Not complaining- I just like having a wide variety to burn. I feel for you guys that have to go out of your way to find anything to cut up though. That's gotta be horrible if your affected by CAD! I just couldn't imagine. You poor guys.
I bought the same one as Gark because of oak, I find that three years will get it below 20% and there's a big difference between burning oak at 22% and 15-17%, like Jon when I put a split in it's on fire before I get the second split in the stove, burns hot and longer, best $30 I ever spent.
Six hours after my middle-of-the-night reload, most of the locust is still recognizably split-shaped, still producing lazy yellow and blue flames, and the stove top is at 450F. Since this is only my second season with a wood stove, I'm still mostly making do with wood that's not quite as dry is it could be. This stuff is giving me my first real glimpse of how burning works when it's working really well.
Hey all you folks that use dry black locust - don't forget that BL can "crack your stove" !! (whatever that means). LOL.
Haven't cracked anything so far as I know, but I did have a few burns where my stove got considerably hotter than I wanted it to, before I quite grasped how to load it appropriately. On one occasion I got an IR reading of 950F, and a bit of steel near the flue was beginning to glow. It wasn't the wood's fault. In every case I had loaded the wood too loosely, often on top of hot coals or on a cold night when the draft was especially strong. Black locust off-gasses for a looooong time, so if you set things up poorly then you can find yourself (as I have 3 or 4 times) sitting nervously by the stove until way past bedtime, waiting for the thing to calm down. Loading the stove for a long burn now involves being especially careful to consolidate all the coals (at the front for E-W, or at one side for N-S). I make sure a nice, straight split goes right next to those coals, either flat on the bottom of the stove or bedded in ashes. I pack in as much wood as I can behind or to the side of that first split, which acts as a sort of firewall that prevents flame from getting under the new wood. I pack it tightly, with little air-space between splits. Finally I drop a fat split directly on top of the coals, close the door and open the air for a little while. That last split sitting on the coal bed goes up fast and gets the temperature up quickly. Flames spread out across the top of the stove, heating the secondary tubes and igniting the topmost splits from above, and the rest of the load essentially burns top-down. This works so much better, and is much easier to control.
