Ideal Steel Season #2 Tips, Tricks, and Improvements.

I agree to check the door and stove body to make sure there's no warp.
If not, gasket change is super simple, although annoying.

 

I hear you on this one. I have gotten in the habit of gently blowing the ash off the andirons before tipping them out. I would think that making the bar thinner would compromise some strength.

 

Thanks, everyone! I know I can count on replies with great ideas. i received an interesting reply back from Mike, and thought I'd share:

"I think we may have figured it out. You won't be able to tell this until you pull the gasket off but at one point under the gasket frame, we added some star washers to the frame that holds the gasket in place on the door frame to give it some extra thickness to push the gasket up against the frame better. I am sending you some new gasket and will include those star washers as well. When they were assembling the doors, they noticed that some of the gasket had different densities that fit differently so they added the washers and it solved the issue. You should have it all soon. Sorry for the issue."

Great company. Love the straight answer.

 

Wearing leather gloves, I'll wipe off the andirons before tipping them forward. Takes care of it!

 

Nice...Simple and practical. My other thought was to keep a small junk paintbrush under/near the stove to brush the ash into the box.

I'm wondering how long I will be able to operate without getting a permanent andiron tattoo on my hand or forearm because I don't always wear my gloves.

 

I usually clink the andirons a few times and the ash falls off, my point is that it shouldn't happen in the first place.

 

I used the andirons for about 2 weeks. Been running 2 winters since without. Wasted firebox space in my opinion. Especially if you are trying to burn 18" sticks north/south

 

Agreed- I have been vacillating between N/S and E/W loading but I always seem to end up removing the andirons no matter which way I load the stove. They take an inch or more away from the available space and even then are too low to hold the top split or two (and sometimes three) in the stove while the door is closed anyway. Besides all of that, my andiron latch fell out of the stove and I have not even looked to see how it is re-installed and what holds it in place.

Brian

 

re: andirons, I enjoy the look and since I am still using up odd sized peices they do sometimes actually help hold pieces back off the glass. I just keep my ash vac by the stove, I get all sorts of bark and dirt on the hearth anyway so usually once a day or so I just do a quick vac of the hearth and the ash lip, I don't want to mess around with the door open any longer than I need too.

One thing I found out about the maple leaf andirons... the leaf shape has many sharp pointy edges.
As long as you reload hot enough, at least it instantly cauterizes the wound!

 

My pellet stove has been down and out now for a couple weeks. Waiting on some stainless steel to fabricate a new burn pot next week. But the ISH has been working overtime ever since. Wasn't a big deal on the warmer days but these last few days have been 20's and 30's which is well into 2 stove territory for me due to the poor insulation and draftiness of this place. It's been keeping that side of the house pretty good, ~68 in the stove room and kitchen, low 70's in the upstairs. However through the doorway into the old side of house it's at 58-62. Had to run a space heater in my sons bedroom overnight, and a couple times sitting at my computer desk for a while I'd turn on a space heater under it. Got a fan running trying to keep heat flowing through the doorway but it just doesn't want to move that way. Can't wait until I can get house (or design and build) that is better for single stove heating. At least it's good enough, actually the main part of the house is warm and now my son won't be around for a few days so I really don't care if that side of the house cools down.

 

I very rarely run this stove on a high burn. 95% of the time it is cruising pretty low. Last night I was tired and didn't feel like wearing a shirt. It was sort of chilly so I loaded some oak and left the air control 1/3 open. It was amazing how much heat came off the stove. All of my temp gauges (no pipe) were hugging the red line. It was a nice long hot fire. I think I finally put it in 5th gear. I probably won't do that often, but it's amazing what it is capable of.

 

Picked up the new tools Woodstock is making for the IS. I like having them hanging from the stove. I had been keeping my poker right on the hearth. This definitely looks better. The tools are pretty effective at what they're made to do too. This is one of the better birthday presents I've given myself.

