Cleaned the King today

My princess looks exactly the same inside.

 

I noticed more heat off the sides tonight.
Makes sense, I guess . The creo was an insulator
keeping heat in.

 

My old Princess was the same, lots of black creo in the firebox during the shoulder season along with black glass. I think its just the nature of the beast when your burning so low and slow.

My Keystone does get some in the back and around the side loading door when I turn it way down but not quite as bad as my BK did.

 

Wish the sides could pop off for easier cleaning.

 

Yea
They do make them with no easy way of cleaning the inside.
Still a heck of a stove.

 

So how did you get all the flakes, chunks, junk out from behind the heat shields?

 

I used Beetle-kills method on the sides.
A 1" wide simpson tie strap is flexible enough to push/pull back & forth &push it to the back corner,
and stiff enough to scrap the creo off the stove wall. It came off
pretty easy, in small sheets & the strap broke it loose & pushed it to where i could get to it.
End of the strap straight to break it loos, bent it to different angles then bent
it over 180° to push the chunks to the back corner
On the back one I use a stiff piece of wire. Bent 90° , long enough to reach from the
top to the bottom & worked it back & forth.
Stuck my hand up around the air pipe,
wear gloves, I got bandaids to show why, stuff is hard & sharp as glass but very brittle.
Breaks up & off pretty good, small putty knife helps too
Shop vac .
tools I used:

 

It's too bad they didn't make those removable.

 

That's what Nate said
He has a princess too

 

I tried to scrape out behind the shields today with the steel strapping from a shipping pallet. I got a lot out but there seems to be a lot of granular junk back there now. Maybe compressed air would work.

 

I'm sure I didn't get the fine stuff, just the chunks & the majority of it the stuff.
i figured dust /ash would build up on the bottom edge
between the shield & stove wall relatively quick anyway.

Air would work if you can direct it to the right places.
Turn the pressure down so your aren't making a big dust cloud
Flexible hose along the bottom edge & blow it to the back corner.

If you try it, let us know what you think.
Maybe wear a dust mask

 

I have a piece of 1/8" copper tubing stuffed into the end of a blow gun for my air compressor. Easy to bend to get into weird places. Like behind side shields. Not that I ever tried.

Or ever will. Hope to out of this house in a few weeks.

 

Thanks, glad to hear the King 'aint the only one doing this.

 

Are you moving closer to town?

 

Well, mine is clean(er) than it was. After using the "sooteater' in the flue, followed up with a brush going top-down-(12'), AND all the clean out in the stove, I'm good for a bit. But next spring, I'm going to change things up.
I filled a 5 gal.bucket, dumped it, and added another 1/3rd before I was done tonight.

 

I'm already close to town. Going to be in town.

 

Been burning on low for a week + now
Glass turning black but the inside still looks ok.
I theink much better wood has a lot to do with it
Cat sure is lighting off better & getting hotter faster since it was cleaned.

 

What is trimmed off the outside of a log at the saw mill. To square it up for making dimensional lumber and such. It is usually sold pretty cheap or free.