Can never start a fire in efm w/o acetylene

 
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hotblast1357
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Post by hotblast1357 » Mon. Jan. 15, 2018 7:18 am

Haha just to be fair! That’s one more than I’ve seen with my eshland.

 
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windyhill4.2
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Post by windyhill4.2 » Mon. Jan. 15, 2018 8:43 am

The fines lever will dump lots of fines & dust too..... might be easier to pull the lever every 15 minutes than to go thru the pain of a re-start.

 
lzaharis
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Post by lzaharis » Mon. Jan. 15, 2018 10:42 am

I start by soaking a big coffee can filled with charcoal briquettes with lighter fluid. A few minutes later I pull out 6-8 briquettes lay them down on a full sheet of news paper and break them with a 4 pound hammer to their very smallest piece after breaking them withthe broadest part of the four pound hammer.

What I have been doing is pouring the broken briquettes in toilet paper tubes and wrapping the tubes with a 1/4 sheet of news print and roll them up and tape them shut. I then take 2 of them and push them into the coal pile on the stoker and light them.

This last time I use a coal mouse between them on the flat grate to get it to fire off. This is how I started my first fire this year and I am still burning with the same fire. I have tried the coal mice before and I have not had much luck with them by themselves which may be a result of the three fire bed wide stoker unless I used the crushed charcoal
briquettes either in toilet paper tubes or making a folded up paper bag with the newsprint and taping the folded up ends of the " newspaper sack" that will get your fire going but it wastes charcoal as you so not have the room to pour a handful of coal on top of the fire made by the briquettes.
Last edited by lzaharis on Mon. Jan. 15, 2018 11:11 am, edited 1 time in total.

 
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StokerDon
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Post by StokerDon » Mon. Jan. 15, 2018 10:50 am

Now that is an awful lot of work just to get a coal fire started.

If you do it this way, you need to be very careful. Any liquid fuel you put in will leak right down into places where it will ignite later. On an EFM, it will go to the bottom of the pot, then travel down the feed pipe to the bin. That could be a big BOOM!

-Don


 
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windyhill4.2
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Post by windyhill4.2 » Mon. Jan. 15, 2018 10:54 am

lzaharis wrote:
Mon. Jan. 15, 2018 10:42 am
I start by soaking a big coffee can filled with charcoal briquettes with lighter fluid. A few minutes later I pull out 6-8 briquettes lay them down on a full sheet of news paper and break them with a 4 pound hammer to their very smallest piece after breaking them withthe broadest part of the four pound hammer.

What I have been doing is pouring the broken briquettes in toilet paper tubes and wrapping the tubes with a 1/4 sheet of news print and roll them up and tape them shut. I then take 2 of them and push them into the coal pile on the stoker and light them.

This last time I use a coal mouse between them on the flat grate to get it to fire off. This is how I started my first fire this year and I am still burning with the same fire. I have tried the coal mice before and I have not had much luck with them by themselves which may be a result of the three fire bed wide stoker unless I used the crushed charcoal
briquettes either in toilet paper tubes or making a folded up paper bag with the newsprint and taping the folded up ends of the " newspaper sack" that will get your fire going but it wastes charcoal as you so not have the room to pour a handful of coal on top of the fire made by the briquettes.
Izzy.... that may work on a flatbed stoker..... it won't work with a underfed pot.

Like SD said.... too much potential for a BOOM with that method.

 
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Rob R.
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Post by Rob R. » Mon. Jan. 15, 2018 10:57 am

Using any kind of combustible fluid to light a stoker is a bad idea. I suspect that is what happened to the guy mentioned by CoalJockey.

 
lzaharis
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Post by lzaharis » Mon. Jan. 15, 2018 11:11 am

For what its worth, the briquettes are dry before I break them up and use them. I never light a coal fire with wet briquettes.

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