New Coal Stove That Looks as Good as a VC Vigilant

My Vigilant does not have a insert. It was designed to burn wood or coal. I purchased it new in 1986/87. I think the model after mine had a different ashpan setup. I'm not an expert on the models. I have vacuumed out all the areas in the stove where ash accumaltes. It has these covers that slide off.

I agree that beauty is in the eye of the beerholder. I my case with a considerably older house my Gelnwood 208C cookstove and Star Herald fit in quite nicely. These are both 100yr old plus stoves that were made next door to each other in Taunton, Mass. They are certainly on the plain side for stoves of this era and that is what I like about them. I agree with Greg and DJ that some of the Victorian (really after Victorian) era stoves were way over the top (for my tastes anyway). While I am a huge fan of the cylinder style coal stoves fer superior heating caricteristics, I only really like the "plain" style stoves like the later Modern Oak series Glenwoods and Quakers, Crawfords, Heralds ect.....These were the Hitzers of their day with function over form.

This thread brings back old memorys of this stove called the petet godin or something like that (the biggest cluster fu.. of a stove ever made, but she was pretty as all hell!) , the fact is cast iron cannot provide the integrity of a solid welded air tight stove, no matter how well you glue and screw cast iron together you will eventually smell the difference as well as feel the difference when the efficiency is lost more and more each year! Your best bet is to find a solid welded stove that has optional decorative panels that do NOT compromise the combustion chamber of the unit. My dads old stoves used to have soapstone or cast decorative panels in enamel with many colors to choose (i assume other current stove company's must offer similar features?). If you find a Crane Stove and want any of the cast iron decorative panels for it I will loan the molds to a local foundry of your choice and you can pay to have what you want made. sincerely Doug Crane

dcrane wrote:This thread brings back old memorys of this stove called the petet godin or something like that (the biggest cluster fu.. of a stove ever made, but she was pretty as all hell!) , the fact is cast iron cannot provide the integrity of a solid welded air tight stove, no matter how well you glue and screw cast iron together you will eventually smell the difference as well as feel the difference when the efficiency is lost more and more each year! Your best bet is to find a solid welded stove that has optional decorative panels that do NOT compromise the combustion chamber of the unit. My dads old stoves used to have soapstone or cast decorative panels in enamel with many colors to choose (i assume other current stove company's must offer similar features?). If you find a Crane Stove and want any of the cast iron decorative panels for it I will loan the molds to a local foundry of your choice and you can pay to have what you want made. sincerely Doug Crane

What I smell a strawman argument in this content. With all due respect: apples to apples.

dcrane wrote:This thread brings back old memorys of this stove called the petet godin or something like that (the biggest cluster fu.. of a stove ever made, but she was pretty as all hell!) , the fact is cast iron cannot provide the integrity of a solid welded air tight stove, no matter how well you glue and screw cast iron together you will eventually smell the difference as well as feel the difference when the efficiency is lost more and more each year! Your best bet is to find a solid welded stove that has optional decorative panels that do NOT compromise the combustion chamber of the unit. My dads old stoves used to have soapstone or cast decorative panels in enamel with many colors to choose (i assume other current stove company's must offer similar features?). If you find a Crane Stove and want any of the cast iron decorative panels for it I will loan the molds to a local foundry of your choice and you can pay to have what you want made. sincerely Doug Crane

Most times I try to resist, but; this time I can't. I would put my Glenwood Base Heaters up against any modern stove, and I mean ANY of them, in any catagory. From ease of use, economy, efficiency, and ease of maintainence. You should search the Forum on the many threads that discuss Turn Of The Century stoves and you might find yourself quite the education.

I think the reason there is such disdain for cast iron is most of the people that don't like it have abused a cast peice and irreparably broke it, have tried to repair cast iron by welding and used the wrong technics, have formed a opinion based of someone else's experiences, or had a poor quality casting fail for them.

