My experience loosly mirrors Rons. I just couldnt pull the trigger on a $3600 stove, no matter what brand, I just didnt think the numbers worked out. In the end, I bought a used stove for well under a grand, $700 IIRC. It was a clone of the old Buckner corn stoves, very common design. I burned corn in that 2 seasons and loved saving the cash (corn was cheap then) so started looking for a nicer stove. Still had a problem with paying almost 4 grand for a stove but about that time Bixby was getting bit hard by higher priced corn causing low sales and at the same time they were trying to corner the market with another company that would have given them in home delivery of corn/pellets (Bixby bought a water softening salt company that "blows" the salt into barrels in the house, they wanted to use that same system to deliver pellets). All that added up to Bixby starting to sell cheaper and sell some stoves for a 1 year warranty instead of the 4 year warranty that they normally offered. I think those were offered for around $2500 and as Bixby continued to have problems (cash flow), they eventually started selling on ebay for $1500 with $300-400 for shipping. Bingo, I jumped on it and to save the insane delivery charge, I went to pick it up.
I think its the best stove out there for a few reasons. It was designed from the beginning to burn anything, it wasnt redesigned like the other stoves to burn the next cheaply available fuel. One key part is, the augerless design. It used a "ferris wheel" design, just like a corn planter. This design does a much better job of stopping jams that are fairly common on auger type stoves. As was mentioned, nails and stones in your fuel does a number on not only the auger itself but to the motor as well BTDT, got the T-shirt with my old stove. The Bixby has had a few jams from that stuff but most times when the feed hopper is empty you see the garbage just laying on the bottom because it tries to feed, goes to the top of the wheel, gets sluffed off by the rubber flap and falls to the bottom of the feed hopper. By design, it just goes back to the bottom of the hopper (lower than the feed wheel is picking up) and stays there. Its a great design for feeding the stove. Oh, and in the case where it DID try to feed, the motor senses the obstruction, stops pushing so it dont burn out the motor and the computer in the stove shuts itself down to prevent damage.
Another great design of the stove is the ash dump. The stove has a cylindrical burn pot and when it dumps the ash, a plate with holes in it cuts off the bottom 1 inch of ash and lets that drop into the ash pan. The stove just keeps burning, no stopping the stove to clean it or anything, it just keeps going all automatic with the computer in the stove doing the work. You even take out the ashes while the stove is running, as long as you return the ash pan within 20 minutes, if you dont, as a safety feature it shuts the stove down.
Finally the backbone of the stove, the computer. Like I said earlier, the Bixby was designed from the beginning to burn anything and everything so the computer was put in it so things like timing of the feed wheel and the ash dump feature could be changed. Early on, Bixby only offered this software to the selling dealers. In fact, Bixby denied its existance when you called the factory but soon had to cave on that stance but they held firm for a while on refusing to allow end users to have access to the program. Now, anybody can get BixCheck and adjust the stove from your laptop. Its a perfect system if you think about it. If you want to burn corn, set the program so it feed the proper amount of fuel with the right amount of air and slowing the convection fan so the exhaust gasses stay above 250 degrees (so you dont rust out the exhaust pipe because corn exhaust that condensates is very corosive). If you want to burn pellets, set feed rate for pellets along with exhaust fan and turn up the convection fan to extract more heat, last have the ash dump happen more often. Want to burn switch grass? Simple, turn up the feed and have ash dumps very often. The computer and the BixCheck programing is the backbone of the stove. If Bixby didnt run into trouble with cash flow right at the time corn prices spiked, Bixby would have kept up the R&D on the stoves and all the other makers would be finding ways to copy them, it really is that good of a stove.
Cons? Exhaust pipe. Bixby uses a 3x5 pipe, exhaust inside a fresh air supply pipe. Its expensive, real expensive. I bought one factory set, never again. Now I use thin wall venting with the joints gooped up with sealant, just replace it often. Not a problem since the venting is about $30 every year or 2 compaired to hundreds for a 4 foot section. Next replacment is going to be car exhaust pipe, stainless if I can find someone to do affordable welding of the angles, if not I will just replace as needed.
Without a doubt, the Bixby is the best stove out there. They are still on ebay brand new now and then and parts are always available from the same places Bixby got them (Grainger, McMaster Carr etc.). Its only because of the low volume sales of stoves that is keeping someone from mailing a stove to China and having them reproduced by the thousands. There is no way a person cant get a 400 pound stove with a simple computer made off shore and delivered here for under a grand (plus tax). If corn prices drop again making volume of stove sales possible, it will happen.
If you buy a Bixby stove used for under a grand or new for under 2 grand, you will be one happy camper... Good luck with whatever you buy. Now with the internet you can get help with anything due to other owners, unlike the early corn stoves that were sold at fairs. We live in a different world now to say the least.
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Today's Featured Article - Third Brush Generators - by Chris Pratt. While I love straightening sheet metal, cleaning, and painting old tractors, I use every excuse to avoid working on the on the electrics. I find the whole process sheer mystery. I have picked up and attempted to read every auto and farm electrics book with no improvement in the situation. They all seem to start with a chapter entitled "Theory of Electricity". After a few paragraphs I usually close the book and go back to banging out dents. A good friend and I were recently discussing our tractor electrical systems when he stated "I figure it all comes back to applying Ohms Law". At this point
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