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No-charcoal minion method; set and forget stickburner

I guess the described technique of tightly packed wood, like for a long burn in a woodstove will technically "work", but I'm concerned about what kind of fire & smoke you will get? Like others have said the goal for a stickburner (at least my goal) is for a small, hot & clean fire with thin blue/clear smoke. I guess I'm envisioning a tightly packed firebox with air flow choaked down to burn for a long duration will result in a long burn with dirty white smoke; not the greatest for BBQ. I'll be interested in what you find out with your experiment.
 
One thing to think about with a woodstove is your not trying to maintain a certain temp or keep a clean burning fire the whole time. Some things are better left alone and I believe this is one of them. If you dont want or have time to tend a fire all the time look into a uds, pbc, cabinet, or pellet pooper type smoker and use the stickburner on days you have time to babysit.
 
ShencoSmoke said:
Stick burners need a clean burning fire. If i opened the door and chunked a split in (like the chute would- with no precision) the fire would smolder because the fire is not built correctly. It takes skill to maintain a clean fire, and a gadget has no skill. And if you wonder why us stick burners go to all this trouble? Because we enjoy it!
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I agree totally with you that it takes a clean fire.:thumb: I am a stickburner and have been for years. I do it for two reasons. I enjoy maintaining the fire and, IMHO, it produces the best flavor. However, there are a few times when it would be nice to get the superior product a stickburner produces without having to tend a fire (at least not as much) such as when I have to do an overnight cook and go to work the next day. This seems to be what the OP was interested in. I am not saying it would be easy to design a working system and the question of fire quality had certainly come to mind. One solution I can think of for fire control is a system of guides and grates inside the firebox to help keep the fire in an optimal design. This idea may be more complicated than the OP wanted and I am not saying I will ever try it but it came to mind and I thought I would pass it along. Honestly I get fussed at by others for not being interested in getting a gravity-feed for competition but I just enjoy the process and taste of my stickburner too much - even if I am a little wiped out at awards :shock:
 
grill 'em all said:
Not saying it won't work but sounds like complicating a time honored semi-simple process. While I would enjoy a few hours away from tending our stickburner I question keeping the cook chamber hot enough..Our UDS is very capable of maintaining a steady temp for hours on end..Waylon,however,just isn't wired that way..It is time consuming & requires near constant fire management(every 30-45 min.)..That being said it's not a pain in the arse to operate..Actually its very easy..I liken it to having a big block Chevelle with a small gas tank..Drives the same as anything else,just gotta take more fuel stops!

Give it a shot..Pass along what you come up with..

Good Luck!!
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If you and know one else will say it, here it is.... "It won't work...period".

I have been raised on and currently heating with wood for 35 years. To many nastys to off gas from wood. Charcoal is carbon after the nasties are burned off and burns clean.
 
matadorbait said:
Hi All,

For those with stickburners, I think the consensus is that you have to add a split every hour or so (I've seed advice from 45 min to 90 min). And in many threads people talk about active fire maintenance is the biggest/only drawback to stickburners. So my question is this:

Are there any methods to get a longer burn with less maintenance from stickburning?

What I have in mind is this: what would happen if you filled a UDS basket with wood chunks (eg, use a bandsaw) and light from the top? No charcoal at all. Could it work for long cooks and need less frequent re-fueling?

I got the idea from this:

http://www.firewood-for-life.com/top-down-fire.html

When I light up my pit or pizza oven, I use this top-down method, and it works well. But I've always done it with splits on the grate. But what if one started with a basket with wood (not charcoal) chunks?

I've learned so much from this forum: I want to thank everyone in advance for your ideas.

