Glenwood Base Heaters and Oak stoves burning wood

Here is a video from Good Time Stove Store instructing a customer how to get 12 hour burns out of a good quality oak stove. He states that the stove he is demonstrating will burn 12 hours on a load of wood and he also demonstrates how the stove has perfect control. If you are going to burn wood in an oak stove well, you MUST have a register plate to set up the stove for wood burning. I have a register plate for my Glenwood but have never used it. I never intend to burn wood in my stove.
If you are interested in burning wood in these get a register plate and take it out when you want to burn coal. I would say that the burn times on this oak stove would rival the burn times and control of most new ones. I do agree that the heated secondary air is a big improvement, but; If one was to burn wood sometimes in the stove I don't think the performance of this one would be in the least bit unsatisfactory.

Wow William thanks for the video!!

I wonder if it would be a good idea to stack the wood so much higher than the firepot as he does?

Here is a picture of the register plate for my Glenwood. These are placed right on top of the coal grates and will allow the air proportions proper for wood burning. The register plate also serves to allow a deep bed of hot coals to build up in the fire pot to maintain a much higher average combustion temperature and to greatly improve the terrible temperature swings that come with the combustion cycles of wood.

I have thought about trying the compressed wood bricks. Each brick weighs 2 lbs and come 20 bricks (40 lbs) per bundle. The moisture content is less than 10% and a single bundle costs $ 8 dollars which seems fair. You can buy a 50 bundle pallet for $ 350 dollars which measures 4x4x3'. Has anyone tried these?

a single bundle costs $ 8 dollars

just a tiny bit more than I paid for a 40 lb bag of Santa Clause anthracite last April

wsherrick wrote:Here is a picture of the register plate for my Glenwood. These are placed right on top of the coal grates and will allow the air proportions proper for wood burning. The register plate also serves to allow a deep bed of hot coals to build up in the fire pot to maintain a much higher average combustion temperature and to greatly improve the terrible temperature swings that come with the combustion cycles of wood.

Will, what is the holes section place: I mean do you place the register with the holes on front or on the back of the stove's grate? Maybe I could make one for the early occasional wood fires.

a grate like that came with the Glenwood MO 16 Im restoring but half of the bars are separated from the ring and bent up at a shallow angle....would that be the result of overfiring? stove was only ever used with wood

PJT, Sounds weird, is your plate cast iron? The ones I have seen are cast iron one piece and it hardly seems possible for it to do that without breaking/being broken?

Pierre, let me know if you decide to make one. Maybe you can make two and I'll buy one from you. I was thinking the same thing for my MO 116 but just a steel one because it would be easier to make. I can buy a cast iron one but they cost almost $100 at woodsmanspartsplus. They have small feet on the bottom (see pix) but I don't know the answer to your question about if the slots should face forward (towards the primary air) or towards the back where it wood get a little less direct air. Maybe it makes no difference?

Steve I assume its cast iron Ill see if I can post a pic

Steve, I was just planning to make 2, one for you and one for me. The right price could be, hum for you my friend: $99.00 US or Can. according to the money value when we sing the contract
At that good price, you can place it the way you want to.

PJT wrote:

The older stoves where the pipe goes off the top of the back are better than the Glenwood baseheater burning wood.

Why would this be? So an Oak or a pot belly would burn wood better than a base heater cause of the exhaust hole placement?

Back when I was burning wood, I ran both an oak and my Glenwood base heater. The oak was better than the Glenwood in overall performance burning wood. The position of the stove pipe off the top of the stove kept smoke from coming into the house while the Glenwood won't always do that. In the daily use, day after day, month after month, you come to see limitations of these old stoves burning wood that are hard to summarize in short notes like these. Both stoves heated well. I would run my Glenwood in base burner mode once the fire was well established. I think the biggest difference in burn time was the quality of the wood and how well you could get it stacked into the stove. All in all, the Oak was more pleasant to run, never had smoke come into the room, that I remember. Probably had a little but it was so minimal it went basically unnoticed. The Glenwood on the other hand, that was not the case. It was more prone to letting in a big puff of smoke at times. That I felt at the time was due to the placement of the chimney. I recall opening the lower front door and watching the smoke almost coming out, you could see it all filled up in the top of the stove and the draft sucking the smoke out the middle of the back. If I forgot to look and just opened both front doors, I'd get notable smoke into the room. That never happened with the Oak. The Glenwood did have the advantage when it got kicked into base burner mode, you could feel the heat coming out of the base of that stove - real nice in a drafty old farm house.

I've never used a register plate as talked about here, maybe they would make the stove run better with wood, but I honestly can't say I felt any need. I'll also tell you to get 12 hour burns I'd fill either stove up a lot more than shown in the video above. I used to take the wood and stack it up in the stove to the very top. I'd pop open the top plate on the stove and fill from the top stuffing as much wood in as I could possibly squeeze in. I'd be jiggling the wood around so there was the least air space possible. I'd be selecting wood pieces just the right size to fill in all the gaps. More wood in - longer burn times.

Where I lived at the time had some serious winters. Not as bad as the Tug Hill area of New York but pretty darned close. 40 below winter days and nights were common. The coldest I lived through up there was about 52 below zero. But that was only one day. Let me tell you to keep a late 1700's built house warm with no central heat just with the Oak and the Glenwwod was an achievement. I kept indoor plants and never lost any.

If I had to burn wood again, I'd jump on a modern stove deigned for wood. These old stoves are great with coal. They are not even close to a well made modern stove. I've also used Jotel wood stoves, Vermont castings wood stoves and another one I can't remember the name of. All of them, modern well designed wood burning stoves. All of them definitely better burning wood than older stoves. You do have to size the stove right for the space you are heating. I could get more heat out of the older stove if I wanted by pushing it than the modern ones. But for ease of use, efficient use of wood, good burn times and just general overall performance, the new wood stoves are better. For me, no contest.

dj

I can agree with everything you just said dij. The cylinder design is a design for coal burning. They were made that way. The box is the design for wood burning. I hope to the Almighty that I never have to burn wood in any great amount. That being said, I feel if people want to burn wood in an oak style stove during the Fall and Spring, that it would be okay and not be afraid to do it. If you want to do that then invest in a register plate. The point being is that a superb stove for coal burning might not translate to the optimal wood device, but; if you wanted to do it, then do it the correct way so you can get the best that you can out of it.

The register plate for my stove is beneath the stove collecting dust as I hope to never have to use it.

Just to illustrate, here is a wood stove, designed for wood burning made at the Turn Of The Century. Notice it is a box. It is the basis for all of the box stoves made today. If I was going to get a wood stove it would be something like this.

Did they make the wood stoves back then airtight and controllable like they did the coal stoves William?

I would be leary of stacking so much wood so high against the sheet metal of a cylinder stove...would it possibly overheat the metal?

I would assume that the best quality wood stoves were as well made as the coal burners, however; all the money and research went into improving coal stoves and appliances as that was the primary fuel. As a percentage, I don't have the exact numbers, but; by the 1880's coal use far outstripped wood as a fuel. Anywhere you could ship coal, people left wood burning and switched to coal. If you look at the catalogs from then, all the wood models were in the back of the catalog and all of the base burners were in the front.

As far as stacking wood up to the top of the stove, I don't think that the temperatures from wood would hurt the barrel. I think that stuffing logs into the barrel like shown in the video is a good way to bang and dent up the barrel if you weren't very careful.