door from the hinges and lay it on a work bench etc so it is horizontal. Spray the glass with Purple Power, full strength. I don't know what's in that stuff, but it annihilates creosote and glass buildup.

 

The ir shield isn't for safety, as the ir from a woodstove is less than a ir heat lamp in your bathroom. It is there to reflect the ir back into the firebox to keep the fire burning. You can eek out a little more performance out of your stove by applying a ir coating to the interior as well.

 

The flat nylon pads made for scrubbing non-stick cookware work incredibly well. If your glass is cool you can wet them and wring them dry, rather than using dry. Makes my glass spotless. I don't have a problem with black stuff on the glass...just fly ash...so don't know how well it does with black stuff. But well worth a try.

 

Steel wool can be used when the glass is hot or cold with no need for water or cleaner of any kind.

 

I guess that is good for free-standing stoves where the heat radiates via the cast iron or steel. On an insert most of the radiant heat is via the viewing window. Why reduce that? Another question for Jotul I guess...

KaptJaq

 

IR radiation is just one method of heat transfer. Conduction and Convection are a much larger percentage of the total heat produced by a fire.

Is a secondary type stove you are ideally looking to keep temps above 1100F in some portion of the stove to burn all of the smoke when you introduce your secondary air. One way to keep the temps up is to use insulating firebrick or insulated baffles on the top of your stove(many manufacturers already do this). You can also apply a IR reflective coating to these surfaces as I have. I have made other modifications to my stove to get the performance up just a touch more. We aren't talking leaps and bounds, but it is enough in my opinion that it is worth it for sure. I have extended my burn times enough to get a solid 12 hrs out of a load, up from 10hrs, and increased the amount of time during a firing cycle I am in secondary burn during. This has allowed me to reduce the amount of wood that I burn, and also has made it so that I produce less smoke which is a good think in my opinion.

 

How does the glass get this way? We have stoves that are 20 years old that don't have glass that looks like this. Do you think the glass was defective or was it just harmed somehow during cleaning over the years? I guess I am just puzzled as to what caused that

 

I honestly don't know. I burn dry wood in hot fires and have terrific draft. The Jotul 602 is a proven performer with a decent air wash over the window. The typical cycle in my burns is this: I clean the glass with ash on a whetted paper towel, start the fire. When the fire goes from the kindling stage to the intermediate stage (about 3 - 7 minutes in) a thin film of smoky haze forms on the glass. At about the 10 to 15 minute point that haze burns off. From that point on there is a barely visible haze on the glass. But for all intents and purposes, it is clean. Last year (because my stove is under powered; only 28,000 BTU) I over fired my stove a couple of times. Could I have 'baked in' the creosote on to the glass? Also, because the stove is only 16" deep, the splits sit pretty close to the glass, often within 1". I find that this often creates a short term clouding of the glass until it burns off.

 

So my guess is that during your over fires/regular use/repeated cleanings your glass has become pitted with microscopic irregularities. These irregularities will give creosote a chance to adhere and further promote additional buildup, which will further deteriorate the glass surface. Creosote is a alkali compound, the opposite of a strong acid, it is a strong base. The Creosote and moisture, even in a log with less than 20%MC you have moisture, released by the wood reacts slowly initially, but with time the reaction accelerates. The alkaline solution attacks the glass surface by dissolving away surface ingredients which results in hazing and roughness. Initial attack may cause only faint whitening of the glass surface due to the changes in the glassy silicate structure. At this stage, a light polishing or special chemical treatment would probably restore the glass surface. However the condition worsens with time and the final stages of attack result in permanent decomposition and a further deterioration of the glass surface which is even more visible. You are at this stage now, and unless you replace the glass you will be cleaning it more often. You probably haven't helped the situation by cleaning with abrasives, more than likely the surface isn't nearly as smooth as when it was new even though it appears so.

 

True enough Augie, but I think that with polishing, I can get the glass to a reasonable degree of smoothness. Also, this being my third year of burning (and scrounging), there may have been some moisture in some of the splits I burnt. Which would account for the creosote buildup. Oh, and i currently have the replacement glass in now, so I'm in the process of grinding and buffing the old one. I'll take pics of the progress.

 

I wonder how something like Bar Keepers would work on stove glass.

 

On my Lopi some how I got a thumb print burned into the glass, oil from my finger I guess.
The glass was cold at the time I hit it.
It was right in the center of course, it drove me nuts.
I use the 0000 steel wool to keep the glass clean and it wouldn't touch it, nothing I tried would, so I called my local Lopi and they had one in stock.
So I figured I had nothing to lose, I started with a fine grit sanding paper and worked my way up thru grits till the stain was gone.
Then worked my way back down till the glass was clean using a light rubbing compound last.
There is no sign of the spot now perfectly clear, been 5 years.
Not as big a spot I know, just a different approach.