Tools & Accessories
Fireplace Tools & Accessories
Toolsets, screens, grates, ash buckets, blowers, gaskets, thermometers and the glass cleaner that actually works. The things that make a fireplace pleasant to live with rather than a chore.
The Kit
What You Actually End Up Using
Most fireplace accessories are bought once and used for twenty years, which is a decent argument for buying the good one. We stock what our own technicians use, because we get to hear about it when something is rubbish.
Tool Sets
Poker, brush, shovel, tongs
Stand or hearth-mounted, in finishes that will sit next to your door set rather than fight it. Individual replacements too, because it is always the poker that goes missing.
Grates & Andirons
Sized to the firebox
A grate that is too big for the firebox pushes the fire forward and smokes the room. We size it to the opening, not to the shelf it came off.
Ash Handling
Buckets, shovels, vacuums
A metal bucket with a lid and a proper ash vacuum. Household vacuums push fine ash straight through the filter and into the room.
Screens
Freestanding and hanging mesh
Spark containment on an open fire, including hanging mesh kits that retrofit behind an existing door set.
Blowers & Fans
Move the heat into the room
Insert and stove blowers, replacement blower motors, and stove-top fans that run off the heat with no wiring at all.
Gaskets & Rope
The annual service part
Door and glass gasket in the sizes the common stoves take, plus cement. A stove that has lost its door seal burns fuel it should not.
Glass Cleaner
The one that works
Purpose-made stove glass cleaner cuts baked-on creosote that household glass cleaner will not touch, and will not scratch ceramic glass.
Thermometers & Meters
Run it in the right range
Magnetic flue and stove-top thermometers, and a moisture meter — the single most useful twenty dollars a wood burner can spend.
Free Advice
The Two Things That Fix Most Wood Fires
Burn dry wood
Under 20 percent moisture
More bad burns come from wet wood than from anything else. Wood at 30% moisture spends the first part of every fire boiling water out of itself instead of making heat, the flue runs cool, and cool flue plus unburned fuel is exactly how creosote glaze forms.
Split it, stack it off the ground, cover the top and leave the sides open, and give it a year — two for oak. A moisture meter costs less than a service call and settles the argument.
- Under 20% on a fresh split face, measured across the grain
- Split before you stack. Rounds do not dry.
- Top covered, sides open. A tarp all the way down traps the moisture in.
Run it hot enough
Then let it breathe
The other half is how you run it. Damping a stove right down overnight to make the load last feels efficient and is the fastest way to glaze a chimney. A hot, bright fire with enough air burns the smoke instead of depositing it.
A flue thermometer tells you where you actually are rather than where you think you are. Most stoves want the flue in a fairly narrow band, and the manual will tell you which one.
- Hot start — get the flue up to temperature before you damp anything
- Watch the smoke at the top of the chimney. Clear is right; blue-grey haze is not.
- Have it swept every year — see inspections and sweeping
Come See It
Have a Look on the Floor
Tools, screens, grates and gaskets are all in stock at the showroom on North Royal Avenue. If you need a gasket size or a blower motor for a stove we did not sell you, ring us anyway — we probably have it.