[Stoves] Accidental TLUD technique discovery

[Crispin Pemberton-Pigott]

Dear Andrew



But...the top lighting of coal is commonly known as 'the Scotch method'!

:)

No one ever tried it?



I wonder if we can trace the method back historically to someone from Scotland.

Crispin







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


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