Black locust dies have a bad smell to it. Some say it's the bark. I haven't had enough to distinguish.
when you get them tweaked way low in a hybrid stove. IMO what your seeing here is the catalytic combustor just beginning to warm the top of the stove to the point secondaries kick in. Cats begin burning smoke at 500. That can drive them as high as 1800. When the interior top of the stove hits 1000 secondaries can kick in. Pretty cool stuff.
So whaddaya gonna do with the mountain of logs sitting on your lot? I know a guy who could take them off your hand!
Still debating It’s not terrible to have to adapt to a new species. It does seem a radical departure from all the others tho. Never ran the ph with added air with anything else. I have more to play with, we’ll see how it goes. Cold weather coming. Who knows, may run the PH with the bypass open and adjust the burn by air only. A little crazy
Here's some BL I loaded on bed of oak coals. In pic #1 damper closed, air all the way open. This is 20 minutes from when I closed damper to engage CAT. Air shut down to 3/4 closed. Air all the way closed. Very little secondaries if any, BUT the CAT temp kept climbing. I opened air just a smidge when CAT temps leveled.
That's interesting that you've had these issues, c even when mostly mixing in oak, that Burgess nicely everything locust in the box. I always mix locust with other wood, usually ash, because I have so much ash. I try to mix every kind of wood I have, although ash and elm dune have any issues burning just those species by be themselves.
My Normal stovetop temp to engage the cat is 250F. With BL I waited to engage at 300-320F but the chimney just puked black smoke. The Next load was oak from the same stack and the cat lit right off.
The majority of the BL I source is dead, down, barkless, and old. Like, semi-petrified old. Every once in a blue moon Fire Flake will get in a hurry and shut down the air too fast and close the key damper too soon as well... smoldery. But if I remind her to wait an additional 5+ minutes longer- who doggies! Granted our stove is an EPA rated Wonderwood, but we could melt a hole in it if not careful. On a bed of coals, most of our 8-10”+ rounds light off before we get the door shut.
Well I just loaded the Progress with 3/4 oak 1/4 BL and what a pain getting that cat to light off. It was still puking black smoke when the Stovetop was over 350F which NEVER happens when I'm not burning BL. The smoke cleared to steamy white when the temp hit 400F but to make this happen the air was open WAY beyond normal. I suppose the cat could be getting lazy but its just fine with any other wood. I'm not liking this BL and I have a ton brought in ready to burn. I'll see if I can find my old moisture meter, I stopped using it when I got 3 years ahead on wood.
Seems that you said it worked fine if you ran up to 400f stt before engaging. Sooooo. That seems easy? After engaging leave full primary air go to it until you hit 650 stt or something considerably hotter than normal. Then reduce primary to a position delivering more air than what the other wood species need. Is it that easy? Just a different operational routine to match the wood supply? May as well use the stuff up! Mostly if you already hauled it upLet us know how you shake it out. Curious.
I've never had issues with BL but as others have already said honey locust is a different story. I tried it after 2 years split once, and ended up putting it back into a pile for 3 years later. Other HL I've let season for 3 years did well, but it does take a while to get going. My only chimney fire (that I know of) was with a stove full of honey locust. It was smoldering/low burning for what felt like 20 mins then suddenly the stove just went up in flames to the point where it was just shooting flames up my chimney and igniting whatever small bit of creosote may have been in there. I only happened to see this because I was upstairs where I have view of the chimney and saw an orange glow/ball shape coming from inside the chimney. Ran down and cut the air off and it was out almost instantly. No damage that I could see the next day and the pipe was squeaky clean. I guess that's one way to clean your chimney. So the moral of the story is yes they can be tough to get going but keep an eye on it cus it will just take off on you.
Wow that's unreal. Sounds like outgassing from the smoldering/low burn ignighted and I'm guessing the chimney had not been cleaned in a while. I also find that the BL smolders unless I give it a ton of air which I am just not used to doing with any other 4+ year old wood.
The bark on the top one looks like locust the split on the right looks more like walnut than locust I burn black locust all the time and it burns hot with a blue flame just like coal it does not have a lot of flame what you are describing sounds more like black walnut it does not burn that well and is medium heat output I have also burnt a good bit of honey locust and have had no issues ,if it is the hybrid honey locust without the nasty thorns it is harder to light . To add though my furnace runs hard my shop is poorly insulated so I run the furnace pretty hard to keep up right now it is @20 outside and 65 inside JB
I don't recall what I had in the stove the night of my chimney fire, BL and silver maple most likely. I still can't get over that night though Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk
I have done my best to follow the same mantra… in fact, as I was getting ready for a hernia surgery back in November 2015, I had some oak and hickory delivered. It was presumably split from “seasoned logs” the day it was delivered. At 4.5 years, I still noticed the hizz and pizz out of many of the ends. 3 years is great for a lot of wood, but not all. And a moisture meter is anything but a toy.
I still plan to measure the moisture content but from what I hear Oak takes longer than Locust to season and the Oak stacked with the Locust burns great. I think I'm just not used to the crazy high air settings needed to burn Locust in my stove. I'm also amazed how hot I have to get it before engaging the cat so it doesn't puke black smoke. I've burned many spieces of wood over the past 20 years and this locust is like burning alien wood!
Im burning some 4 year old css black locust right now. Not much in the way of flames mostly just off gassing. Honestly the wood it reminds me most of flame wise is cherry.