 

I had an odd thing happen this morning. After a somewhat hot reload (house temp is struggling, needed heat!) I started turning down and after setting engaging cat and walking away for a few, I come back to no flames. I opened the air back up to 50%, since I wanted as hot of stove as possible, but still 30 minutes and no flames?!?


As you can see cat was at 1000-1100 and stove top around 450 so it's running along great in full cat mode and still producing good heat (checked chimney too, no smoke). Just found it odd it was chugging away in cat-only mode with the air open so much. My thought it since the stove was already hot (I didn't let it burn down as much as usual since I needed heat) that I closed it down to quickly before the wood was engaged enough with the fire. But temps were good enough for cat burn. Plus since I only filled it half way it does usually take a bit more air than a packed full burn.

burndatwood do the tools get hot at all? I suppose they would have verified that before building such a way but just curious. I'll probably be placing an order soon, though I was really hoping for some more designs to come out. I'm wondering though if the height of the stove will interfere with the shelf... My fender goes up to the next slot, covering up about half of it. Looking at your pic the closes edge of the shelf goes about half way down that slot, and my fender goes about half way up the slot so the two would probably be just about touching but I would imagine it was designed that way. But if it were slammed all the way down (I think I had another notch or two to go) might be an issue for some.

 

I was loading maple and a mix of black locust and maple for most of October November and December. January I ran out of maple and did a full load of red oak on a cold day. The stove went into beast mode. I had to move the couch further from the stove because the radiant heat was overwhelming.

 

As you can imagine the shelf gets hot, but the handles aren't a problem. I just measured the distance of the shovel to the hearth (it hangs lowest), and it's a shade over 4 1/2". I would have liked to have waited for other designs too, but gave in to impatience.

 

Are any of you guys tipping the andirons front to avoid smoke spillage on reloading?

I was going through old blogs on woodstock's site. I found one about smoke spillage where they mentioned the smoke flap and tipping the andirons front. I never even gave it a thought before. I've been using the smoke flap.

I tried it once and it seems to help. I don't get much smoke anyway, just enough to get a whiff of it. Anything helps. Extending the chimney height made a big difference.

 

I normally tip the andirons forward. I get plenty of smoke spillage. I always use the smoke flap and sometimes put my ash pan lid over the opening to reduce it.

 

I rarely ever get any smoke spillage unless I really let the stove die down to almost nothing and am trying to load it up with too large of pieces and it smolders for a while with the door open. But for 95%+ I just leave the smoke flap locked up and spillage is almost a non-issue.

With the mild temps the last few days I went for some long burns but this time using cordwood. Not trying to set any records - I was using short ~13" pieces I had cut for my last stove. Still have a few rows of those. I'm sure larger pieces would burn longer, but I pack the shorties in n/s all the way in the back, then a couple packed in the gap across the front, sometimes vertically. I sort of got 24 hour burn yesterday, but while I was sleeping the cat drifted below active zone so that wasn't ideal. I think the cat probe was at 400 when I woke up. I did get it back up to around 500 or so, but it was well past any out-gassing at that point I think. I reloaded with plenty of hot coals somewhere around 24hrs later (could have been 25). I did the same thing again yesterday into today, trying for a long slow burn. But I loaded it with a lot more smaller pieces. Same thing happened overnight though, woke up to 400 or a little less. Never got it much over 400 since, though I did load it with a lot more smaller peices instead of the bigger chunks. About 21 hours right now and not quite burned down to reload levels. I probably won't reload it though, let it burn out. 10 day forecast has 60's every single day!

 

Took out Cat today to clean and noticed that the metal on the radiator (with stainless plate shield) was scaling off on both sides. Anyone with a radiator and stainless plate experience this? The scales were stuck between the shield and the steel piece (radiator). I'm wondering if this is going to compromise structural integrity of the radiator in the future and/or if this piece is something that will have to be replaced too. I would think if it was just stainless to begin with, this wouldn't be an issue at all.

 

It's going to happen. They sent me one of those new ones . I didn't look yet, but I'm sure it's doing the same. The nice thing is it won't drop the pieces on the cat like the old one did. I would just clean it off and move on. At some point down the road it will need replaced.