[Stoves] Accidental TLUD technique discovery

[ajheggie at gmail.com]

[Default] On Tue, 15 Nov 2016 21:39:44 -0000,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.  

My experience with the scouts was much as Neil's. Whilst our leaders
in the early sixties  must have had military experience they knew no
better. Indeed Tommies were renowned for brewing up their tea over a
can filled with sand and soaked in petrol.

I suspect it was because SE England was such an urbanised  area  that
most people worked in towns and agriculture was not a big feature
here. Anyway woodland cover, whilst the most in England at 25%, was
not accessible to the public for foraging, indeed tree felling was
frowned upon such that when out camping with the scouts we had to be
surreptitious about felling a birch for the bonfire. Therein was the
other problem, trying to cook on a fire with small scavenged dead
twigs and freshly felled birch.

At home during this period the newly built house had minimal
insulation, 2" depth of fibreglass wool in the roof and 2" air filled
cavity in the walls, the only heating was an open coal fire in the
lounge and a rayburn range on which the cooking was done in winter to
which was plumbed one radiator in a central hallway. My late sister
and I would scratch drawings in the frosted condensation inside the
windows when we woke up on a cold day of which we don't experience the
likes now.

My job on coming in from school was to lay the fire with crumpled
newspaper over which was split kindling from vegetable crates. The
main fuel on top of this was coal. I never thought of lighting it in
any other way.

It was finding Ronal Larson's postings on the internet in the mid 90s
that got me experiments although I was already involved in charcoal
making from my woodland work.

AJH