Need help with acorn stove

 
Kacey
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Post by Kacey » Thu. Mar. 22, 2018 5:08 pm

Hi there.
New to this (and any forum) so please excuse my ignorance. I recently purchased an antique Rathbone Acorn stove from an estate sale which I originally thought was wood but I now think is coal. I want to use it as the heat source in our Quonset Hut but want to get a little info about it first. I have no idea the year it was made or anything else about it and have had trouble finding any info on the web. Any and all info welcomed!!!

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franco b
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Post by franco b » Thu. Mar. 22, 2018 5:24 pm

Pictures of the grate arrangement would help to determine whether coal or not..

The opening on the left upper front looks like something missing.

Others more expert will be along.

 
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McGiever
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Post by McGiever » Thu. Mar. 22, 2018 9:32 pm

What might look to missing could be a open hinged door that is just swung open in the picture. ;)

 
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joeq
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Post by joeq » Thu. Mar. 22, 2018 10:42 pm

Hi Kacey,
Welcome to the club. Nice looking stove. You've come to the right place for info on it. Lots of experienced members to get you up and running. If you go to the main page, there's a search block up above. If you punch in "Cooking with coal", you'll see a huge thread on how to use your stove. And you say you'll only use it for heat? Once you get the hang of it, I'll bet you'll be pleasantly surprised on how much you and the Mrs. will be cooking on it. If you learn how to post pictures, (help with that above also), post some pics of the interior, and they'll be able to get you going in the right direction. Also, punch in your stove model to the search bubble, and I'll bet some-one has already posted about it. Good luck, and have fun surfing.

 
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McGiever
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Post by McGiever » Thu. Mar. 22, 2018 11:23 pm

My contribution to help your SEARCH effort:

Rathbone & Sard looks promising. ;)
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Kacey
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Post by Kacey » Fri. Mar. 23, 2018 12:51 am

Here are some more pictures i just went out and took. Its amazing what you can see in different light and angles and camera flash. :D Looks like a 1885 Aurora Acorn??? But could not find it in the catalog. It does seem there is a door missing next to oven on top. But what would that door even be for???

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joeq
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Post by joeq » Fri. Mar. 23, 2018 6:20 am

Looks like coal stove grating to me Kacey. :yes:
And you'll definitely need to get a door for that opening, or your stove will not operate properly. There's a gentleman on this site, (Wilson Mull) who is an avid coal/wood stove collector that might be able to help you with parts. Check him out in the "search" bubble. Also looks like your ash pan is missing.


 
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freetown fred
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Post by freetown fred » Fri. Mar. 23, 2018 6:51 am

508-763-8941--for Wilson

 
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Sunny Boy
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Post by Sunny Boy » Fri. Mar. 23, 2018 8:32 am

Welcome,
Yes, those are coal grates. My in-laws had the same grates in their National Acorn range - the first picture is what they look like through the ash door opening. If yours don't have those long teeth sticking down - like in the picture - and one side of the grate bars does not have large openings, then yours may be what are known as "combo grates" - made for both coal and wood.

With my in-laws Acorn they were just for coal. To burn wood with their coal grates, a "summer wood plate" , a plate with small holes could be placed on top of the grate bars.

The coal position of the grate bars is in your first pictures with lots of openings to allow air to feed up from below into the firebed. Coal burns from the bottom of the firebed upward. For coal you only use the "primary air damper" in the ash drawer door and close off any damper near the top of the firebox.

Wood burns from the top down, so you'd use the more closed side of the grate bars to support the firebed (showing in your later post pictures ?) and only feed air from a "secondary air damper" - located above the level of the grates.

However, the front loading door of the firebox is missing. You can see the inner, removable cover that closes off the end of the firebox when using coal. It says, "RT END LINING". What we assume is the front of the range type stoves is actually the "right side". Technically, the front of a range is the hearth end with the ash drawer door. It's a hold over from earlier "cook stoves", the predecessors of the range, that were smaller and the hearth end was considered the front and the stove pipe came out the opposite end, behind the small oven.

