Lighting a stoker

Ed.A wrote:

Saber 5 wrote:Anyone know of a website for a dealer who sells these "mice" you guys are talking about. Sounds like a great way to light up and I would like to give it a shot

From my own NOVICE experience....and MAJOR help on this here forum. I tried the mice, they came with my Alaska stove. Do it with dry coal, I'm sure they do great.


Start with "Dry" bundle up some readily available Chunk Charcoal, get it lit....add coal (ie: let the stoker get on) and away she goes.

I fired up my Keystoker last night after replacing the cam. I used a length of 1" wide x.040 thick stainless steel strip bent into a half moon shape, wedged by spring force, onto the end of the grate. Then I placed a handful of lump charcoal and then filled the hopper, sliding the coal down the grate up against the charcoal. 20 seconds with my propane torch on the charcoal, close the door, plug in the stove, and away she goes. For good measure, once the charcoal is well lit, I'll pour a cup of coal on top of the burning charcoal. Usually, as the stoker continues to feed coal, the stainless strip will pop loose and fall into the ash bucket for retrieval.

Chris

I fired up my Keystoker last night after replacing the cam. I used a length of 1" wide x.040 thick stainless steel strip bent into a half moon shape, wedged by spring force, onto the end of the grate. Then I placed a handful of lump charcoal and then filled the hopper, sliding the coal down the grate up against the charcoal. 20 seconds with my propane torch on the charcoal, close the door, plug in the stove, and away she goes. For good measure, once the charcoal is well lit, I'll pour a cup of coal on top of the burning charcoal. Usually, as the stoker continues to feed coal, the stainless strip will pop loose and fall into the ash bucket for retrieval.

Chris

That sir, is the EXACT method I used ( ok, I used a piece of stove pipe for the 1/2 moon not SST) and it worked great.

europachris wrote:

Ed.A wrote:

Saber 5 wrote:Anyone know of a website for a dealer who sells these "mice" you guys are talking about. Sounds like a great way to light up and I would like to give it a shot

From my own NOVICE experience....and MAJOR help on this here forum. I tried the mice, they came with my Alaska stove. Do it with dry coal, I'm sure they do great.


Start with "Dry" bundle up some readily available Chunk Charcoal, get it lit....add coal (ie: let the stoker get on) and away she goes.

I fired up my Keystoker last night after replacing the cam. I used a length of 1" wide x.040 thick stainless steel strip bent into a half moon shape, wedged by spring force, onto the end of the grate. Then I placed a handful of lump charcoal and then filled the hopper, sliding the coal down the grate up against the charcoal. 20 seconds with my propane torch on the charcoal, close the door, plug in the stove, and away she goes. For good measure, once the charcoal is well lit, I'll pour a cup of coal on top of the burning charcoal. Usually, as the stoker continues to feed coal, the stainless strip will pop loose and fall into the ash bucket for retrieval.

Chris

I guess the coal mice are cheap enough but for my money, you can't beat the lump charcoal. I use that method and it's fool proof, no mess, no odor, always works and it's cheap!

I find the charcoal to be smelly and dirty but maybe I'm doing something wrong. if you're lighting the stove less than 3 times a year then the mice can't be beat.

I have found the charcoal smelly also. I have used the road flares cut onto 3 pieces but sometimes they were smelly too (I have my stove in my dining room)and smoke and fumes come out of the door when trying to get either the charcoal or flares lit. My solution was to take the flare pieces and drill a hole in them and insert a piece of cannon fuse. I have a local gun shop that is into black powder and re-enactments so getting the cannon fuse is easy. With the fuse into the flare you just touch a flame to the end of the fuse and close the stove door and I get no odor at all in the house.

A road flare is kinda fun for lighting. I like the bright red light and the intense flame. I used a Makita box saw to cut the flares. It was messy and it probably isn't an intelligent thing to do since there is heat with the blade and who knows but a flare is like lava so I don't want that on me. When I was in ACE the other day I saw that they had flares but they certainly weren't economical.

gambler wrote:I have found the charcoal smelly also.

Hrmmm, perhaps my draft is really good? Seriously, lumped charcoal with a torch, it lit quick and I shut the door, didn't smell at all that I can recall. Hell that was in October, it ain't been out scince, and I don't plan on re-lighting again till next October.

The key with the charcoal is to shut the door!

The other key is to break it up into chunks the size of buck wheat coal, also you need to put some fresh coal over it once it gets going. No method of lighting will work if you just lay it on top of the coal.

traderfjp wrote:A road flare is kinda fun for lighting. I like the bright red light and the intense flame. I used a Makita box saw to cut the flares. It was messy and it probably isn't an intelligent thing to do since there is heat with the blade and who knows but a flare is like lava so I don't want that on me. When I was in ACE the other day I saw that they had flares but they certainly weren't economical.

I cut the flares with a PVC cutter, the sharp blade slices right through it with no mess.

BK

When I lit up, I filled the hopper part way, poured a coffee-can full of rice coal way back on the grates, placed a good dozen bricks of match-lite on top of that coal, lit them and closed the door, and started the stoker motor. I let the stoker feed coal in from there and build the fire up while I filled the hopper and did other stuff.

What I forgot to mention before is, I closed the restrictor plate on the combustion blower all the way before turning it on, and then cracked it a bit and bumped it more open every few minutes as the fire built until the stove was going good. After everything looked good, then I hooked up the manometer to set the baro and blower, and made sure the little bolt holding the restrictor plate was tight. Otherwise, the entire firebox looks like July 4th, and the house fills with charcoal fumes almost instantly. (Yup, learned by doing )

Received this reply regarding the auto ignition system from Coal-Trol.

Date 12/11/2007

The ignition system is not yet available. Release date is not yet determined.
Thanks,
Neil

I had this in: How To: Create an artificial draft. Thought it might be handy here too. When I started the fire, I got no smoke out the stove doors or exhaust pipe.

After reading the thread on using the hair dryer to heat up the pipe, I got thinking. This year I put a old style milk house electric heater in the bottom of my stove for 15/20 min. warmed upped the stove nicely. Removed the heater, then put my charcoal chimney stack, (for starting barbeque fires) paper in the bottom, charcoal on top of that, and buckwheat coal on top of that, in the stove. Lit the paper, all the smoke went out the chimney pipe, after 2 or 3 min. I plugged in the stove blower. Three min later...I pulled the stack out of the stove and we were up and running strong.
Gary

I started a coal stove for the first time. A fire starter from Alaska stoves. Put it in. Put a little rice coal around it. Light the wick. Turn on the fan. Away it goes. Pretty easy.

I bought the coal mice in the fall after someone here sent me a link to Ebay. They worked VERY well. I had to use 2 to get it going. I tried 1 bag and it didn't seem to light. So I did it again with 2 bags and it fired right up (~2nd week in November) and it's been running ever since!

I took the starter chips that came with my keystoker and placed them in a metal coffee can then pour enoungh karoseen on them to just make them damp and let them soak for a couple mins.
i took about a 1/2 cup and placed them on the grate and a handful of rice coal around (mostly behind) them with some on top. let it set for a min. lite it and away she goes. close the door and start thr blower. fire burning like it's been there all along.