Restoring My Wehrle 112 Acme Sunburst Baseburner

Here's a picture of the little "flower nuts" that hold the mica frames inside the door frames. I thought they turned out neat! He polished the heads of all the little screws too. I had them cleaned in a tumbler so they looked ok, but they weren
't this smooth and shiny. Apparently the old craftsmen liked to show off a little too! I haven't figured out how they cast the little "jacks"-looking piece into the handle, but they must have, because it won't come out, and it's loose. You can move it back and forth in the channel.

Beautiful work. That stove is going to look awesome when you assemble it. I can't wait to see the pictures as you put her back together.

Thank you sir. It's been a long wait and I'm more excited than ever to put it back together. There are just a few more items to attend to, and the re-assembly can begin. I forgot to mention in the other posts that I asked the plater not to do anything about the sand-cast pits that are in the metal. That's why some are visible in the parts. I felt like I shouldn't change that because it shows how the factory did it. Jerry

Very beautiful, good idea to keep the original metal look.
Waiting to see that stove on the job with a nice fire glowing all over the place from that nickel.
Winter is almost ending .............

I finally finished the part with the worst problem today. One of the side frames had a big crack in it caused by a bolt being too tight when the stove was assembled. The crack started at the mounting point and went down the side of the frame.
My brother and I fashioned a pre-heating oven out of an old small 3-burner hot plate like restaurants use, with a heavy expanded metal screen and some firebricks. We hot-rodded it a little by turning the orifices open a little to let in more fuel and get a bigger fire on the burners. I was able to easily get the entire part up in the 700 degree F range. I used old-fashioned square cast-iron welding rod and a Victor torch with a # 2 tip.
I was able to take out a couple of the bricks to make a space where I could do the welding, and when it was done I covered it up again and each half hour after I turned the fire down a little bit until after 3 1/2 hours I turned it off completely and let it cool down on its own. The bricks kept it from cooling fast. I did the back side of the frame first, then repeated the whole procedure for the front side.

Front and rear welds after cleaning:
I used a Dremel tool, a sander and a file to re-shape the designs on the side.
I put on some stove black and I'm happy with the results. Now I can clean the rest of the parts and begin to re-assemble the stove.

That is some beautiful work.

Excellent work. If you hadn't shown pictures of the repaired area before clean-up, no one could tell where the welds are !!!!

Paul

An amazing, meticulous restoration job. Excellent. Thanks very much for the update.

I'll tell you what...............

I wouldn't want to be in jubileejerry's shoes. That man has documented every part of this rebuild!

Can you imagine the pressure on this man to not only attempt this , but to document it with photos. Lord god almighty.............I wouldn't have attempted it.

You sir are one hell of an artist and my hat goes off to you.

I just hope that you and your brother don't stop here, because you are one hell of a team. And I hope that other people realize that you may have missed your calling................................

To add to the above..... You'll never get hired to do the kind of work you do.......................nobody can afford you.

But man I hope you don't stop!

I cannot add anything new to the posts already given but I just wanted to say AWESOME JOB!

Randy

Double post

SWPaDon wrote:I'll tell you what...............

I wouldn't want to be in jubileejerry's shoes. That man has documented every part of this rebuild!

Can you imagine the pressure on this man to not only attempt this , but to document it with photos. Lord god almighty.............I wouldn't have attempted it.

You sir are one hell of an artist and my hat goes off to you.

I just hope that you and your brother don't stop here, because you are one hell of a team. And I hope that other people realize that you may have missed your calling................................

All of you are very kind. I really enjoy what I do, and this is special because it's my own and I wanted something that can "showcase" what we do at our shop. People actually do hire us to do things like this for them, but it's mostly tractors. We do have a '31 Ford Model A in the shop right now though. I didn't join this forum to drum up business, I just have the idea that a build thread like this ought to be thorough and show all the steps it takes, not just the good stuff. How else will someone learn from it? If anyone is interested, my website is http://www.walthillservice.com. I need to update the pictures but I don't know how. The person who built the website moved away and I need to contact him to get help and put some newer photos on the site. Anyway, this is just for your entertainment, not to get any business. Thanks for letting me hang out here. Jerry

Your reward and ours too will be when we see that stove all glowing with a good coal fire in it.
That's the only way you can really appreciate them.