If you were to use wood, you'd remove that inner cover so you could load long pieces in through that loading door. Second picture shows the same firebox inner plate through the opened loading door of my in-law's Acorn range.

It looks like it's the lift-off type loading door. Maybe someone took it off and forgot to put it back on and it's still back at the Estate sale ?

Without that firebox loading door you can't load wood in that way. You'd have to load through the cooktop round covers, using a "butterfly" lifting handle - like the one in the third and forth pictures. It allows you to lift all three covers over the firebox with just one hand. If you want to burn wood, too, Brayan Stove in Maine sells those Butterfly handles.

Paul

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Kacey
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Post by Kacey » Sat. Mar. 24, 2018 1:11 am

Oh boy! I just wrote a novel of questions and kept having to get up from the computer to tend to the kids and it signed me out and it is all gone now. :annoyed:

So.....I'll try to remember most of it.
Thank you all so much for your help! I absolutely love this stove and really want to install it and put it to use. Joeq, I am the Mrs. I went to this estate sale and called the Mr. and told him to bring a trailer to pick up this stove and other fun antiques I purchased. lol So, if im understanding correctly my stove is able to burn coal and wood but I need to have combo grates to do so which looks like I may have? Im so glad to find out what the plate is for. I could not for the life of me figure why if there was a door that was missing would it just open up to a plate??? Wood! Yay! Im still confused on the primary and secondary air dampers. There is one just below that door that I assume I feed the coal into, which is shown well in my 3rd picture and there is what I think is another on top where the stove pipe would connect to the stove where the middle back cook cover is. Is that correct? And the ash door is the bottom left correct? What is an ash pan that was mentioned that I may be missing? And what the heck is the little door under the oven for??? So. Many. Questions. :lol: Thank you for Mr. Mull's number, I will try to call him next week. Im hoping I will be able to track down a replacement wood feed door. I doubt it is still at the estate. Looking back on the picture that I originally posted that came directly from the estate sale people, the door is already missing. :annoyed: Im still learning to navigate this site and really interested in finding the videos mentioned earlier on operating the stove. Super excited. I would also like to get this baby cleaned up and looking good. Not brand new looking but clean. Any suggestions with that? Thanks again for the info, hoping you all have time to answer more!

 
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McGiever
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Post by McGiever » Sat. Mar. 24, 2018 1:20 am

Whenever you log in from now on put a check-mark in the box for "Keep me logged in". ;)

Have you a source for anthracite coal in California?

 
Kacey
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Post by Kacey » Sat. Mar. 24, 2018 1:32 am

Ok, ill do that next time! Learned my lesson. haha No, I do not have a source yet. I saw online that they sell nut and rice coal at Tractor Supply. Is buying coal in California an issue?

 
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Post by Kacey » Sat. Mar. 24, 2018 1:34 am

Also, does anyone have an idea what this stove is valued at? I paid $295 for it and felt good about it. And am I correct in the year being an 1885?

 
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Sunny Boy
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Post by Sunny Boy » Sat. Mar. 24, 2018 6:52 am

Kacey,

In your first picture, it shows the open grid design that those are definitely coal grates, so yes, you can burn coal in it. Either chestnut (aka "nut" coal), or "stove" size anthracite coal (aka "hard coal"). Bituminous (soft coal) won't work well in it. Nut being the more commonly used size coal in the smaller fireboxes of kitchen ranges. Rice coal is way too small. You will have it falling through the grate bar openings before it can burn.

Your third picture showing the grates is not clear enough for me to be certain if that is the wood burning sides, so the only question I have is when the grates are turned 90 degrees from the open grid for coal, is that truly the wood side ? If the grate bars don't have openings that look like claws in my first picture, then yes that is the wood side of the grate bars and that means they really are combo grates.

