[Stoves] How to make smokeless coal?

neiltm at uwclub.net neiltm at uwclub.net
Fri May 26 04:59:58 CDT 2017


On 25 May 2017 at 2:41, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott wrote:

> Question for you: can you ask around some old-timers and find out where
> the expression "Scotch method" comes from when referring to lighting a
> fire on top in order to reduce smoke? This name arrived in Southern Africa
> with people from Europe more than 100 years ago, 120 at least. But where
> did it originate? 

It doesn't seem to be within living memory of the 'old timers' I know in 
Scotland I'm afraid, but they sent this:

Not sure if the so called 'Swedish log' counts as a TLUD?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lIWMKx8anI&feature=c4-overview&list=UUIq7
3l9XpOlq0LYP3l5tQPg

Finnish method ...used during Finnish Russian War according to this
chap...


Did anyone ever have a conversation with Paal Wendelbo about what he 
might have known of the history or ubiquity of lighting fires from the 
top in Norway?  We have heard the Norwegian resistance stealth fires 
story, which I found interesting in relation to Baden Powell who actually 
describes bunking off into the woods while at boarding school and 
lighting "stealth fires" and trapping and cooking rabbits, but then the 
top lit idea is entirely missing from 'Scouting for Boys', and its hard 
to imagine he would have known the technique but not shared it.  He talks 
of learning other fire techniques in India and SA, and from N American 
Indians, and he had what he called and illustrated as the 'star fire', we 
know as the three stone fire.  This suggests the approach did not spread 
like wildfire exactly!  And then died out where it perhaps was once 
adopted.  Why, since it is so obviously an excellent and useful fire 
technique?  Haven't noticed Ray Mears using it, and he is a practical 
reviver/rediscoverer of lost bushcraft.  I bet your old scout troop don't 
light camp fires that way any more Crispin.

There seems to be a general hinting in the direction of Scandanavia as 
possibly somewhere to focus on finding the origins, but probably also 
China, and we know that this would have been multiply discovered, because 
the TLUD has been as we know.

My first attempt at one of Paal's TL fires was a revelation, and the 
first time I had ever lit an open fire, and it burned down to the end of 
every stick, leaving just char and ash without once touching it after 
lighting, and very little smoke.  In particular it burned the windward 
side completely, the pyrolysis front moving against the side wind, 
whereas with a conventional BL fire, the unburned wood has to be moved 
over to the lee side. A pot hung from a tripod could have been well 
placed over that fire.

I got my daughter trying it out in her open fireplace, and she was quite 
pleased with the result.

The cheap Chinese ebay/amazon ND stoves have similarities to the prior 
bushbuddy, but unlike the bushbuddy, they separate in the middle for 
packing small, and the grate is different.  Since it emerged that these 
are not cheap Chinese knock offs of the British stoves, but were the 
original basis of those stoves, it seems likely to me at least, knowing 
how good they are that some native Chinese expertise was brought to bear 
on them.

Best wishes,   Neil Taylor




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