Is this gravity kerosene stove worth restoring? Picked this up for $10.00. All parts seem to be there. Light surface rust and missing paint. Could not find much info on stove. I wanted to find when it might have been made, and is it worth anything. Thanks for reading....Roby
Neat find, great price. I'd have grabbed it too. CAN it be restored is an almost certain yes. Is it worth restoring, you're the only one who can answer that. It's a very individual thing, a personal question that varies with starting condition, interest, time, expense, etc for each situation and for each person. The posts on this board are filled with mechanical miracles pulled off by some very capable people who thought it was worth it. Looking forward to seeing what you do with it.
Hello roby, Re your "Is this gravity kerosene stove worth restoring?" if you have a use for it, maybe but otherwise I would say probably not, imo. there are a fair amount of wick stoves posted, some have innovative burner designs to satisfy an evolving niche from a by gone era. Some very cool, not sure how collectible, like anything within a category the more rare and higher quality items may be more sought after. If your burners have thick round wick at base of what is like nesting coffee cans... it is a basic variety(neither rare nor innovative), sorry to say. If you search site you can find posts but may not find a lot of enthusiasm. I posted a complete like new WARDS 3 burner wick stove that found me. BTW the end result for that one was very little interest and of no value, ymmv. An observation, that is more about: Spiegel, Montgomery Ward and Sears Roebuck. The 3 based in Chicago, did have brick & mortar stores but also had profitable busness models (some large scale) of selling via catalogs. The customer base of catalog sales were in rural areas throughout the US (another aspect of a by gone era). Late 20s to 50s a wick stove would be more a catalog item destined for a rural area imo. By late 20s most kitchens in metropolitan areas were already using piped-in natural gas. thx omc
Ok, hang on. The stove may not be historically unique, but that doesn't mean it's not worth restoring. I'm going to fall in more with @Marc 's opinion: if it's worth it to you -- if you find the stove interesting, if you'd like to understand a bit about how people lived before electric hotplates and microwave ovens, if you want to learn more about how burners can be designed to efficiently burn non-pressurized kerosene, if you just think this stove is neat, then yeah, it's worth restoring. ....Arch
I would restore it just for the exercise , I have not found a stove that is not worth restoring, may be only one that was steel and so rusted, it prompted me to find a better one of the same make. As it turned out with boath I had the parts I needed. So my advice is to restore it. Cheers Rob
Thanks to all. Yes I will restore the stove. All parts are there and I already have the paint. I never worked on this type of stove, it will the challenge. Too bad its riveted together, I will probably have to drill them out to paint. Thanks to all...Roby
