Do your secondaries look different when burning soft (pine, spruce) wood as opposed to hard (deciduous) wood? This is my first year burning spruce, as I use to be blinded by the dogma of "you can't burn soft wood in a woodstove". The secondaries from a load of spruce seem much more orange and fewer of them as opposed to maple/beech/ash/birch.
In my experiences it seems like the really dense woods put.off more of a blue flame, both primary and secondary..... Never really saw a big difference in pine or maple, just a faster burn (pine does lots of poppin' and cracklin'). I will say that pine seems to "gas off" faster, leading to more intense secondaries........is that the case with anyone else??
Can't speak to pine as I've not had access to much, if any, but the hardwoods (oak, cherry, ash) do indeed give off blue primaries and secondaries in my unit....thus my user name
Yes pine definitely off gasses very fast compared to some woods. I also get it with really dry silver maple, ceder, cottonwood, and a few others. I have to watch it on startup/reload with these as I need to get on the closing the air much sooner compared to most denser woods. If you do not catch them early they really take off. As far as colors it is amazing some of the differences. Black locust I get bright, almost looks like propane, blue secondaries, mulberry is almost purple, and allot of times sugar maple has a green cast in it.
I can get really long secondaries flames that are mostly orange with a blue tinge right where it comes out of the baffle when burning pine.
