Thinking of Buying a Vogelzang Potbelly Stove

The firebrick are standard size,, 4.5"x9" and come in two thicknesses.. the thin ones are called splits I think.. I'm not home now, or I'd measure them for you..

At my local lumber yard, they cost about $1.50 or so each.

Greg L

Here is some info on firebricks

http://www.woodheatstoves.com/zcart/fire-brick-st ... -1670.html

http://www.armilcfs.com/pages/firebrick.htm

thanks

I was looking at my rear wall on the brand new never used MarkIII and the last brick on the right at the rear of the stove is cocked over the the right some making a small pie type gap. About 3/8" at top I hope I can fix that as I hate to put it back into the truck and off to the shop.

A small gap is not something to be concerned with,, it will fill up with ashes with the first fire,, the coal cannot get near the steel...

Greg L

thanks greg

I'll look at it furthere when I have time. maybe in the move to the house something got out of wack.

Like I said above my Chubby had a cast basket suspended from the top lip so there was a space between the outer wall of about a inch.

That basket worked well. It just dropped in and if one did break which in 14 winters it was still good you can get another one and drop it in.

I'm going to pick up a used Chubby in case this Harman doesn't work for me.

You will like the Harman,, by far the most popular hand feed on the forum... only one had an issue... pretty good track record..

Greg L

Do not know your location, however you should have no problem getting rid of the Harman if you do not like it.
If you are in the New England area I would be interested in your unwanted Harman.

I'm going to use it for a while and see how it works. I do like the top loading feature on the Chubby as well as the round cast basket. When I bought the Chubby back years ago the selling points were round burns better, round keeps the steel from warping. With the top loading door you can open it up to burn wood. Air flow can be blocked some with ash on the grate but when you open the top loading door the fire for wood just takes right off. I use to use that to get a fire going fast to catch the coals on fire again if it got too low,etc. Plus it makes loading from a coal hopper easy. I use to fill up the basket like an ice cream cone.

The one thing that kept me from buying a Chubby again was the grate in the Harman. Rocket type. I hope the other features the Chubby have will be over ridden by the rocker grate system in the Harman.

Hi Captcaper, I also burned a handfired Chubby. No one tallks about them on this forum but they are awesome stoves. They are very easy to run and forgiving for coal novices. They do not not put out as much heat as a Harman mark II but I think they put out as much heat or more than my Channing III. My Chubby is waiting in drydock to be called into service once again.

The owner Larry Trainer restores them in Pembroke Ma. He said he may start building them new again but wanted to see if this oil crisis is for real or not. He didn't want to invest and hire 15 people for just 2 years.

I loved the scrolling on the cast iron. I thought the Chubby SR. was about 85 K BTU's and Chubby Jr. 40K or so

I have a Vogelzang Potbelly stove and I love it. I have a mechanical damper below the barometric damper and the only time I have to use it is if I put too much Bit into it or I've just lit it off with wood and coal. But other then that all the comments here are right on. The stove does leak air so even with lower vent closed you can have a hot fire but all in all it's a very nice stove for what it is. This is my first go around with coal and a coal stove and the whole system works good for me now and in the future if I need to replace this stove I may get a better one but this is a great starter stove........

Lisa

rberq wrote:The Vogelzang is cheap, $380. But that's like buying a new Yugo instead of a used Toyota. Go for the used Toyota.

Why do Yugos have rear window defrosters?

to keep your friends' hands warm when they're pushing it....

Thinking of buying a vogelzang potbelly stove?

Think Again.

they're more or less garbage, not bad for a twice a year cabin heater with wood and a manual damper to control the fire. Correction: even then they're too expensive! @ 380 you can find some very good quality old stoves, cast iron potbellys (for coal) and fisher/timberline (for wood) types on craigslist that will far exceed the quality of the vogelzang! buy a good condition old potbelly coal stove from the paper or craigslist, disassemble, clean, seal, then reassemble it and you will have a MUCH MUCH better and SAFER stove for likely less $$ than the vogelzang.

Berlin wrote:Thinking of buying a vogelzang potbelly stove?

Think Again.

they're more or less garbage, not bad for a twice a year cabin heater with wood and a manual damper to control the fire. Correction: even then they're too expensive! @ 380 you can find some very good quality old stoves, cast iron potbellys (for coal) and fisher/timberline (for wood) types on craigslist that will far exceed the quality of the vogelzang! buy a good condition old potbelly coal stove from the paper or craigslist, disassemble, clean, seal, then reassemble it and you will have a MUCH MUCH better and SAFER stove for likely less $$ than the vogelzang.

i cant even sell mine for 50 bucks on craigslist!
i have had a couple of wack jobs call about it though. there are some strange people out there!