[Stoves] Cutting wood down to size for batch-fueled stoves.

[ajheggie at gmail.com]

[Default] On Mon, 19 Aug 2013 16:47:34 -0400,"Lanny Henson"
<lannych at bellsouth.net> wrote:

>
>I know there has been some complaints about cutting wood down to the small 
>size necessary for batch-fueled stoves,  so the longer the pieces a stove 
>will burn, the better. This is one area where stick burning stoves have an 
>advantage over batch-fueled stoves, that is with fuel length issues.
>
>
>
>So what would be a minimum length we can ask people to cut their wood?
>
>What is the maximum length that a batch-fueled household stove should burn?

Interesting question, back before machine tools it was normal for
large fires to burn cordwood, the length of 4 ft (1.2m) was a
compromise for the wood to be handleable and to reduce the need to
cross cut. I imagine saws weren't generally available for forest work
and restricted to cutting wood for joinery, planking etc. doing things
that add more value. These billets would be held on andirons and fed
into a fire burning as they met in the middles to control power and
rate of burn, muck like a 3 stone fire with sticks.

Smaller fires probably used faggots, bundles of wood cut and gathered
by billhook. Commoners sometimes had the right to gather wood "by hook
or by crook" meaning small wood that could be snapped off (dead) or
short rotation coppice.

These smaller pieces could be subsequently cut with a hatchet.

When I sold firewood locally most people accepted 12" (300mm) logs and
split such that they could be picked up across the cross section with
one hand. Cutting and bagging we had to reduce the length to 7"
(175mm) and this was only easily done on a saw bench. Of course as you
get shorter lengths the waste sawdust becomes a problem as well as a
higher percentage of the wood, typically a chainsaw or circular saw
kerf is 1/4" (6mm).

Nowadays a lot of the smaller arisings go straight through the chipper
and when screened and dried make an excellent TLUD fuel.

I think Alex English managed to get woodchip dropping into his wedge
shaped natural draught modification to a side opening door on a wood
stove, using Dasifyer principles.

AJH