Woodburning for fun and profit!

Way back in the days of dinosaurs... you know, the 80s... those were my formative years. I'm of the highschool class of 1984. Feathered hair, Flashdance, hightop tennies.

My home however was in the days of the 1890s. My dad wanted to save money on heating bills so when we were at bible camp in Minnesota one summer, my folks purchased a woodburning stove. Why they thought of this 500 miles from home and in the heat of the summer is beyond me, but they did. We hauled it home in the back end of our converted breadtruck RV and Dad installed it in the center of our livingroom. Above this mysterious oven, was a tall metal chimney that was about 10-15 inches circumference. An elbow at the bottom of the chimney going into the stove and the other end disappearing into the ceiling and out the roof of the house. And a funky box thing halfway up that if you turned it on would blow the escaping heat out into the room.

The bedrooms for us girls were thru a closed door and up the stairs from there, but there was no heat up there. Not even with the gas furnace on! Some winters, on extremely cold nights, my sisters would give up and camp out in front of the woodburning stove. I was the strong one. I'd take an old mayonnaise jar full of piping hot water to bed with me to keep my toes warm and in the morning find that it had slid out from under the blankets to freeze next to the wall...

So anyway, back to the woodburning stove... Several years later, one afternoon, I got home from highschool with one of my sisters and the stove had burned down to nothing but cold ash while we were out all day. My parents weren't home yet and if you recall from my garbage burning incident, you'll know that I don't back away from a challenge, especially when it deals with fire! I stuffed the stove full of crumpled newspaper that we always kept on hand and put in several small bits of wood along with a couple BIG logs. It was going to be warm in that house even if I had to burn the house down...

And I almost did.

As the newspaper took off, the small bits of wood ignited. The larger logs started slowly burning. We enjoyed the heat and laid our snowy gloves on top to dry off. The sizzle of the stove sounds so nice!

As the stove heated up, we noticed something... The elbow at the bottom of the chimney wasn't the dull black anymore. It was turning a deep blackish/red and getting redder by the moment. I quickly turned the little valve that lets the heat escape more outside but am unsure about which way I turned it. The reddish glow slowly crept up the metal chimney.

If the elbow part had broken, the fire, I'm sure, would have sprayed out on the carpet a few feet behind and would have spread quickly. My sister and I opened the stove and with the stove stick, pushed stuff around in the fire. I think that may have made it a bit hotter... Not sure.

After several heart stopping minutes, the red glow finally started to die down and our hearts stopped beating out of our chests.

We got some "instruction" from our parents when they came home and knew better the next time we had to build a fire.

Not ours... stock photo of someone's! Ours was entirely enclosed and black with a grill, but this looks much swankier than ours ever did.

Have any of you done anything like this when you were younger? You know... accidentally try to burn the house down? twice?