New Old Crane 404 Stove

Woooooooooowooooooooo doggy! Lit the stove tonight with some dry seasoned wood and smoked out my basement! The stove was off gassing and smelled like burning plastic/paint/oil etc. Lets just say the boss upstairs wasn't too happy! But she's cool and got over it in like 15 seconds! HA!

I ran her at about 450d with the bottom door cracked open - I figured the stove is smoking so might as well try to get all off it off now!

I had my flu wide open and the ashpan door cracked 90% of the time. The times I shut the door the flame would get lazy but would maintain about 325d with the airflow knobs fully opened. But my number one goal was to burn off the residuals and air out the basement. There was no sign of wood smoke present so that was good.

Its only 55d outside so I'm sure my draft isn't sucking hardcore right now. We do have a little bit of wind volume outside but who knows....

Real nice AD--50* right now--we've had frost for the last 3 nights--YEP, she'll only smoke like that once per season my friend---well done

Ah, the smell of curing paint. Almost as good as starting a small block chevy after rebuild. Just wait till you get some coal in there. Nice job. Matt

Oppps.... We forgot to warn you about that Now you will remember if you ever re-paint the stove to make sure you have it all ready so you can run to it and spark it up the second the wifey heads out to the mall for the day otherwise you no doubt will hear the cursing "WTF are you doing, I cant breath, you flippin' ass...." (like every single one of us has heard at least once).

I'm burning wood tonight. But I'm having a hard time keeping a strong flame with the ash pan in the door closed and the vents wide open. will coal burn differently?

What temp should my stove be running at? I can keep it constantly at 300 with the door cracked like in the pic. If I open up all the way I can get to 525.

I don't want to leave the door open unattended though.

Wood likes air from over the fire. I didn't see any secondary air controls on your loading door. Coal likes air from under the fire hence the primary air control on the ash pan door. I'm sure Dcrane will be around shortly. Although it should be cold enough tonight at least by me, throw some coal in there. Good luck Matt.

Edit: Typed without thinking. When you first rebuilt the stove looks like it was burning fine. Everything kosher with the chimney and dampers. Is this the first night your having problems? Wood quality?

Forget whatt I said in the edit part of my previous post. Thought you were having problems. Sorry been up since 3am. Yes, you always want the ashpan door closed. Matt

wood should burn up like a torch with bottom door open (ashpan or not). Is your damper closed? (open it if it is), what type of wood are you burning? green or wet wood sucks no matter what your burning it in!
start your wood fire with crumpled newspapers stuffed in ashpan and in grate... cover the paper with some nice dry sticks and place a few larger pieces of split wood on top of those... place a paper in the flu and light that first (close top door, bottom door open, damper open)... next light the paper in ash pan... you should start hearing the roar of the draft in a sec! keep bottom door open until she is going good... open top door add some more big logs... close bottom door and play with air controls to fine tune (if you leave the bottom door open it should be consuming wood like wildfire.

their is no secondary air holes on this particular unit because it was built by a rouge employee (but that should not effect the fact that dry/seasoned wood should be easy as hell to burn).

I may have posted prematurely as this is only my second burn.I threw a couple more logs in and got the temperature up to 500and close the ash pan door. the stove pipe thermometer slowly goes down in temperature with the door closed and the two front knobs wide open. The temperature outside is around 50 degrees.

all of the wood is seasoned and it doesn't burn up very fast with the ash pan door wide open. But that seems to be the only way I can get the temperature up to four or five hundred degrees. Once I get it that hot I close the ash pan door and the temperature so will we goes down to 300.it takes about 30 minutes to get to 300.

AD--even wood needs a good bed of coals my friend--be patient & you'll get that bed--then I'd bet closing the ash door with vents wide open will work OK--I would NOT go to bed with the vents wide open--like suggested---throw some coal on her once you get a good bed.

Gotta get me some coal first! Ha....

I had a typo up above. The wood burns up fast with the ash pan door open. I'm sure I'll figure it out. I've been hanging out down in my basement for a few hours. I'm sure the wife doesn't mind. Hahaha

I have my thermometer about 6 inches near the outlet of the stove on the stove pipe.

Gottcha, you're doing fine with it--

Thats all just keep experimenting. Matt

Well I bought a couple bags of coal today. Took about 1hr 20min to get her filled up to the top. Running temp was about 500d on the stove pipe thermometer. I shut the ashpan door and kept the knobs fully open. I'll monitor over the next few hours. When I dumped the last load on, the temp went down to 475. The coal was super wet but whatever.... the place I got the bags from stores them outside. It could be last years stuff too...

So, I mostly see blue flames... is this OK? Not sure what to expect really... The blue flame at the "header" of this forum is what it looks like.