Hey Bud, I’d recommend that you check out a Blaze King catalytic insert stove. There is a bit of a learning curve to operating a catalytic stove but they produce long lasting, even heating and are very efficient.

I just bought a small stove for my wood shed. I have been pretty successful in getting a fire in it, but its not without watching it and keeping up with it so I may give this a try soon.

The difference between a good stove that is efficient and a bad one that gobbles cords of wood are the fire bricks. As one can see that stove has fire brick all around. Fire bricks and refractory are the expensive part of the stove. They are the thing that keeps the firebox hot and burning efficiently. It's also why he can build a fire upside down, as the firebox retains the heat to catch the bigger wood afire. Don't use lint on a catalytic stove. Lint is mostly synthetic fiber, basically plastic and will cause problems with the catalytic converter.

I've started doing a fire this way and I'd never look back. There's far less smoke in the house from stalled flues than before and you never run low on embers.

classic stove

We have an Esse, best thing we bought 12 years ago, has oven and cooking ranges on top, if it suits your situation I would recommend looking t Esse

We do this. Except we just keep the egg trays on the dryer and load as we go. Then collect candles from yard sales, we melt them down and pour it over the trays. We do it before winter comes and then just have tons of fire starters for winter. Another way I have seen is putting wood shavings in the wax coated paper ketchup cups.. never tried that method tho