How to Start a Wood Stove With a Propane Torch
Lighting a wood stove shouldn't take three tries. People who've burned wood for decades have a quicker way, and a few things they watch for.
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The fire's laid the way the stove shop showed you. Two sheets of newspaper, a tent of kindling, one match. Ten minutes later the paper's ash, the kindling's black at one end and the room smells of smoke.
Ask the people who light a stove every day and a lot of them say the same thing: a plumber's torch. A trigger-start propane torch like the Bernzomatic torch, screwed onto a cylinder from the hardware store, has the kindling burning in a few seconds to a minute.
If paper and kindling have become a chore, or the fire keeps dying before the logs catch, the torch is worth a try.
What people who light a stove daily do
The thread asking r/woodstoving what a new stove owner actually needs got this from somebody who'd heated with wood for most of their life:
Welding gloves. A propane torch to get things started in under 60 seconds with no paper or petroleum. I've lived with a woodstove for 42 of my 51 years and can't believe I caught onto both of these last year.
u/terrybuvm, in r/woodstoving
Hold the flame at the kindling until it's burning on its own, then shut the door. With dry kindling, one owner has the fire going in under a minute. On Hearth.com, a long-running stove forum, a dozen posters in one thread light theirs the same way.
One owner adds a small square of fire-starter block and torches that. It works on old coals too: another points the torch at the coals to get them going before adding kindling.
Can you light a wood stove without kindling?
Yes, if the wood is dry. One owner keeps a propane torch for their partner, who finds lighting the stove harder. You can stick it on a dry piece of wood with no kindling, they say, and have a fire going in no time.
Another uses a weed burner, the long-wand kind. They just throw in the logs and blast them for a few seconds.
Propane, MAP-Pro or butane?
Most of the torches these owners name screw onto a disposable cylinder, and the fuel is where the choice is.
Propane is the cheap one, and the one most of them use. When a farm owner with several stoves asked which torch to buy, the first answer was a Bernzomatic on propane: cheap, reliable and sold everywhere. Another in that thread runs the cheaper propane version and says it works just as well as the MAP-Pro setup.
One owner keeps a torch at each of two stoves and gets a couple of seasons out of a cylinder.
The MAP-Pro setup costs more. One household lights with it because a plumber lives there and it's always lying around. Otherwise, they say, they'd just use propane.
Butane is the compact one. A kitchen torch, the kind sold for crème brûlée, like the Blovec butane torch, refills from a can instead of screwing onto a cylinder. One owner uses one because it's more compact than a propane torch, and another blasts the kindling for a few seconds with one and calls it good to go.
The weed burner is a bigger tool: it runs off a five-gallon propane tank. One voice in the farm owner's thread says that's the right tool and a plumbing torch is for plumbing. It does put a barbecue-sized tank by the hearth, though, which is a lot of hardware for a kindling job.
What they watch for
A torch is an open flame pointed into a stove, and the careful owners keep a few rules:
- Flame on the wood, never on the stove. One Hearth.com poster who lights with a torch is careful not to let the hot flame touch any part of the stove, the glass especially. Aim at the kindling, through the open door.
- The cylinder lives somewhere else. The next worry in that thread was the bottle of propane sitting right next to the stove. A poster in an older thread wouldn't keep it there either. Light, shut the door, and put the torch back wherever the plumbing tools live.
- Gloves and an extinguisher. The 42-year owner's other late discovery was welding gloves, and the owner with the butane torch adds a fire extinguisher or two.
No stove maker or fire service has said anything about torches, for or against, that we could find. The closest thing is a state fire marshal's rule never to add a flammable liquid to a woodstove, which says nothing about a torch either way.
That leaves your stove's own manual as the only authority there is. Read it before the first try, and if it names what to light with, that beats anything on this page.
When the torch doesn't help
A torch doesn't fix wet wood. One Hearth.com poster's answer to a whole thread of torch users was that if you need a torch, your wood is wet. The reply that came back was "ever heard of dry kindling??", and both have a point.
If a fire won't catch with a match or with a torch, look at the woodpile before you look at the lighter. The torch needs something to catch, too. Another Hearth.com poster who uses one says it doesn't work so well without a fire starter.
Where to start
Start with propane, since that's what most of these owners burn. Screw the Bernzomatic trigger-start torch onto a cylinder from the hardware store, hold the flame on dry kindling until it catches, and shut the door. A butane kitchen torch does the same job in less space.
Keep the cylinder away from the hearth, and read the manual before the first try. While you're at the store, the welding gloves are worth a look, on the word of somebody who waited 42 years for both.
