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  • From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Wood Cookstove
  • Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2008 20:16:33 EDT


> >O.K., James, maybe others???, did they perhaps make the stoves different
> for
> the West Coast vs. East Coast? Cause the fireboxes on Gramma Dorothy's and
> others I've used aren't that small and they do bank but we've never had the
> coal out here to fire them. We've always used wood and a lot of it is soft
> wood.

That's interesting and quite possibly the case that stoves made in the East
were made with coal in mind and those for other places where coal wasn't
cheap
were made differently. The stove we use we got from Herself's uncle who was
keeping it as a keepsake because he remembered it being brought into the home
new when he was five. But before we discovered that he had the stove, which
he
was very glad to see back in use, we looked at several score of old
functioning stoves made by Majestic, Warm Morning, Knoxville Stove Works, and
others.
They all had very small fireboxes.

The firebox on our stove is 7" wide, 9" deep, and about 16" long. About an
inch of the space is taken up with by the water jacket which is not being
used
but it took the place of an iron plate when it was installed and connot be
removed. On a good bed of coals an piece of oak 5" or so in diameter will
still
be glowing hot the next morning. But that's just to keep from starting the
fire afresh, it doesn't produce much heat in the process.

>From about now in the year until about New Year there will be a fire in the
morning which we let go out and another one in the late afternoon on which we
cook and then keep going until we go to bed. It begins to get cold in
earnest
in January and most days there will be a fire in the kitchen stove all day
long. For the next couple of months, maybe ten weeks or so, if it bids fair
to
get into the teens at night, we will also have a fire in the big Franklin
stove. It will take geat chuncks of wood a foot in diamter or more and so it
keeps
well all night and puts out a lot of heat.

If we get one of those 'three dog' nights where the temps head toward below
zero, there is also another stove in the basement (the chimney of the house
is
five feet wide and has three separate flues), one of those homemade affairs
out of plate steel and able to take an enormous log up to 30' long. It gets
used maybe as many as ten times a year.

I don't like cooking on an electric stove, though I must admit I've only used
the ordinary induction coil eyes and not a modern or expensive one. I like
gas cooking but propane can be a pain in the rear, the flame goes only so low
and stays lit and on the other end getting more than 9000 btu's out of one of
those orafices is just about impossilbe. But the wood stove is cooking in
heaven. Blasting heat over the firebox and a smooth graduation of temps
until the
pot goes over the water reservoir which is 'warm'. The oven is huge and very
easy to control the temp.

James




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