Tried sweeping a 1920s farmhouse flue with a Shop vac brush kit and it made things worse
A customer in Guthrie called me out because her wood stove was smoking into the room, and I figured the flue was just clogged with normal creosote. I did not have my regular rods with me, so I grabbed a Shop vac brush attachment and ran it down from the top for about 10 minutes. When I lit a test fire, smoke rolled out worse than before, and I pulled the brush back up to find it caked in soft black stuff that had smeared all over the clay tile. Turns out the flue had a heavy glaze layer from burning green wood, and my brush just polished it instead of scraping it off, so I had to come back with a metal rotary head and spend 2 hours getting it clean. Has anyone else run into glazed creosote that a normal brush will not touch, and what do you use for it?