Production Woodstock IS

Yeah, medium burns at first but they leave areas on the stove where the paint did not finish outgassing. Then when it is -9 outside and the stove is pushed, the final vapors are driven off and it is not pleasant to open windows. So I wanted to finish curing the paint while it was a decent temp. outside.

 

Can you see these areas...as in there's a visual difference between the cured and uncured?

 

No, or at least I cannot. The paint starts off with a very low- luster shine and after being heated a while that shine goes away and the paint becomes flat. I believe that shine is the polymers in the paint being driven off with temperature. But I cannot look at a stove and tell how much of the paint is burned- in, or tell where the finished vs. not yet finished spots are.

In my limited experience it takes a couple of med. fires and maybe two hot fires to drive most of the particulate out of the paint. Even then, after running for months, a very hot fire on a very cold night will show some last remaining smoke from the paint.

 

tenacious paint

 

I think the problem is that parts of the stove lag behind some other parts. So the stovetop gets hot pretty readily but the bottoms of, say, the outside of the firebox remain relatively cool. So the stove has to be really quite hot to get these lagging areas hot enough to drive the 'stink' out of the paint.

Last night was not the hardest I have ever driven my I.S. though, in the past I have had the stove top over 600F, which is really, really reaching with this stove, at least it is for me and my house. As I remember it was quite cold outside and the stove was being a bit resistant to coming up to a decent output. I closed the bypass and the fire kinda' died. So then I left it running with an open draft and the bypass open until it was absolutely hot enough to keep burning with good output- I remember being impressed that the stove top was 6XX, a value that I had never reached before. Cleaned the glass that night with just the fire also. Generally stove top temps. of between 350 and 450 are ample to heat my house.

 

Time for an unusual load, the next 4-5 full loads will be some scrap rounds that are ancient. 8-9 year old maple, oak, elm, etc to small to waste time splitting, to large to waste not burning. Finally got around to cutting the limbs to fit. Many were piled in the back of the woodshed in 20-30” lengths on a rack. Chopped the longest in half. Days like today I appreciate the longer firebox of the IS. Hot fire tonight. Winter storm blowing like mad here in the SE Ozarks, lots of draft. Life is Good and warm.

 

If you use a moisture meter have you split any to check moisture content?

What’s your normal moisture content numbers with your normal wood?

Will be interesting to see if you think you get more heat from these rounds than your normal wood. Let us know what you think.

 

I was doing some cleanup also.
Yesterday i had a 550° bark fire. Got me through the whole afternoon.
This IS amazes me that you can stuff it with any size bits and burn it just like normal..

 

Regarding more heat, no, not really, but when I burn extremely dry wood, I do got hot fires, not much difference with split or rounds. A large percentage of my wood is extremely dry, stored long term in a covered metal wood shed open on one side, great air circulation, and my moisture meter measures between 11-14% on my splits. These rounds, on the fresh cuts in the middle measured 10-11%, For your question I did split one 4-5” round and it measured 11.5%. All the wood had been inside my house for 24 hours and at room temp.

 

Agreed, The IS can do well with various load sizes, wood types, and drafts.

 

Our IS has always surprised me on how much heat we get out of low btu wood. On the other hand some of the high btu wood don’t seem as good as it was in a smoke dragon. One thing for sure it makes a lot of heat.

 

Yes it can produce heat, and the soapstone liner and big soapstone slabs hanging on the exterior sure do hold heat well. When cruising hard those slabs are 190-200 easy, but this morning after 9 hours unattended they still were 140 with great coals in the box for a restart.

 

I knew it was coming.

 

Dang, I too am waiting for this, fortunately my yearly burn days are low. What are your yearly burn days do you estimate?

 

I’d guess around 120 days a year. This is my 4th season with the IS. I burn a little over 3 cord a year.

 

Ouch! So back it goes to Woodstock?

 

I’d say so. From what I’ve read on here they are addressing the problem. Thought about asking about the process and doing myself but it still has to be moved out of the house. Probably send to them.

 

One can drill a small hole at the termination of the crack - to keep it from getting bigger. One could then weld the crack, but you would need something on the inside to take the heat stress. I believe Woodstock has been welding a new plate on the front of the old front.
I should send mine in too...

 

Sorry you ended up with one of the unlucky. I'm on winter 7 with zero issues. Still going on the original radiator plate too, although it is warped some it still seems to work. I've been meaning to ask for a replacement for 5 years but it's been a real trooper.

 

Are the new stoves still doing this?