Entirely Different Ball Game

Boy, did I learn a BIG lesson today. I'm burning coal with my Leisure Line stoker. Soooo easy to light; "magic bag" on grate, covering air holes, big scoop of rice coal on top, light her up, wait for blue flame, another big scoop of coal, DONE.

Now...Dad's stove is in. Hitzer, gravity fed, hand fired. Holy cow. Took us HOURS to light this freakin thing. We probably could have been done by about 6pm, starting around 5-5:30, but we were waiting for it to kind of work like my stove. NOT. We did not realize that when you fill that hopper, it fills the stove!!!! My stove has a small grate with lots of flame. His apparently will NEVER have flame once the hopper is filled. We didn't realize that when we got a nice layer of red hot lump coal, the stove was ready to be filled. Geeze. We kept waiting for the stove to be ready handle lots of coal and still have a flame. Oye.

Just left their house. Am exhausted. Will find out in the morning if the stove took, but I think we are all set. Right before I left, we could finally smell sulfur when we opened the hopper lid and could hear the coal crackling.

I will never give advice on starting a coal stove again unless it is my exact model stove because they are all apparently WAY different from one another!!!

Experiences, experiences.

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