I got 5 Vermont Castings stoves, 4 wood burning. The 2 first ones had no fire brick liners. The inside parts like the fire back and other parts got damaged from heat. But most of the problems came from stoves not controllable. I went many times to Randolf Vt, wrote many times to the company's engineers...and on the road I saw many VC with same problems. VC even replaced a one Y. Defiant cat no charge for the supposed to be better Defiant Everburn. The 2 last had fire brick liner and got no problem from cast iron thank to the liner protection. The actual Vigll is like new after 5 Yrs and many fire bricks in it.
I think that cast iron or steel stoves are much better when having some fire brick or liner to protect the fire chamber/fire pot from the direct fire heat.
About the stove to be more air tight, shure a closed welded steel box is a good solution and easy to make air tight. But a well made cast iron stove, used corectly and maintained as it should be can make the job perfectly. Some antique stoves can proove it.
For the look, I already wrote a post: are they ugly? On the look side it's hard to match a cast iron stove, old or new. But the look is a personnal choice and can change over the time.

dcrane wrote:The fact is cast iron cannot provide the integrity of a solid welded air tight stove, no matter how well you glue and screw cast iron together you will eventually smell the difference as well as feel the difference when the efficiency is lost more and more each year! sincerely Doug Crane

Doug,

Wow! What a statement!

Let's see, my cast iron stove has been running now for over a hundred years... I'm really wondering about the smell and loss of efficiency... When am I supposed to notice this? Just wondering as that stove is still one darned efficient stove and I haven't noticed any loss or smell at all... Please point me towards a solid welded air tight stove with that many years running that can out-perform my old cast iron stove. I'd like direct document-able evidence to support this statement of yours.

dj

dlj

Thank you for saying what I was going to say.

Doug,
Your father made a good stove. Heck.. I even owned one at one point. Though that ownership lasted less than 12 hours but that is another story.

However cast iron and steel have been used together for well over 100 years with no problems. So your "glue and screw" commments leave me somewhat puzzled. And WHAT SMELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? If you have a smell coming from your stove you either have BAD DRAFT or you are burning wet/green wood. At least that is what I have learned from burning for over 30 years. Then again I could be wrong.....

I have to agree with dlj. The cast iron stoves of the past were not only a thing of beauty but many of them were also pure heating machines then as they are now. As long as these cast iron stoves are sealed at the joints properly I can't see them losing any efficiency at all. The smell has me puzzled a bit.

LsFarm wrote:

tmegg wrote:I owned a Chubby in the 70's and have had the 1st gen VC VIgilant (wood/coal) since 1985. Both of these stoves are cast I beleive and look way better than anything currently being made. If the Vigilant burned coal well I would'nt even consider a new stove. But lets face it, the Hitzer's etc are ugly as hell.

Everytime I see a cast iron stove I think, this thing is one overfiring away from the steel scrap pile..

Pretty cast iron is not the where-all and be-all that some folks erroneously assume..

Steel makes a very strong, forgiving box to enclose a fire in.

The ONLY reason that cast iron was used 'back in the day' was because that was all that was available that was inexpensive..
Steel used to be very expensive.. now that it's mass produced, and the labor to use cast iron is expensive, cast iron is expensive to make parts from.

Pretty, but fragile.. that 's cast iron.

While looking at many old stoves to find a baseburner or double heater to buy, I can't count the number of cracked, warped beyond use cast stoves I found.
And the sellers comments !! it's just a little crack, I've used it like that for years.

Anyway, Ugly is as Ugly does: if it's keeping you warm, it's a thing of beauty. If you want pretty, buy painting to hang on the wall.

