Lighting and Operating Antique Wood Cookstoves

Join me as I demonstrate how I operate my antique Crescent Classic wood cook stove. It’s patterned after a Glenwood C made in Taunton, MA around the turn of the 19th century. We’ll touch on the various functions, features and observations. Apologies for the background noises. And the “ums“. Getting your non-airtight stove going is fairly straightforward: 1) Open your dampers up fully 2) Open your ashpan or lower air inlet fully (ensuring your wood grate is also open) 3) Keep your upper air inlets closed and your oven diversion set to “off“ or “open“ so smoke flows freely up the flue and out the chimney 4) Put a small amount of paper, birch bark or easily ignited material in the base of your wood grate. Alternatively, some folks do this in the ash pan. 5) Place the usual fire-building materials over the paper on the wood grate (pencil sized sticks or thin kindling). 6) Nurse your fire until it’s strong, opening and closing inlets/