Let the good ideas roll.....
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Sorry to chuckle, but stick burners with a proper fire running only need attention every 4-6hrs. I get up twice in a night and usually just toss a large block on and head back to bed for another 4-5hrs.
 
ag80n said:
I agree totally with you that it takes a clean fire.:thumb: I am a stickburner and have been for years. I do it for two reasons. I enjoy maintaining the fire and, IMHO, it produces the best flavor. However, there are a few times when it would be nice to get the superior product a stickburner produces without having to tend a fire (at least not as much) such as when I have to do an overnight cook and go to work the next day. This seems to be what the OP was interested in. I am not saying it would be easy to design a working system and the question of fire quality had certainly come to mind. One solution I can think of for fire control is a system of guides and grates inside the firebox to help keep the fire in an optimal design. This idea may be more complicated than the OP wanted and I am not saying I will ever try it but it came to mind and I thought I would pass it along. Honestly I get fussed at by others for not being interested in getting a gravity-feed for competition but I just enjoy the process and taste of my stickburner too much - even if I am a little wiped out at awards :shock:
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I hear ya, and good on you for sticking with the stick burner. It's just that I ( and others) have a hard time understanding why folks spend so much time trying to get a square peg in a round hole.
 
ag80n said:
Me too. Longest I can get in my brick pit is not quite two hours and that's on a hot day after it's been running all day.
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Home heating = absolutely : cooking on TBS = not a chance.
 
ShencoSmoke said:
I'd be interested in your pit design. Mine would be cold after 5 hours.
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I'm with ya on that!! If I had mine in the 250-275 range & walked away from it for 5 hrs I could most likely lay down in the cooking chamber it would be so cold!! The OP should check out Mr.Coyotes set up..Hell so should I!
 
I'm gonna experiment this weekend with my Junky Bandera. I'm gonna pack as many splits as I can get as tight as I can get in FB on top of grate that sits 2" off floor and dump 1 chimney of lit coals on top and let it go. Not gonna put any food in till I see what it does. I think it'll be Heavy Harsh Smoke from smoldering wood but we will see. I have a guy at work who says his Church buddy does this and my work buddy swears the Q is Good (and he's had my Q many times- it's the guy who helped me patch up this Turd).

 
Teleking said:
Home heating = absolutely : cooking on TBS = not a chance.
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I am assuming you were pointing out to me that I missed a joke about home heating. :wink:

If however you were saying my brick pit won't run that long between fuelings you would be correct. This is something that I only experience at the end of a cook on my brick pit. I know it sounds a bit far fetched :crazy: but it's the honest truth. In this pit I burn my wood down to coals in a hearth and only shovel in the coals. First hour or two it needs coals more often but once the bricks heat up it only needs coals once every 45mins to and hour but sometimes near the end of a cook I can do one last fuel to get the temp up to 250 and let the fuel run out. If it is hot enough outside it will coast slowly down to 225 as the bricks start to release their heat. The longest this has lasted after the last fuel is added was about 1:45. The TBS does die out over that time but it doesn't smolder. I guess I should have been more clear that this pit is not run exactly like my offset stick burner is. My bad. I was more stating this as an example of the longest I had ever been able to maintain a temp worthy of cooking at. I am in the same boat as everyone else seems to be with normal fuel intervals.
 
FatCoyote said:
Sorry to chuckle, but stick burners with a proper fire running only need attention every 4-6hrs. I get up twice in a night and usually just toss a large block on and head back to bed for another 4-5hrs.
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Fat, I'm curious as well, what are you cooking on?
 
When I first saw this thread, the idea of somehow incorporating a rocket stove came to mind; for some designs, they share similarities with a gravity feed cooker like a stumps. Then I found this video. Although this runs on pellets, I'm sure you could use wood chunks if you can get them small and uniform enough to flow in a hopper of some sort.

http://www.pelheat.com/Rocket_Stove.html

Notice how he has vents or "restrictions" set up to draw air from either above or below the fire, kind of similar to the intake vents on some wood stoves or stickburner fireboxes. This should give you more control over how clean your burn is, so the result isn't too smokey.

Now, the REALLY hard part would be to figure out sizing of the stove compared to the pit itself, in order to get the temperature range you want; ideally, in this case, between 200 and 400 degrees at the grate, and adjustable on demand. I think it's a good idea to start with though, compared to making something else like a UDS do something it wasn't designed for.
 
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