Saltfire Classic review:

The Classic is a new stove from Saltfire. As always you can get it in lots of different colours, but this one has a static multi fuel grate and ash pan, allowing it to burn different fuels and it's made entirely from cast iron. It has a fluted "less hot" handle, it comes with a glove and a tool for the ash pan and as the name suggests it has smart, but traditional look.

Lighting the stove: 9/10

This stove (in part) thanks to its grate and ash pan, is very easy to get lit. Stack the fuel in the normal way and off it goes, nice and easy.

Cleanness: 8/10

This stove runs really clean. The flip side to the added convenience of the grate, is that it makes it harder to keep in for longer periods. I sadly couldn't (easily) get it to run overnight with wood, but to be fair the times I did test towards its maximum for burn time, it did still run clean. It runs at 80% efficiency and also comes as standard with DEFRA approval, and like all stoves nowadays it complies with Eco-Design 2022.

Controls & Controllability: 4/10

This stove really behaves itself as far as smoke spillage is concerned. As mentioned the main handle isn't too hot and like all Saltfires, it comes with 3 separate controls. They can be hot and a little fiddly which is a shame and it's also not super controllable. On the other hand, given its target audience this stove behaves really well. 

The over finish of the controls is okay, I like the tool, but I remain not super keen on the glove that Saltfire send with their stoves, or the slightly slap dash control design which is a little cobbled together rather than nicely designed.

Fuel economy & Burn time: 6/10

This stove can run for 7-9 hours on a single net of kiln dried logs. It is designed for evening and weekend use, and whilst some stoves may be able to keep the same amount of fuel lit for longer, you will find that this stove isn't losing anything it is just wanting to push its heat into the room a little quicker. This again suits intermittent users as they will often want the stove to get the room up to temperature quickly.

What I thought:

 The main issue for those users is the gloves, but that is very easily sorted on this very website! And the things that are important:

Nicely put together, looks nice, easy to light, stays clean, drives heat out well...

It does these so well that despite it's fairly average technical review, from an end users perspective, if you want to use it more occasionally as a back up and focal point for the evening, it's actually a great option.