[Stoves] TLUD history...... was.Re: Accidental TLUD technique discovery

[Paul Anderson]

Neil and Crispin and all,

What Crispin described and Neil found as the "upside down (pyramid)" at 
the REI website writings

https://www.rei.com/learn/expert-advice/campfire-basics.html

does indeed relate to Paal Wendelbo's youthful experiences in Norway in 
the early 1940s.  How far back is the origin of that information?  Did 
the ancient Vikings make fires that way?   And when is it first 
described in early Boy Scout writings?

Wendlebo is TLUD "Pyroneer" NOT because he made campfires like the older 
Norweigan men (or like early boy scouts or even earlier people.)   No.   
Wendelbo is a TLUD Pyroneer because he spent years of his spare time in 
Africa in the 1980s-90s accomplishing the task of "containerizeing" the 
top lit fire, in metal materials in his case.   He made the top-lit fire 
in a way that it can be picked up and moved around.   He made it so that 
the heat (secondary combustion) was at a specific location above which 
the pot could be supported.

Top lit campfires and top lit stoves are sufficiently distinct so that 
Wendelbo is the only person known to have accomplished the containment 
inside a combustion chamber intended for cooking.  We are always open 
for documented evidence that someone else did the same thing.

In contrast, Tom Reed (the other recognized originator of what are now 
TLUD gasifier cookstoves) arrived at similar processes but started from 
a theoretical perspective.  He turned upside-down the components of down 
draft (DD) gasification, and creating a cooking device, which he called 
IDD (Inverted DownDraft.  We now realize that the DD has its ignition 
and continual fire at the bottom of the fuel pile, whereas the IDD (or 
TLUD) has its ignition at the top BUT THE FIRE FOR GASIFICATION DOES NOT 
STAY AT THE TOP, but has the MPF (Migratory Pyrolytic Front) in action 
decending downward until it reaches the bottom of the fuel pile.

Just think, that was only 30 years ago that those two men 
"containerized" or confined the "upside-down" fire and originated TLUD 
stoves.    [For more about those 30 years, please read the "Origins and 
History...... document at the   drtlud.com  website.]

Paul

Doc  /  Dr TLUD  /  Prof. Paul S. Anderson, PhD
Email:  psanders at ilstu.edu
Skype:   paultlud    Phone: +1-309-452-7072
Website:  www.drtlud.com

On 11/15/2016 3:39 PM, neiltm at uwclub.net wrote:
> Crispin, I'm amazed by your scouting campfire experience, it bears
> absolutely no relation to mine, where in both the troops I was in at
> different times the fires whether for cooking or the sing song camp
> evening fire were completely conventional bottom lit, the latter
> sometimes in a tepee construction.  What you are describing, but probably
> on a larger scale, seems to be what Paal Wendelbo described and that
> inspired him.  It might be interesting to try to discover if old scouting
> literature describes making fires this way.  Our cooking was in large
> oval cast iron 'dixies' placed on top of sticks aligned in the direction
> of the wind hopefully.  The most sophisticated thing we did was to roast
> large joints of pork, from breakfast time to be ready at lunch time where
> a roasting tin with the joint was placed on a bed of embers, a galvanised
> bath tub inverted over the whole and sealed with ash and a fire from a
> separate pit brought over and placed around the windward side and on top.
>   Guaging the degree of cooking was by removing a pole from the corner of
> the cook house shelter, placing the metal tip on the top of the bathtub
> and the wooden end in an ear!  After 4 years of observing and helping in
> this process you became sufficiently competent to take charge of it.  We
> were allowed half an hour leeway to bring the pork to the table, pork
> properly cooked was more important than punctuality!
>
> So was the TLUD/CD fire common knowledge in Britain/Europe?  I never came
> across it in the late 50s and sixties, or since.  Our scoutmaster was an
> ex navy man, perhaps if he had been army?  There's some unwritten history
> here surely?
>
> But I came across this through the second hit on a search for 'scout camp
> fire instructions':
>
> https://www.rei.com/learn/expert-advice/campfire-basics.html
>
> They call it the 'Upside down (pyramid)' (the fire being 'upside down',
> not the pyramid!
>
> The girl guides also have it, but they don't really understand it, unless
> yours had tinder at the bottom as well?:
>
> http://gscm.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/07-1137MasterOfTheCampfire.pdf
>
> "You can use several types of fire styl
> es for a campfire. The PYRAMID starts
> with a bottom layer of 4-6 inch diameter
> logs. Add subsequent layers of smaller
> shorter logs. Fill the center with tinder
> and kindling and light the fire on a small
> platform of sticks near the top. As it
> burns, the coals fall in to the middle,
> helping the fire burn downward."
>
> wikihow.com don't know it
>
> http://scoutingmagazine.org/2016/02/how-to-build-the-best-campfire/
>
> don't list it
>
> It seems patchy, but I'm wondering if it simply became largely forgotten
> in my day and has been revived a bit in more recent times?  It always
> amazes me what my parents generation didn't seem to know.
>
> Best wishes,   Neil Taylor
>
>
> On 15 Nov 2016 at 20:15, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott wrote:
>
>> Dear Neil
>>
>> "why doesn't everyone do it that way?!"
>>
>>
>> Then I was a Boy Scout we used to have large meetings in the evening
>> Zaround a large campfire. It was a stack as you describe with 6-8" logs at
>> the bottom and kindling at the top. It looked like an Egyptian pyramid. It
>> was always top lit so it didn't make smoke and bother whoever was
>> downwind.
>>
>> The wood was gathered from what was available which meant the large pieces
>> in particular would be damp. They were dried from above. As time passed
>> the fire (char) fell to the centre. This caused the in-drafting air to
>> pass through the dampish wood and run into the char fire, whatever the
>> height at the time. It would remain quite clean burning to the last straw,
>> so to speak.
>>
>> In that condition it could be viewed as a crossdraft fire with the
>> pyrolysis gases being consumed in the char/coke fire in the centre that
>> also provided the draft.
>>
>> The technique also contained the fire as the largest logs would take ages
>> to burn through. As I recall this type of bonfire was standard practice in
>> the Scouting world for generations.
>
>
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