View attachment 5176731 Hey all, was yard saleing this summer and ran across an old rusty #27 Birmingham Range and Stove Co wood stove. It was complete but needing some tlc. It was freshly pulled from a chicken coop as a hatching nest for the lady's hens. A dog had killed the chickens and the stove was out of work. After hearing the story and finding out that it was the same stove that I among others, sat around swapping lies in the old store in the town that I grew up in, how could I not buy it?. I remember as a kid in the 60s, this old stove had a coffee perculator with the glass knob on it year round. Sitting beside it was an ash shovel and a coal bucket. I have no idea what went with those things, but I will find suitable replacements, Im sure. I often wondered where it ended up, as the store was torn down in the late 90s. E.B. opened it up in 1946 after a government tour in the South Pacific when the war ended. I would venture to guess that the stove is an early 50s model. I will attach a couple of photos and if you heat with an old stove, post up a picture. I love these things. View attachment 5176729 View attachment 5176730 View attachment 5176729 View attachment 5176730 View attachment 5176731
I have a very similar one with a cool story as well. It spent time in my small shop and is just stashed away maybe to do sauna duty at a later time
Not sure how you guys have fond memories, mine are of endless firewood chopping, stacking, and the chill that ran down my spine as I was warm in front of the TV on a Michigan winter night and dad would say "go get some firewood boy....", lol. I do remember mom cooking on it, making the kids cocoa after hockey and stuff tho. Absolutely nothing like wood fired heat.
Cool. My wife's grandmother died in 1987 had a wood cookstove in her house. Cooked two meals a day for 58 years. Just throw every door and window open and fire her up.
Good score!! I have several stoves like this and three cook stoves. I bought one at a farm auction and a lady about 80 came over to me and told me it was a wedding present. She had made bread in it the day before. I found a ten plate stove at another auction. It's made of 10 plates of cast iron screwed together with only four screws. It's either late 1700's or very early 1800's. It was disassembled, laying on a pile. I had the only bid as no one else knew what it was.
It reminds me of a small one my Grandfather had. He got in during WWII to conserve heating oil. He would set it up in the late fall in the living room of his house to help keep things warm. A couple of times a season, we would cut a pickup truck load sized for his stove (ours was bigger) and bring them up to him. Once, he complained that some of the pieces needed to be split some more, because they were two big. I grabbed the sledge hammer and wedge and went up and split them. He was impressed that after one hit, the piece would be split and I would have to pull the wedge out of the block I had under it.
They still made those exact ones not too long ago, because my roommate bought one for the house we lived in around 2007 or so? He's still got it in there...
Had a smaller version, only one hole in the top, in the small barn I built dirt modifieds in during the 70's. Also had the coffee percolator. Still got the percolator. It was my mom's, and I saved it a couple years ago just because.
That looks like the perculator. I asked the store owner one time why it would stay on the stove year round, he said it was easy to find come winter if he didn't move it. We had a coal scuttle bucket and an ash shovel that sat in the corner and would take turns shoveling ash and dumping the bucket.
I had it easy. Just throw the ashes out the back door. Only woods out there beyond the circle of dirt driveway. We had lots of ash trees, and we'd cut down 3 or 4 large trees each year. Split it right up using nothing but an axe when still green. Store it in the old garage for a year. Good to go... Lit the fires in the barn the easy way. Light the cutting torch, and have at it for about a minute. Got the draft going really good as well.
That is really cool! It looks like a coal burner, but is that a more modern range top swapped in? Hot rodding a stove. Gotta love it!
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