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[Jon_E]

Last night I had a thick bed of red hot coals in the G200, and it's pretty warm here (42 deg).  I put half a dozen splits of old, dry white pine in there, full of resin.

This morning, still had the same thick bed of red hot coals and the pine was gone, nothing left but fine powdery ash coating all the coals.  It's interesting that some woods will coal up well and others turn to ash without coaling, but this provided the best actual demonstration that I have seen so far.   

My lesson learned here is - use pine or other non-coaling woods for a quick initial burn, but mix it up good with other long-burning species (black birch and black locust being most common in my wood shed this season).  Funny thing is, though - butternut, which is a very soft wood and has a BTU rating only slightly better than pine, leaves a nice coal bed.  I have a lot of that too, and I have loaded nothing but butternut in the firebox a couple times, and been pleasantly surprised.

[jreimer]

Yup.  Pine and spruce won't coal at all for me in my P&M Optimizer 250.  On the other hand, the ash I have will almost coal too much.  I have found the best is to mix them with the ash on the bottom and spruce on top.