Here's an early example of a Primus No.0 Feel free to contradict/correct my dating, I've been pouring over adverts/posts to try and get it right. I'm going to say for starters that its approx 1898 to 1905-7..... Big thanks to Ian's @igh371 detective work in previous posts and his tardis-come-shed of early examples Solder repairs at every point apart from the burner upstand to fount connection! One leg is only just hanging in there, will have to do some remedial work and a general solder tidy-up in the future, but here it is warts and all for a start..... A later/replacement burner assembly. In good general condition but gunked up. I boiled it in plain water and lots of dark gunge came out. Its still partially plugged but I will give it a blow through with some thinners for a clean-out. Filler Cap with "AKT.BOL.B.A.HJORTH&Co." introduced in approx 1898, possibly to cover a management re-shuffle. Jubilee and Ref:Primus No.1 c.1898 Plain-sides on the air release screw. Pump tube is the fixed 1896-onwards internal NRV type (I haven't removed the NRV yet...), and has seen surgery. Its a bit far into the fount and the pump cap needed some cotton rag inside to bite down into the tube's poorly threads! There appears to be a small groove/undercut approx 3/8" down the pump tube, is this normal on an early example? Tube Cap is the F.W. Lindqvist Patent type. Pump rod is the type with the leather-backed/sealed pump head, seen in the parts catalogue of 1905, but missing by the circa 1907 Moeller & Condrup catalogue. The pump knob has been stamped but your guess is as good as mine as to the character! Top half of an "S" perhaps? Fount nice and clearly stamped, no date letter as expected. I have some leather cut and soaking for the pump head backing-washer. I may not disturb the NRV as long as it behaves, but would be nice to see if its an EARLY internal NRV or a later style and whether it has a cork or rubber pip.... The heavy soldering may mean that whatever was in there has been changed, or it was leaking at some point. I may have talked myself into taking it out for a peek The fount internals are black-sticky-filthy, it will take a few days of thinners and shaking/rinsing with M5 agitating nuts to de-gunk Progress update and Tea-Test anon... Any dating/tech input gratefully received in the meantime Alec.
Nice stove Alec and pretty accurately worked out dating parameters. The only tiny tweak to those parameters would be to move the earlier date point from 1898 to 1899. This is with reference to revised dating of the first possible use of the 'AKT.BOL' on the filler cap for which we are indebted to recent archive work by @gieorgijewski. As a result of this we now know that, whilst Lindqvist & Svenson's manufacturing company became 'Aktiebolaget Primus' in 1898, as mentioned in the Jubilee book, the sales company B.A.Hjorth & Co. did not become 'Aktiebolaget B.A.Hjorth' until the year after, i.e. 1899. Understanding stoves is one thing, coping with the vagaries of commercial company law and structures is something else! (According to current Swedish Wikipedia; "B.A. Hjorth & Co ombildades till aktiebolag 1899 och blev huvudföretag och försäljningsbolag med industriföretagen AB Primus och A/B Enköpings Verkstäder som dotterbolag och med varumärkena Bahco respektive Primus" - 'B.A. Hjorth & Co was transformed into a limited company in 1899 and became the main company and sales company with the industrial companies AB Primus and A / B Enköpings Verkstäder as subsidiaries and with the Bahco and Primus brands, respectively.") Ian
Thanks Ian and Gieorgijewski good spot I was delving into the NRV thing a little further over lunchtime break The Svenson/Lindqvist Patent type which you found still present in your No.1 and which appears to have been used from approx 1896, seems to have been dropped/deferred by at least 1903 to the more familiar enclosed-type NRV. Whether the original type was used for any great length of time is entirely subjective, but we could possibly say that if an original NRV was found it would (from the currently available evidence) have likely been pre-1903? I don't suppose you noticed any difference in say body or thread diameters of the old NRV? A standard lead washer fitted fine? We'll probably never know when the changeover year was, someone probably poured a freshly made scoop of the "new" type 373 in the NRV pigeonhole and that was that Its also interesting to note that two options of lead washer/packings are available in the 1903 catalogue, there must have been a subtle difference of some description 381 - "Blypackning till pumpventil" (Lead gasket for pump valve) 381A - "Blypackning till stigroret till No. 8-11, 215 & 216" (Lead gasket for the riser to No. 8-11, 215 & 216). The old No.8 and No.0 tend to be contemporaries (Is the No.8 the travelling version of the No.0?), they share most parts anyway. Alec. @igh371 , @gieorgijewski
Very true as far as currently available documentary evidence goes, but there is also the evidence of all the actual stoves in the CCS reference gallery and various other collections. From those actual stoves we can say confidently that there is not one single example of any model of Primus that was first introduced to the market during or after 1897 that is fitted with that original fixed pump tube exposed spring NRV. So that leaves only the 2 years of 1896, when the patent was taken out in March, and 1895 when presumably there must have been developmental prototypes and pilot market offerings, from which actual examples could potentially be found. This might sound odd, but itt has to be remembered that the patent was not for any particular way of setting up the NRV spring, but for the design concept of base carrier piece, which screws through the inside end of the pump tube to project into the tank, and which can be be unscrewed again for withdrawal through the pump tube for servicing, thus enabling the pump tube itself to be permanently fixed in place in the tank side. The rapid revision of the detachable NRV unit with the adoption of the 'modern' brass tube shrouded spring arrangement simply made the unit as a whole stronger and more robust. The fact that the crucial base piece, that threads though the bottom of the pump tube, remained substantially unaltered in the process of this upgrade also meant that the 'improved' NRV units were directly interchangeable with the originals, and no doubt replaced them in most cases as and when serving required.
