17
Fuels
Wood
Wood is probably the most popular fuel. Well seasoned hardwood will give you the longest burn
time. Seasoned wood is wood that has been cut and split and allowed to dry for one year. Some
good hardwoods are maple, beech, oak, ash, elm and birch. You can burn softwoods in your new
SEDORE stove. However, softwood won't give the length of burn that hardwood will. Some soft-
woods are cedar, pine, spruce and poplar. You can expect 12-18 hours burning time on just one
fill-up of wood, depending on its degree of dryness.
If you are able to store your wood indoors, you will get the absolute longest burn times. However,
most of us cannot store our winter's supply of wood indoors. Try to have at least one day's supply
of wood inside. The reason for this is that it takes heat energy to warm the wood to burning tem-
perature - so you will lose some heat energy warming the wood. If the wood is already room tem-
perature you will get more heat from your stove. You will get the most heat, and longest burns out
of a complete load of seasoned hardwood. However, green and wet wood will still burn in the SE-
DORE stove as long as it is put on top of dry wood, as it will dry out before it reaches the bottom.
You will discover that you get more creosote when you use in green or wet wood. However, this
is not a problem in the SEDORE because as long as you have placed good dry wood on the bot-
tom of the fuel load, the rest of the load doesn't matter much because it will dry before it reaches
the fire at the bottom. The creosote from the wet wood will stay in the front chamber, on the lid
and upper walls, where no harm can be done - it will simply dry and fall in by itself. Caution:
When loading fuel, don't put wet wood in at the bottom as the creosote can then go up the chim-
ney.
Wood now can be cut up to 18 inches long for filling the stove horizontally. However, when a
good bed of coals is established, you can put the wood in vertically. The box will hold logs verti-
cally up to 26” long. It is helpful when burning very large chunks, to stand some smaller ones
around it.
Corn
Corn starts best when thrown onto a bed of coals, so you can start the stove the same way you
would start it with wood. After reaching the stack temperature, add cob corn instead of wood.
Corn burns best when dried to 12%. You will get a higher heat from cob corn than wood. You can
expect 10-12 hours on one fill-up of corn.
If you would like even a longer burn, you can increase the burn time a great deal if you pour ker-
nel corn over a fill-up of cob corn. For example, it takes approximately two sacks of cob corn to fill
the Model 3000 stove. On top of this you can add approximately five "milk jugs" of kernels. The
SEDORE can take more than 24 hours to burn through a load like this.
Draft setting is much lower when burning corn than it is with wood because corn needs very little
air once it gets going.
If you wish to burn straight kernels, you will need the hopper insert.
You can burn any of the small granular fuels, such as kernel corn, wood pellets, grains, sawdust,
etc. mixed with larger fuels such as wood or corn cobs.
