Did I clean it in the Spring, or didn’t I?

Safest bet was that I didn’t clean it. And it had accumulated quite a bit of soot…

…and so it was definitely time to give the stovepipe a good pre-winter scrub.

I used to be much more diligent about cleaning the stovepipe, to the point of neurosis, thanks to that early chimney fire. Different circumstances, different stove, very unlikely to happen again. Nowadays it’s just soot rather than creosote but still. It’s bad practice to neglect stovepipe cleaning.

And it’s a lot less of a hassle since I listened to some neighbors…

…who showed me that I could greatly reduce the mess by taping a trash bag to the pipe and working the brush through that. Thanks to lack of practice I still managed to make a pretty bad mess that took a while to clean up.

Of course the bottom section is way easier…

…since I can just take it outside, put it on the sawbuck and scrub to my heart’s content.