Glacier Bay- Is it me or the stove?

I'm On Fire wrote:Looks good, looks like you could add more coal too.

...yes, looks like you need to fill that suckah to the top of the fire brick, close the ash door, leave the mpd open until the blue ladies start dancing and set your mpd to coast

I'm On Fire wrote:Looks good, looks like you could add more coal too.

Yes, from the last picture you could/should add more coal, even go so far as to heap it up a bit in the middle. Also once it's burning well, the air inlet in the upper door should be almost entirely closed, 95 percent of the air should come though the inlet of the lower door. That was mentioned by one of the posts above but I'm repeating it because it is SO different from wood burning. With a low temperature stove, you may have black coal on top and burning coal underneath, but when you open up the air inlet to get lots of heat, the whole coal bed bottom to top may be red.

Stove coal takes a little more patience to burn. Will burn hot but also harder to control the heat. I cannot explain exactly why, just know from use. Nut will be much easier for you to learn.

When burning coal, your first fire for the first 24hrs will burn very clean & hot but than afterwards the heat will dampen down a bit due to some hard to expel ash in the corners of the box that consume firebox capacity. But this is OK, it is expected. Be careful shaking, never disturb a tired coal fire. Look for a mushy glowing ash just under the top layer. A fresh coal fire will look more distinguished if you poke around a little.
I always load a few shovels of fresh coal on top before shaking down. Let the fresh coal heat up and catch fire first. Keep at it. Hot Coal fires loves clear cold nights.

HotCoal! I want to change my user name to HotCoal!

That Glacier Bay is a clone of Gibraltar stoves , which in my humble opinion are the best made, most rugged handfired stoves out there . Take a look at the grates on that Glacier Bay compared to harman stove grate and you will know what I'm talking about. It is the indian that is the problem not the arrow. Fill it to the top of the banking plate and it will love to humm along all day at high temps. I think Cap is right get some nut coal and then mix in the stove or save it for those extra cold days. Do not give up on the stove its a good one.

hi i am new here i have the same stove. i got it new in the early eightys
. the book said the best coal is pea then nut
i have burned pea fpr years in my stove
thay will burn 12 very well
the draft onthe loading door runs best closed there are 4 cut outs in it so it is never realy closed
the lower draft i run at 2 turns open
this stove has a realy big pipe 8 in
so it is moving a lot of air

SUCCESS !! I guess my problem with the runaway fire way too much draft. I would get the fire going, and could not slow it down, untill I choked down the flue. I have no meters or tools to measure draft or temp, just old trial and error, but it worked. Yes, I do have CO2 / smoke detectors working and updated. I had 3/4 inch coal going though the shakers into the ash in the (Error ) days. So I thought stove coal was the correct size for the stove. Anyway, back to the poit. The slow death fires I guess was coal bed was too thin, only 2 or 3 inchs. Yup, I will have to update some pics, I fill it up now. Top firebox screw is closed, bottom is open maybe 3/4 turn from closed, and maual flue(for burning wood) is about 1/2, and my blisters on my finger are finally healing . Now will be fine tuneing. Thank you all for comments, tips and ideas.

kjun coal wrote: SUCCESS !! ... I thought stove coal was the correct size for the stove. ... Now will be fine tuning.

Once you are comfortable with burning (with a nice deep coal bed ), don't be afraid to try the stove coal again. I burned stove coal very successfully in a much smaller stove than yours, it burned well and it was very controllable and also was less prone to explosions due to the better airflow through the large pieces. The ONLY reason I went back to nut coal was, the large stove coal pieces didn't pack as tightly together as the nut, so I couldn't get as much total weight of coal into the stove and length of burn was shorter.

will wrote:hi i am new here i have the same stove. i got it new in the early eightys
. the book said the best coal is pea then nut
i have burned pea fpr years in my stove
thay will burn 12 very well
the draft onthe loading door runs best closed there are 4 cut outs in it so it is never realy closed
the lower draft i run at 2 turns open
this stove has a realy big pipe 8 in
so it is moving a lot of air

Welcome Will, where are you from?

I have a new problem. I was burning old bills and anything with an account number on it in the stove. If I burn them on top of the coal, will it clog it up with paper ash? looks like I might have to put a small stove in the garage, LOL.

kjun coal wrote:I was burning old bills

Nothing bigger than ones and fives, I hope.
Often stuff does not burn well atop a coal bed, because combustion air comes up through the coal and most of the oxygen is used up.

The only time I burn paper is when I'm starting the fire. After that, only coal gets burned. I hate when my glass gets foggy from wood/paper. I like seeing blue flames.