Deb and I are always looking for sharp bargains on stuff we need, and we’re pretty good at uncovering killer deals. You’ve read about many of ’em here.
So when the City of Flippin, on its official page, announced the other day that Ranger Boats would hold “a huge variety clothing sale” today and tomorrow at its corporate HQ, that got my attention. Much of my wardrobe, such as it is, is getting threadbare — about the only clothes I’ve replaced in the last four years are jeans, underwear and socks. If I could pick up a couple of things at deep discounts, that’d be great.
And that was the question. Did “huge sale” imply “markdowns,” or was this merely an over-the-counter convenience to save us locals the shipping charges?
There was only one way to find out.
The sprawling Ranger facility, which is part of the Bass Pro empire here in The Ozarks, is located on the north side of Flippin. I arrived shortly after 8am and grabbed the parking spot closest to the entrance — a good thing, since rain was coming down in buckets at the time.
When I walked into the bright corporate lobby, I was greeted by a young woman sitting behind the main desk. She told me to ignore the price tags and expect “significant” discounts.
Question answered.
Apparel was laid out neatly on three long, cloth-draped tables, arranged by style and size. Only a couple of other shoppers browsed the merchandise while I was there, so I could take my time. Eventually I gathered up several items, both for Deb and for me, and stepped up to the counter to check out.
I didn’t know how “significant” the markdowns were until a Ranger Boats staffer wrote them on an old-school NCR ticket. I was pleasantly surprised, then, to see discounts between 65% and 75% off the retail prices.
It was worth the trip. I covered the six-and-a-half miles back to The Mountain quickly, considering the weather, and was Home before 9am.
I skipped blogging yesterday ’cause I wasn’t feelin’ it. Not in the mood. Wet fuse and no spark. Nothing in this world could make me tell you about yet another of our typical Sundays, doing the usual things.
The breakfast pizza at Casey’s was particularly good, though.
And it’s worth noting, I suppose, that between Saturday’s rain and today’s, our aquifer banked another two inches. Maybe a little more. That’s always welcome.
I got to thinking this morning about all of the things I don’t know. It’s how I learn. Still, though I don’t know everything, I do know some things.
More every day. Also, as I said on Saturday, I’m reminded all the time of stuff I already knew but hadn’t had reason to remember or use in many years.
I’ll probably keep telling you about that, or some of it. Maybe it’ll help a reader.
Just don’t get the idea that I’m posing as some sort of authority. I’m not.
A couple of subjects came up in a wood-burning group last night, and I want to talk about them here. The first had to do with burning softwood — pine, spruce, fir, cedar, etc. — in a woodstove, and the oft-heard caution that doing so is a ticket to creosote buildup and, as a result, chimney fires.
That’s misinformation, probably originating where hardwoods dominate the landscape and are readily available for fuel. Over half the world burns nothing but softwoods, however, and without issue. Why is that?
Creosote is the by-product of incomplete combustion. Poor draft, condensation in the stack, burning unseasoned (green) firewood or burning at too low a temperature — any of those will lead to creosote buildup. It has nothing (categorically) to do with softwood vs. hardwood.
No matter the type of firewood, it must be seasoned thoroughly to have a chance to burn completely. The goal is moisture content of 15% to 20%, which can be judged subjectively (by smacking sticks of wood together) or measured (with a cheap handheld meter). Then, it’s important to recognize that each species and type of wood burns differently.
Generally, seasoned softwoods burn hotter and faster than seasoned hardwoods. Let’s say you’re accustomed to burning white oak overnight, and you switch to white pine without changing anything else. Chances are you’ll wake up the next morning to a pile of ashes in a cold stove.
What do you do the next night? You choke the draft to slow down the pine’s burn rate. That may or may not make the softwood last ’til morning, and even if it does, it won’t generate the heat that oak did.
Worst of all, strangling the draft and slowing the burn lowered the flue temperature, resulting in incomplete combustion and, naturally, creosote.
It wasn’t the pine. It was you.
I can’t imagine a day when we’ll ever run out of oaks and hickories here on The Mountain. But if we did, and we had to heat the cabin with nothing but eastern red cedar, I’d have to make some adjustments.
The cedar would be 18 months’ seasoned (at least) before it went into the stove. I’d maintain my burns at the hotter end of what’s prudent. I’d be prepared to get out of bed a couple of times each night to tend the stove and stoke the fire with more fast-burning cedar.
And I’d probably sweep the flue and chimney mid-season, if only to confirm that I was burning hot enough to avoid incomplete combustion.
Hardwoods are my go-to fuel. They’re plentiful in Ozarkansas. But I don’t harbor an irrational, misinformed fear of softwoods, and you shouldn’t, either.
The other woodburning topic under discussion last night was prompted by a simple question:
“For the best heat in a room, should I leave the stove door open? Or should I keep the door closed?”
To anyone who’s lit a fireplace or heated their home with wood, the physics of that are pretty obvious. I’m gonna walk through an explanation anyway.
The intense radiant heat rolling out of a woodstove with the door open is a trick — what you don’t feel is the fire pulling indoor air back into the stove and up the flue. That supercharged draft may make the fire burn hotter (temporarily) and warm up the immediate area (temporarily), but it defeats itself.
Now if you just came indoors from work or play in sub-zero conditions, by all means throw open the door and toast yourself for a minute or two. Then shut the damned thing and let the stove do its job.
A woodstove is designed to contain an efficient fire that transfers its heat to the surrounding mass — cast iron, steel plate, fire brick, glass — and radiate that heat to air and, subsequently, objects in the room. Because a fire requires a supply of oxygen (air) to continue burning, a stove also admits fresh air, usually by way of an inlet with an adjustable damper.
The best and most efficient source of fresh air comes from outside the space being heated. That’s why we ran a duct from our woodstove’s inlet port to a fixture on the exterior wall of the cabin.
When the stove door is opened, however, the fire naturally begins pulling fresh air from the least-impeded source available — the room itself, through the open door. That air was already warm, and when it gets sucked into the fire and up the chimney, it’ll be replaced (in the room) with colder air. The process of heating the space is set back.
So don’t leave the stove door open because you think it helps. It doesn’t.
I make one exception to the open-door rule. Whenever I add fuel to a fire that’s died-down to large coals or glowing logs, I’ll leave the door ajar a bit — no more than a quarter-inch at the latch, just enough for the fire to choose that gap as its primary source of fresh air.
The focused draft acts like a mini-blowtorch on the new wood. Once it catches, after maybe a couple of minutes, I close the door.
Okay, maybe you knew all this. If you didn’t, now you do.
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath #Ungovernable
#LetsGoBrandon #FJB