Oil soaked paper logs.

[kawalekm]

People are familar with the old idea of rolling recycled newspapers into logs for burning. A few roller machines were even marketed to make it faster. Of course though the performance of these "logs" leaves much to be desired.

I wonder though if this could be a good way to burn our waste motor oil in a woodstove. I can imagine rolling up some logs, soaking one end in a bucket of motor oil, letting it wick up, then popping the wet roll in the stove.

Has anyone here ever tried this, or is this something too dangerous to attempt?

[candy]

You are going to have a lot of smoke rolling out of that stove. Black smoke to boot.

Lol , sounds like something my hubby would try and then not understand why I get upset with him over it.

[jott]

Never tried in a stove, but have tried it in a steam boiler. It did not work great, had to have a very good draft and a very hot fire for them to burn well. Since they don’t burn down into a coal bed it is hard to keep a hot fire with them. It is something I would do if I had waste oil to get rid of from time to time but I would not try to use it as an every day thing. And I would not try it with any kind of open stove

[kawalekm]

Thanks Jott!
Did you see excessive smoke production as "candy" mentioned? Perhaps one way around this would be to stoke the fire with half paper logs and half wood. The wood would produce some coals to keep the oil rolls hot and the oil logs would cut wood comsumption in half. Once I get my woodstove put in I'll try it out.

[DM]

Old catalogs are hard to burn, i have a couple plastic pails in my shop that i drop them in "on end". I then pour in a couple gallons of used motor oil in the pails and they sit there soaking it up, sometimes for quite a while. I then put one in with my wood every so often and they burn up completely. As i add catalogs, i add oil...

My newspapers i save and put in bundles. I then give them away to kids or to the church that's doing "paper drives" that can profit in some "good" way from them..

DM

[jott]

No smoke visible, but had a very hot fire with good draft. I would not try it a fire place or a Franklin stove. But for a closed fire box I would say it is worth a try to see if it will burn clean. Unless you have one of those new stoves with the catalytic converter and all that other fancy stuff.

[DM]

I doubt you would gain much heat from it but you will surely get a lot of smoke.

It burns very hot giveing off a lot of heat, but it's like pine, it burns fast too... Chokeing it down to make it last longer cools off the fire and then there's lots of smoke..

I only use it for some fast heat and to get the fire going...

DM

[docjered]

Maybe it is just me, but I dont get it... oil and paper are both readily recyclable. Why would one just burn them?

[cub_cadet]

Yer better off just soaking tightly wrapped newsprint in regular water, then draining the things in a vertical position, in the hot sun, then stacking them in yer wood crib till winter. The makeup of the newsprint fibers is altered when exposed to moisture, and when dry, is more readily consumed in a hot fire. However, if you burn mostly paper and no, or little wood, you`ll have very feathery residue that takes up more space and is harder to clean up than regular wood ash. Also, a paper fire doesn`t give you as many btu`s as wood. Oil would be more trouble than it`s worth, in my book.

[ryanmercer]

Also I wouldn't let local officials find out you are burning oil... it's probably illegal... if you can't drive down the road with your car smoking from oil excessively for safety reasons... I imagine you can't burn a known pollutant in your stove...