the 60/40 rule for oven dried wood.

[ThermoJax]

Jcg31's great youtube video about why oven dried firewood is the best, "creating an inferno in two minutes" advises that 60% of the wood should be oven dried, and 40% should be air dried. He says that if you do not have about 40% air dried, that you will have too much soot. But, when I think of chimneys, and soot build up, I always think that soot is caused by wet wood.

So, why not use 100% oven dried wood? I am pretty darn sure that the wood I have dried in the oven has very little moisture after a few days in a hot oven.

[GrahamG]

we use kiln dried wood and get an excellent fire, just recently (getting down to last 6 firings) wood maybe damp here in the UK but has started smoking after around 20 firings, so I am putting the smoke down to the wood being damp.

When we fire the oven, we just build a small jenga style frame of kindling with some paper and 4 logs, lite it and go in for a drink, when we come out we add 4 more logs and leave for a further 40 minutes at this point it is usually around 350 C, then we add a further 4 logs and this normally lasts for 2 hours after finished making pizzas.

To keep some of the heat, we close the steel, insulated door but find that soot appears on the outside of the door the folowing morning, making it look unsightly.