# Upside Down Fire



## austinl (Jun 10, 2012)

Have any of y'all heard or tried making a wood fire in your side boxes with this upside down method?  I've read around the internet of people doing it in fireplaces for a long steady burn and thought I'd throw it out here before I go light off a pile of wood like that.


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## shoneyboy (Jun 10, 2012)

No, I have not, but I would be interested in following this post to see how it worked out....


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## austinl (Jun 10, 2012)

I'll likely try it next weekend unless someone chimes in here that it burns out of control for cooking purposes and post some pics and times, temps and such.


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## capntrip (Jun 10, 2012)

never tried it for cooking but for starting a campfire it works really well putting the kindling on top


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## austinl (Jun 17, 2012)

*Results From The Upside Down Fire*

Attempted to stack it as close together as possible




















On goes the hot charcoal next







About 30 minutes in the fire is going nicely and I have the intake damper choked down a bit.  Nice thin blue smoke going; okay very thin blue smoke but there was plenty in the cooking chamber.  Cooking temperature is holding a solid 230F.







And now the trouble comes.  1 hour in the bottom logs catch fire somehow.







I'm thinking the intake is open more than enough to feed this thing however, the fire quickly consumes all the oxygen in the firebox after spiking out-of-control and my thin blue smoke is not so much anymore.







1 and 1/2 hours in the temps start dropping from the choked-out fire.  Another 15 minutes of my last-pitch adjustments and I decide to pull the rip cord on this mother.  I leave two logs in that are burning the best and return the thin blue smoke and my temps stabilize after about 15 minutes.







Unless I've missed some fundamental concept of the upside down fire here I'm declaring this a FAILURE for the purpose of cooking food.  Oh well, at least I got some good chicken out of it in the end once I rebuilt my fire.







And finally for no practical reason what-so-ever here is a pic of TBS at night under a flash.


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