Three Minute Fire

[jonlovepizza]

nice one dave with tea bags i like it i like it a lot . i shall use this method . wen i get to fire

[lwood]

I use the fire-starter also. Chemicals in the oven? At 900F those hydro-carbons are long gone. Especially when the the dome clears. It's a very small amount of fuel (maybe 5 gm.) and works great.

Wet wood....oh my. I live in the tropics and the wood is always wet. especially since we live in the rain-forest. Dry wood is an imperative when firing the oven and getting it up to temp. Even if you have a nice fire going and throw a wet piece of wood on, it will drag the fire down until all the water is evaporated. Only then can the piece of wood ignite.

I always dry my wood for the next firing with the residual heat. Wait until the oven is below 450F before you put your in wood to dry. Much hotter than that you risk it igniting and you will end up with a pile of ash. You will probably see the smoke long before that and careful when you open it cause you are adding oxygen to the chamber and it will surely burst into flames. So below 450F when drying your wood. I speak from experience. All of these thing have happened to me.

Your wood should be dry enough to burst into flames within 30 sec on a bed of coals, with a flame. I always like a small flame going all the time....so when I want a tall flame during pizza cooking.....I throw in a piece of wood and it bursts into flame. I like to the way flames char the top and make the dough rise quickly. I've never had the problem of the top cooking quicker than the bottom and I can control the top char better than the bottom. An active flame is my ace in the hole.

[heliman]

What I like about the fire lighters is that they burn intensely when lit (unlike kindling or paper), and this is all that is needed to get the main fire roaring away. A tiny block of starter, as you say lwood, is all that's needed and that only costs a few cents so well worth it in my view.

[Karangi Dude]

Hey All,
I am not an advocate for using news paper as a starter, it just works for me.
I was trying more to explain about building a stack with plenty of air flow.
I don't seem to have problems with the newspaper ashes I think it is because I push the fire deep into the oven just after lighting. (a couple of pics showing how the paper has burnt)
As a cheap alternative to bought fire lighters you can use coals with citronella, this one litre bottle only cost a couple of dollars. I made some to show how they work, I used about 200ml of citronella to make about 2 litres of coal lighters, they burn for a fair while long enough to get a good fire goining.
When I was a young fellow my Mother used to make them using kerosene we did not have citronella back then.

Cheers Doug