posted 11 years ago
James Barr: Opps, with a regular wood stove you are producing enough Lye in your wood ashes to " Rot out " your barrel stove when and if the Wood ashes get wet. This is
something to try to avoid doing and if this happens again you should plan on a complete removal of all your wet ashes and a quick attack with a wire brush !
Leaving wood ashes in your barrel is a good free way to insulate the bottom of your barrel against high temps and most people teach themselves to do that ! Working to
scrape out the bottom of the barrel is literally wasting your time, if it starts to clump together thats a good sign ! Some people set their wood stove off set from their vertical
chimney,come off of their wood stove raising up to an elbow that goes directly into a 'T' at the bottom of their Vertical Chimney, making sure that any water vapor that ever
collects in the chimney at the end of a burn can never run back to their wood stove ! That and cleaning out their wood stoves ashes in the late spring takes care of most of
the Maintenance! For the Good of the Crafts ! Big AL !
Success has a Thousand Fathers , Failure is an Orphan
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