In the initial joy of locating a fine-looking old stove, don’t lay down your money without first giving the stove a thorough examination. I know of one man who, at an auction, cheerfully paid $500 for a lavishly scrolled, highly-polished black cookstove. It was carefully loaded into the back of his pickup, but when he got home, it lay scattered in half a dozen pieces. The owner had cunningly puttied together the broken parts and applied a stout coat of stove blacking. Be willing to spend fifteen minutes or more going over the entire stove, inspecting for the presence and soundness of all the parts. (Be sure to take a flashlight along on stove-hunting expeditions: a careful examination of the inside is as important as the outside.

A desirable stove is one that is tight enough to prevent air from entering through any place other than the drafts; otherwise the rate of burning can’t be controlled and the firebox may overheat. Also, there should be no place for the smoke to escape other than through the stovepipe.

Woodman Associates Inc.

P.O. Box 186, Ballards Ridge Rd.

Heckler Brothers.

Check the top of the stove. Make sure all the pieces are there, that they’re not warped. Look for any cracks.

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Take an inventory of the parts on your prospective stove.

Make sure the stove you are looking at has all of it's parts

Stove top cracks, if small; can be welded or brazed. Larger cracks should be reinforced underneath with a steel plate. If the T’s are badly warped, (the parts most likely to do so), they’l have to be replaced, or you can try this simple repair. Fill the groove of the T, where the lid fits on, with furnace cement (found in hardware stores). While the cement is still wet, set the T in place, completely coat the cement with wood ashes, and put back the cooking lids. The cement will dry conforming to the shape of the lids and create an airtight seal, which the warping destroys. The ashes prevent the cement from adhering to the lids.

2. Check the sides, back, bottom and base of the stove. There should be no cracks or rusted-out areas.

Small cracks can be welded or brazed and, if necessary, re-inforced with a steel plate. If larger sections are missing, especially in such tricky areas as a curve, the problem increases. A piece of sheet steel  can be fitted from behind to fill the space and then stove cement applied to fill out the front. If any parts are not securely fastened, bolts are rusted out or the seams are loose, they must be removed, cleaned and reassembled. Scrape out the old cement from the seams, re-cement with new, replace the parts and tighten with new bolts.

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It is always best to have the right parts.

If no grate can be found and all other options have been exhausted    then: take a piece of cardboard and cut it to fit loosely on the ledge where the grate normally sits. A machine shop can cut a piece of 1/2inch plate steel to match its dimensions. Then burn or drill holes, about the size of a quarter, every few inches on the side over the fire. This will make a durable, poker-type grate.

3. To replace a liner:

1. A cast in place liner can be made by taking cardboard and forming a mold around the area that needs lining. Then use 3000° furnace cement to pour in mold area.
2. Castable refractory cement can be purchased from Woodman Associates.

c. Cut a piece of cardboard to fit inside the firebox along the oven wall. A piece of plate steel can be patterned after this and, if necessary, (some stoves require that the liner be bolted into place, but mine sits loose) bolted with one bolt. A patch expands differently from the stove, and if more than one bolt is used, the stress could become so great that the cast iron could crack.

To burn wood on a coal grate: Place a heavy wire screen over the coal grate, or, for a more permanent conversion, have a wood grate made (as described above) to sit on top, or replace the coal grate. These measures are only necessary if the wood coals drop through the grate too easily, or the fire is hard to control.

4. Remove the remaining lids and check the firebox wall and top of the oven for cracks.

A firebox crack, either on the outside or oven side, deserves careful attention. If not severe, it can be filled with stove cement, then lined with a piece of sheet asbestos, and finally backed with steel plate. Again, use only one bolt to tighten it.

Sometimes the metal has been so badly burnt that it has deteriorated to the point of uselessness. If the stove looks suspicious and you cannot determine this yourself, have somebody who knows metal look over the stove before you buy it.

5. Open the oven door and check the walls and top for any cracks or rusted-out areas.

These can be welded or brazed, or covered with 1/8-inch plate steel, and tightened into place with as few bolts as possible.

6. Check all the seams of the stove to insure that they’re tight-fitting.

A gaping seam, besides being difficult to repair, indicates there is something wrong with the stove or that it has, sometime in the past, been heartlessly dropped or abused.

7. All the moving parts—doors, dampers, draft slides and levers—should be in place, closely fitting, and easily moved. Missing doors, especially flush-fitting ones, can sometimes be replaced with a door fashioned out of steel. Doors with rounded contours are more difficult to fit.

Household oil, penetrating oil, and kerosene will usually loosen stiff joints. Don't be in a hurry give the oil some time to work.

8. If the stove has a water reservoir, check the cast iron supporting it to make sure that it’s sound. Some of the stove companies didn't make vents for the steam to escape; instead the moisture collected on the inside of the reservoir cover, condensed, and rolled around the reservoir tank into the hot air chamber below. This water would combine with ashes, which had blown over from the firebox, to produce lye. After years of use, the lye could corrode the end of the stove. This must be repaired before the stove can be used.

Also check to see that the reservoir liner is there; a missing or damaged one can be replaced with a liner made of galvanized tin or copper.

9.   Check for rust damage. There likely will be some rust, but if it’s only on the surface, it’s harmless and easy to remove. Some stoves, however, were stored without first being cleaned of ashes, and the moisture accumulation and ashes will have eaten thin parts of the metal. So, if the inside of the stove looks like a lace curtain, forget it.

For heavily surface-rusted stoves, sandblasting is an effective and time-saving solution. Often, gravestone and monument makers provide this service.  A better method however, is to remove the rust by hand (with a wire brush attachment on a power drill) as it encourages a careful examination of the stove. Thin layers of rust are removed with steel wool.

Look for makeshift repairs. They will appear as gray or rough areas.       Furnace cement which has been used to fill in cracks or fill out missing pieces of metal will not take stove blacking the same as metal.

Black light testing is a common practice used to authenticate antiques, to determine the extent of repairs.

For many beginning collectors, the science and techniques used in the black light testing method are a mystery?

Now, onto the uses of blacklight in collecting antiques. Different chemical properties become apparent under a blacklight, modern paint will fluoresce under a black light, older paints will not, you can use this to determine whether a painted object is an antique or a newer reproduction as well as to determine whether a piece has been "touched up" and if so, how extensive was the repair.

The same technique can be used to detect repairs on antique porcelain as the old finish will not glow under a blacklight, and the newer material in the repair will.

Some antique glassware will glow under the blacklight as well; vaseline glass will glow because it contains uranium oxide.

Cast Iron: Most new paint on most new cast iron fluoresces; old paint on old cast iron rarely fluoresces. You can also detect newly painted repairs as well.

Antique Stove Association