I have my base burner (BB)

Rob R. wrote:In this mild weather, your draft may not be strong enough to hold a fire with a thick bed of ash.

Possibly but the Vig seems not bothered from warmer temp. Maybe the Bride is more affected from it and from thick bed of ash like you said?

smithy wrote:Hi Norcan, with the little experience I have noticed the 2 x per day shake down keeps it going about 250- 300 f mpd almost shut, main air just cracked and bypass gate adjustment will give + or - 100 f .
I have been using the magazine as it is not removable on my the stove and as Steve said the added weight of the coal on top will give a better shake down.
These things are realy hot!
Question what do you clean you mica with?

Good Smithy, with the mag, I will try the 2X day shake. The warm temp probably doesn't help.
Just water and paper towel. I think the mica stay cleaner when the MPD is not more than 1/2 closed????????probably help to pull gasses out before deposit on the mica????????? Before I was closing theMPD almost completly.
I also made testings with the MPD,air damper,check damper,base damper all closed when shaking, and it helps to keep the dust out of the mica???? After shaking, I re-open the MPD , base damper and air damper slowly.
I think you say: "learning curve in English". LOL

SteveZee wrote:I bought a little package of Huggies unscented baby wipes per someones advice here on the site. They work well for cleaning the mica's and can be done with the stove burning. Gentle swipes with a folded up corner and they clean up the inside soot of any starter fires nicely.

Thanks Steve. The BB should love it.
The deposit on my mica is a very light white fume and easy to remove, not like a wood burn hardened black one.

Thanks for the mica tips guys, on that mpd the one that came with my stove is a Griswold #6 but is about 5-5/8" dia. And has two holes about 1-1/8" anyway one that I saw one at the home store that is close to 5-7/8" dia with nothe holes ,do you think I could choke this stove down somemore?

I think you would be getting too close to the danger point with that damper.

smithy wrote:Thanks for the mica tips guys, on that mpd the one that came with my stove is a Griswold #6 but is about 5-5/8" dia. And has two holes about 1-1/8" anyway one that I saw one at the home store that is close to 5-7/8" dia with nothe holes ,do you think I could choke this stove down somemore?

You know Smithy, my personnal opinion for MPD is if the stove is as air tight as possible (principally at the lower places we already talked about), a MPD would not be necessary. Plus base heaters have a so long gasses path to slow down the draft...
But we can say all we want, in the past they didn't have the sealers we have now like the rope gaskets. A metal on metal seal will never be and stay as air tight as a gasketted one. The new high end stoves don't even use cement when assembling cast iron parts. The lazer cut are so precise that they can place rope gaskets and seal the parts for ever. Much more resistant than cement...and air tight.

When I made the first fires in the Bride, I had to close the MPD all the way to try to lower the fire. With the stove much more air tight, I can control the burning rate and leave the MPD just a little angled. Plus as said before the mica stay cleaner when the MPD is more opened.
I think that it's better to lower the combustion rate from primary air entering in the stove than trying to choke the draft with a MPD

franco b wrote:I think you would be getting too close to the danger point with that damper.

Yes Franco, that is an other very important thing to consider. Probably the most important one.

[quote="nortcan"]Having a too large gap between the outer front grate and the center next bar( more than what you see on the photo), I put flat bars between the triangular grates. The front of the bars exceed at the front to fill the gap. Seems to work good and less anthracite falling in the pan. The center is less agressive and dump less ash at the time.
[quote]
Our Penn Garnet has different center grates than yours. Everything else is the same. Looking at yours, I think mine is alot more tight and restricitve. maybe a later design?

nortcan wrote:

franco b wrote:I think you would be getting too close to the danger point with that damper.

Yes Franco, that is an other very important thing to consider. Probably the most important one.

I agree too. I use the MPD's that have an oblong hole in the center. This makes things easy. I can shut it entirely and know that I still have this hole venting.

oros35 wrote:

nortcan wrote:Having a too large gap between the outer front grate and the center next bar( more than what you see on the photo), I put flat bars between the triangular grates. The front of the bars exceed at the front to fill the gap. Seems to work good and less anthracite falling in the pan. The center is less agressive and dump less ash at the time.

Our Penn Garnet has different center grates than yours. Everything else is the same. Looking at yours, I think mine is alot more tight and restricitve. maybe a later design?

Happy to hear from you oros. Did you try your Penn Garnet yet?
I think that there were few desings for the grates at that time and some were like yours and some like mine.
I always wonder if the center dumping ones like yours' let much ash and unburned ant. fall in the pan or less than the tri. ones.
Anyways it seems that triangular grates allow more unburned ant.to fall in the pan than some other models. Something is curious about these triangular grates.

[/quote]
When I made the first fires in the Bride, I had to close the MPD all the way to try to lower the fire. With the stove much more air tight, I can control the burning rate and leave the MPD just a little angled. Plus as said before the mica stay cleaner when the MPD is more opened.
I think that it's better to lower the combustion rate from primary air entering in the stove than trying to choke the draft with a MPD[/quote]

Ok I get it now, sometimes a little faster sometimes slowly but I get it now. Thanks!

Now with the 2 X shakes for a 24 Hrs period and the mag. in, the stove works good.Thanks for advices on it.
So what works good for the VigII doesn't automatically for the Bride.
But the temp. still much warmer now than it used to be. Nice to be able to idle the 2 stoves, would be impossible to do it with 2 wood stoves and be confortable in the house.

nortcan wrote:Happy to hear from you oros. Did you try your Penn Garnet yet?

Still need a chimney built...

Good things take time.

Oh I can see you & the REAL Bride are going to be way too spoiled this burning season.

nortcan wrote:Now with the 2 X shakes for a 24 Hrs period and the mag. in, the stove works good.Thanks for advices on it.
So what works good for the VigII doesn't automatically for the Bride.
But the temp. still much warmer now than it used to be. Nice to be able to idle the 2 stoves, would be impossible to do it with 2 wood stoves and be confortable in the house.

I see that this thread has finally made it to 50 pages. I think that is a record.