Greg L

I couldn't have sayed this better myself, sometimes beauty is NOT the wise choice. Functional coal burning would surly be better with a chubby then a VC! here is an example of both function and beauty (solid welded steel combustion chamber with the good looks of cast iron exterior (or in this case a soapstone kit applied to the exterior). This would give the safty, longevity and reliability of solid welded steel with the sexiness your wanting (gosh my dad spent to much money to build the perfect coal stove, no wonder he went under building stoves that look like a piece of fine crafted furniture like this LOL) I would kill to get my hands on one of these beauty''s he made years ago

BEHOLD PERFECTION (paint is a deep luscious brown), background stove shows the same solid welded 1/4" steel combustion chamber with the Cast Iron decorative kit attached

Doug, my Grandfather always used to tell me,"you gotta be smater then what you're workin with" Knowin how to run a stove properly eliminates all that over-fire drama--if I haden't found this FORUM when I switched from 40 yrs of burning wood, I have a feeling that at least the hopper in my 50-93 would be no more then a molten glob.

dcrane wrote:...8<... Functional coal burning would surly be better with a chubby then a VC!

Now I'm convinced that your words, at least the above, are motivated by pride. If anyone with the knowledge of the current Vigilant II (model 23100) would make such a statement, they'd be well aware that they are sailing a boat with a shredded sail.

• FFred's sail is set!

  freetown fred wrote:Doug, my Grandfather always used to tell me,"you gotta be smater then what you're workin with" Knowin how to run a stove properly eliminates all that over-fire drama--if I haden't found this FORUM when I switched from 40 yrs of burning wood, I have a feeling that at least the hopper in my 50-93 would be no more then a molten glob.

  • 

VigIIPeaBurner wrote:

dcrane wrote:...8<... Functional coal burning would surly be better with a chubby then a VC!

Now I'm convinced that your words, at least the above, are motivated by pride. If anyone with the knowledge of the current Vigilant II (model 23100) would make such a statement, they'd be well aware that they are sailing a boat with a shredded sail.

• FFred's sail is set!

  freetown fred wrote:Doug, my Grandfather always used to tell me,"you gotta be smater then what you're workin with" Knowin how to run a stove properly eliminates all that over-fire drama--if I haden't found this FORUM when I switched from 40 yrs of burning wood, I have a feeling that at least the hopper in my 50-93 would be no more then a molten glob.

  • 

of course I speak with pride.... that Vigilant II is a direct rip off of my fathers design (the grate system is identical in everyway shape and form to my fathers design) Its individual "finger" grate pieces which slide back and forth on a Cam shaft, the firepot is identical in everyway shape and form as well. VC was able to take my dads concepts (which they knew to be great for coal burning because they were well aware there stoves failed at coal) The only difference is VC was able to build it for less and lighten up on the quality and stuff the package into a "wood looking" shell. Dont get me wrong Vermont Castings is a wonderful stove and history and god knows they have better business sense then most any other stove company out their (i wont get into the things they have done over the years and how they adapted in order to shine and always remain as it would take up a large thread all by itself), the fact is their stoves are great and profitable and appeal to the masses..... but don't tell me thats not my fathers system in that stove (beacause it IS!).

Interesting take on the evolutionary history of the Vigilant from the early hybrids to the current coal-'only' model 2310. I wondered why VC made the move away from the hybrid kit models to single fuel units. When did your dad stop making them, or maybe more telling, when did the pattens expire on his design? I've never looked at a Crane stove but will given a chance. Did his designs incorporate the side/back burner space for heat exchange? I believe VC used artisans in creating the original molds for their stove exteriors. The fact that they managed to put an efficient coal burning package into the original -70's stove and maintain the long exhaust path (with your dad's design?) is a positive that makes this little stove throw some serious heat. FWIW, I've been using mine for 12 seasons and have only replaced the front grill and door gaskets.

Truth be told, many of us Vigilant II users (and respectfully~) sure wish the grates were a little more aggressive. With crunchy coal ash, they need to be a little more persuasive. With a little prodding and slicing, they do get the job done without the fear of ever dropping the fire. I've found that the ash content makes a huge difference on how easy it is to operate. Doug, did you dad's cam have more lift? I often question if a larger differential between the high and low grates wouldn't help move the ash more efficently.