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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> >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