The primary damper is located below the level of the grates. In the case of kitchen ranges that's usually a slide damper located in the ash drawer door. On your range the primary damper is that slide damper on the left end of the range, just below the loading scoop. As I mentioned before, coal burns from the bottom of the firebed upward. So you feed air to the firebed in under the grates.

For wood, the air should be fed over the top of the firebed, or it will burn up too quickly if fed from below. You also need to provide air over the fire to help burn off smoke and creosote to lessen the chances of creosote building up on the walls of the range's oven flues, stove pipe, and chimney. That's called the secondary damper. On some ranges it's located above the ash drawer door on the end of the cooktop - such as in my third and forth pictures, where you can see two pairs of glowing square windows. But, you have a coal loading scoop and it's hinged cover located there. So, I suspect that the secondary air damper is built into the missing loading door cover ????? If not, then the primary damper may be designed to feed air to both under and over the fire ? Without being able to see the internal pathways, and the loading door, it's tough to tell where the secondary air is supposed to come from.

If there are no cracks in any of the stove's castings, and the only thing missing is the front loading door and an ash pan, then yes, you got it for a good price. Any sheet metal shop can make a sheet metal ash pan for it, so that's no big deal. In the meantime you can just shovel the ashes out of the ash drawer area into a metal bucket.

If the secondary damper is built into the loading door, then the problem is going to be trying to use the range without that loading door. You won't be able to control the over-fire air feed. That will make it extremely tough to control the burn rate of both coal or wood. I can't help but wonder if it's still back at the shop you bought it from, or wherever the stove was before that.

As to the date your range was built, not sure with R&S stoves, but with many other manufacturers the casting dates are the earliest the stove could have been built. The date was fixed into the patterns used to cast the parts. They didn't always change the date every year. Usually just when they made a change in the pattern. So, your stove may have been made for any number of years after that casting date. My Sunny Glenwood range has all 1903 dates. They only made that model in that style for several years before redesigning it in about 1905, so that narrows it down in my case. But, some others stoves used the same castings for many years, so there's no way of telling the exact year they were built.

If you want to learn more about ranges, here's the post Joe mentioned to start reading. Cookin' With Coal I think it pretty well covers most of the questions you'll have of the what and how of coal ranges.

Any questions not answered, don't hesitate to ask ! Remember, the only dumb questions are those that are never asked. :D

Paul

 
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Sunny Boy
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Post by Sunny Boy » Sat. Mar. 24, 2018 8:40 am

Kacey,

One other thing to check. Looking at how full the ash drawer is, I suspect that the oven flues need a good cleaning, also.

Just below the oven door is a small rectangular plate with "Rathbone" on it. That plate may be removable to give access for cleaning the flues under the oven. If they are not cleaned you won't get as much heat out. If the oven flues become plugged then the fire will stall-out when in oven mode because the exhaust can't reach the chimney. Then, the stove top plates will leak exhaust and you'll likely smell exhaust until the fire dies.

The oven lever is sticking up just to the right of the "pipe collar" - the oval opening where the stove pipe attaches to the cooktop surface.

When the oven lever is in the oven mode (aka "indirect draft"), the oven damper below the pipe collar should be closed. Then, for the hot exhaust gases to get to the chimney they have to travel from the firebox across the top of the oven (and under the cooktop), then down the flue on the right-hand side of the oven wall, and then under the oven floor, and then back up another section of oven wall to the pipe collar to get to the stove pipe.

When in "direct draft" that lever is moved to open that oven damper so that the hot exhaust can go directly from the firebox to the collar. That makes the chimney draft stronger. You would use direct draft when starting a fire. And you want that stronger draft when putting more fuel in so that exhaust doesn't come out where your putting fuel in.

Other than starting or refueling, the range is always running in oven mode to give the exhaust the longest pathway within the range and thus extract as much heat as possible before the exhaust reaches the chimney.

Paul


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