Took down an old Beech at the cabin.

[Kevin in Ohio]

Got to thinking and decided to do a little more to the stump. Plunge cut some X's into the wider sections making sure not to cut through. I'll fill these with oil to stoke the fire.

I ran the saw back through the straights to clear them out. Now to build the fire.

Paper in the bottom and dead twigs to start till I get a good coal pile and some heat.

Drug all the brush in and raked the big chunks up so Dad can mow come Spring. Yeah, those are some BIG Sycamores in the background. One in the middle is over 5ft across

We started the fire at 9AM and this is what it looked like at around Noon.

 

[Kevin in Ohio]

It seemed to help as in the lows of the web you could see the red glow in the middle, feeding it air.

Here you can see what I was referring to with the glow. Not as good as I hoped but I think it does help to do the cuts. tends to fill up with ash some but once it gets a little bigger the air draw keeps it pretty open.

The other side has a glowing window to the inside as well.

I'm hoping it will continue to burn outward as the coals burn down and settle. Time will tell on that. So far it's doing okay.

This is what it looked like at 2:30. We hung around till 3 and will go back over before night to check on it. I'll try to get some pics then.

 

[Kevin in Ohio]

I can confirm the above about wavy beech and kinetic splitters!

Everything has it's place, pluses and minuses. Next time a get a solid wavy grain that's over 3 ft in diameter I'm going to save them for some of the Kinetic guys. If I was running production(as a business) I'd have one to do the smalls and quick stuff. I need an all in one so mine suits me fine.

Try these with a kinetic and yes, that is Beech.

This is just after I finished building the splitter and had saved a pile of rounds to play with. Worked them up with no issues. The best part of it is I CAN work them up by myself with little to no straining at a comfortable height.

 

[Kevin in Ohio]

Went back over to check on it and when we first saw it from a distance didn't think it looked too good. When we walked up on it though we were pleasantly surprised. It's burning back on all sides and going strong. This has 10 hours of burn time on it here.

This side is real nice and basically gone. I'd say it's about 1/3 burnt now. You can see the glow at the top and sides where it is going back.

This side has a lot to go but the coal pile is stacked high there and a BUNCH of heat working on it. As soon as it breaks through a side it will probably do really nice. Here's hoping with fingers crossed.

 

[Cowboy254]

Grab a leaf blower and blow the ash off it to allow air to get in there, I reckon.

 

[Jeff Lary]

I agree too much ash I did the same to 2 spruce stumps on my lawn. I worked but I had to bring in a lot of wood to keep the fire going long enough to burn the stump.

 

[Bobby Kirbos]

That burned out stump looks like a volcano for an HO or N gauge model railroad layout.

 

[djones]

This is how I dealt with a 42" dia. stump this summer. Creates a lot of heat in my stump forge.

 

[Jeff Lary]

I bet that vacuum worked good. I went out to the wood lot and filled a trailer with dead cut up softwood to stoke mine with.

 

[Kevin in Ohio]

1 day burn

1 day in and we were hopeful as it was working it's way out pretty good.

I took some of the coals and put it in the outer webs in hopes that it would start burning from the outside in. I would throw some firewood around to get it flaming hot but then I'd have to babysit it. We've got other stuff to do.

We'll see how that does tonight.

1 1/2 days of burn here. A little disappointed as the coals did nothing on the outside and basically went out.

It's still burning nice but slow. we always want more than we have I guess but it's human nature. We did take a leaf blower over but it had carb issues so that's a no go.

Lots of heat coming off of it. I took the dirt and ash away on the outside and cleaned out the cracks on the top. Dropped some nice coals on that and they were burning till we left. We'll see what tomorrow holds.