I took the NRV out as I was in that far anyway Typical style, cork pip in good condition, ditto the lead washer... Assembled with fresh seals, I used a Vapalux pressure release viton washer on the pump rod as it fitted so nicely and works great. New pump leather as the original was like iron and woudn't soften Tea test completed! What a photogenic old stove! Cheers, Alec. @igh371
Superb powerful burn there, pity we can't hear it as well as see it And back on the NRV topic, the quite rounded end, and large side vents, on the NRV sleeve are quite characteristic of early date Primus NRVs; so very likely the original fitment
I admit to baiting someone with that photo..... I just could not recall what type is in my '09-'10 Primus 96, but I did think the rounded end and large holes were unusual which makes me think I have not seen it before Will be interesting to see whats in my pre-1911 un-numbered No.2 when I get to it Alec.
That bottom stamp started in 1896 and ended in 1899 - your stove looks like a Primus 0 i was bidding on recently - that stove had the 1895-96 style bottom stamp and ran away in price(too many collectors found the auction) but your spirit cup looks like WW1 or later.
@Lennart F Thanks for that This old timer was very cheap, only £20-odd plus post! They are out there and I consider myself astonishingly lucky: To have got it so cheap; That it wasn't recycled for shell casings in either world war! I imagine the spirit cup was changed at the same time as the burner. It's certainly not the sharper "vee" V of the earlier cups. I've found some info on the bottom stamp but was focussing on the accessories/caps. It looks the same as the stamp from a late un-numbered type such as Ian's one HERE What are your thoughts on the stamp Lennart? Alec.
In 1899 the bottom stamp peripheral text became similar to that on your filler cap so if the cap is original, the stove would have been completed in the months after the transforming to a limited company(AKT.BOL. B.A. HJORTH&Co) - a couple of years later, the stamp got a less dense text step by step and the crosses were altered to dots so I would guess it's made in 1899. That was a nice price - most early swedish stoves are cheaper here in Sweden but I should have paid that after less than 30 seconds of checking that stove. The round bottom stamp was around in 1896 while 1895 used to have an arced 2-line stamp in bottom or side.
It would seem logical that that should have been the case, but all of the evidence from actual stoves in the reference gallery shows that the tank base stamp was not updated in 1899. For whatever reason the provenance stamp on the tank base did not get updated until 1911. The clearest proof of this is that new Primus models introduced to the range between 1899-1910 inclusive all still had the plain 'B.A.HJORTH' base stamp until the date letters were added in 1911. At that point, 1911, 'A/B' was squeezed in (see eg). Similarly the original crescent shaped 2 line provenance mark was not replaced by the round stamp in 1896. It is, for example, still to be found on all known examples of the first Primus silent burner, the No.6; and that model was not launched until 1897.
OK - I thought the stoves changed bottom stamps like the blowlamps I have from that period but obviously the stoves continued to use the older stamps then.
@Rangie certainly started something off here! Maybe to avoid excessive drift in this thread could pursue some of these early dating discoveries and debate in a separate thread or PM? I say this because I began to think at one point that the old base stamp may have lasted even longer on some blowlamps than it did on the stoves, but that doesn't fit so well with this thread about the Primus '0'! Ian
I have no problem with the thread drifting to include blowlamps. Any discussion on Primus stamping and dating of brassware is of great interest to me.
o.k. lets do not forget about "STOCKHOLM" vs "Stockholm" on filler cap... wich was older... Here with "Bade shield" and Lidqvist patent
