# It was an All-Day Stove Day



## RuttedField (Apr 24, 2016)

Well I like steel and just cannot seem to keep steel type projects out of my shop.

Last year an old cheap Vogelzang pot bellied stove crapped out in mid-winter, and was unrepairable. You guys (and gals) know me, as cheap as I am when I say its unrepairable, there is no fixing it. So we scrounged through 3 feet of snow, found an old stove from my late-grandmothers house, and put that to work; unfortunately it was wood-only. Now that I can't live with, so when I found a pot bellied stove for sale online, we went and looked at it today.

It ended up being a 1893 Woods and Bishop Model 4 New Era pot bellied stove. Kind of an antique stove anyway, and we were prepared to pay the guy $100 for it. It has its problems, but generally is a nice stove, but anyway after talking to the guy awhile, realizing he was a Christian, he handed our money back. Then being a guy that moves houses insisted we "clean up his place" and gave us all kinds of scrap steel, rigging straps, and Katie an antique trunk. He was more than generous for sure and we thanked him profusely!

But one of the things it needed was its legs, two of the 4 had broke off. But I live near Bryant Stove Works which has 100 years of stove parts in their trailers and back shops, so we went to see them. My grandfather worked there for 30 years so I know the people well. The 87 year old proprietor looks at us and say, "oh that leg, that must be off a Woods and Bishop Pot Bellied stove, my son-in-law will help you see if we got it", and into this tractor trailer we go; the whole thing loaded with thousands of legs for stoves. Some were singles, some were twins, and some were all four. I am overwhelmed, but Katie finds (2) matching legs in about 3 minutes time. The guy is shocked saying it was the fastest he had ever seen anyone match legs.

We ended up buying a really nice Crawford 1917 gas stove there for our 1930's style kitchen while we were there. Note to anyone who loves old stoves like me and loves to tinker on them; do not go into an old stove shop like that with cash on you. Since we knew them, and they are getting out of gas stoves anyway, we got the stove for half off.

So here is a picture of this Number 4 Woods and Bishop Pot bellied stove, but admit it needs more work. I was able to line the fire box with firebrick as I dislike how coal will make the outside glow without them. Sadly two brackets for the mitten rail are busted right off so I will need to recast them, and of course paint and trim it out. But overall we are happy with how our day of stove hunting ended up.


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## somedevildawg (Jun 20, 2011)

Those are very cool.....being from down here, we don't see many like that


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## shortrow2 (Sep 25, 2017)

There's nothing like a warm coal fire. It's great that you and your wife have the same interests.


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