"BABYGAZ" stove

Discussion in 'France' started by blabast88, Mar 31, 2021.

  1. blabast88

    blabast88 France Subscriber

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    Hi,

    This one is a true curiosity, or should I say a true mystery...

    I bought it a few months ago, after my friend Hervé catched my attention on it, on ebay. No other bid on this one, I guess I was pretty lucky as it went under the radar of other collecters. I received it, I cleaned it and looked for further inscriptions on it, but nothing else than the "babygaz" writings, "France, Etranger", and "breveté SGDG" which means "sans garantie du gouvernement" (without warranty from the government).

    I tried to find information about this little gas stove, but until now I've been pretty unsuccessful. My friend Hervé thinks there is a link with camping-gaz, as the shape of the logo is the same "diamond". But this was used by other brands as well (for example "relais camping", another french brand from the 1950/1960's), and as far as I know, the very first camping-gaz butane stove was the 901 with the 3 pot-supports burner.

    So, it is still unidentified. I found a "babygaz" reference on a newspaper from Algeria, dated 1942, so that could be the beginning of a clue, maybe. As Algeria was still a french territory back then, it could explain the "france - étranger" marking, which is correct if it was manufactured there at this time.

    I only have the pictures from the seller right now, I did not take a proper time to do some photo shooting of this stove, but I will. I'll also try to recharge the gas bottle, and light this fella up.

    s-l1600 (5).jpg

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    s-l1600 (9).jpg

    s-l1600 (2).jpg

    s-l1600 (10).jpg

    s-l1600 (11).jpg

    It is a well-built little stove, with (in my opinion) a very good overall quality. The stove itself consists of a metal box painted in grey, with a sliding lid, a cardinal-red gas bottle with a secured knob (you have to push a metal nipple to allow the rotation of the knob / wheel), two detachable pot supports and the burner. You have to open the little window on the side of the stove first, let the gas bottle stick out from the stove body, attach the pot supports, then the burner (after removing a security cap) through the sliding lid, and then it could operate. The whole thing comes in a nice leather carrying case, which is a little weared. I'm currently taking care of that leather part, tying to soften and nourish it.

    If anyone here have seen something similar, or have information about that curious stove, feel free to bring some light to me :)
    It is a bit similar to the wee-dex stoves, and maybe John @presscall could confirm this, but I don't have any other idea to clearly identify this beauty.

    Bastien.
     
  2. presscall

    presscall United Kingdom SotM Winner SotY Winner Subscriber

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    @blabast88 Yes, Bastien, there’s a similarity to a Weedex - gas tank horizontal, burner appearance - but I doubt they’re from the same manufacturer.

    Quite a find!

    John
     
  3. blabast88

    blabast88 France Subscriber

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    @presscall thanks for this confirmation about my thoughts, John. I was thinking about that particular model: (there is one with almost the same burner)

    Wee-Dex butane stove variants

    I will post more detailed pictures of the burner, so we could compare the wee-dex and this babygaz.

    There are still surprises about butane stoves! This is a good example...

    Bastien.
     
  4. Majicwrench

    Majicwrench Subscriber

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    Serious fun.
     
  5. blabast88

    blabast88 France Subscriber

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    I've just checked the bottom of the gas bottle. There are some numbers written here: "28 9 37". IF, I'm saying IF, this is the date of manufacture, that could confirm the mention "babygaz" in the Algerian paper from 1942, and could make this stove a very early example of portable butane stoves, as well as a direct ancestor of the wee-dex models. That needs to be verified, but this is clearly getting very interesting :)
     
  6. blabast88

    blabast88 France Subscriber

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    Here are some additional pictures of the babygaz stove:


    1. The stove packed in its leather case.

    IMG_4476.JPG


    2. Leather case opened, stove inside.

    IMG_4474.JPG


    3. Stove and leather case, side to side.

    IMG_4472.JPG


    4. Details of the side of both the stove and the leather case, showing the buckle of the strap / handle, and the circular opening in the body of the stove.

    IMG_4473.JPG


    5. The leather case from 3/4.

    IMG_4478.JPG


    6. The other side / rear of the leather case. You can notice that it shows signs of wear / time damage. The leather is cracked in many places, and needs some attention (it hasn't been restored yet, apart from a general cleaning and the application of moisturizer, which helped a little bit, but is not enough).

    IMG_4479.JPG


    7. General view of the stove, showing the embossed logo "BABYGAZ", "Breveté SGDG", "France Etranger".

    IMG_4482.JPG


    8. View from above, with the sliding metal cover and the attachment of the pot supports / the hole for the burner.

    IMG_4483.JPG


    9. Opening the cap / cover.

    IMG_4487.JPG


    10. Metal case opened. You can see that everything packs in that case: gas bottle, pot support and the burner.

    IMG_4488.JPG


    11. Elements of the stove out of the box: sliding cover put apart, on the right you can spot the pot supports and the burner.

    IMG_4490.JPG


    12. Details of the pot supports / the burner.

    IMG_4492.JPG


    13. Details of the gas bottle and its protecting cap. During transport, it locks on the bottle thread, protecting the jet / preventing a gas leak. It has a leather seal inside.

    IMG_4494.JPG


    14. Protective cap unscrewed, showing the jet.

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    15. Circular door opened, bottle in "transport" position.

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    16. Circular door opened, bottle in "working" position.

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    17. Before assembling the stove, with the bottle already in working position.

    IMG_4504.JPG


    18. Putting the pot supports in place: they simply slide in and lock in position.

    IMG_4505.JPG


    19. Pot supports in position.

    IMG_4507.JPG


    20. Burner head screwed in place.

    IMG_4511.JPG


    21. The stove in working position.

    IMG_4513.JPG


    22. View from 3/4: you can see that the clearance between the burner and the pot support is not important at all, even non-existant. It should cause some combustion problems.

    IMG_4518.JPG


    23. Another view from 3/4.

    IMG_4519.JPG


    24. Detail of the brand logo.

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    25. Detail of the burner head, from above. It shows similarities to one of the wee-dex models (butane stove as well).

    IMG_4520.JPG


    26. Burner head, dismantled.

    IMG_4528.JPG


    27. Detail of the circular door screw, with a little spring: it allows the opening to be nice and soft, and the doors to lock perfectly in place.

    IMG_4529.JPG


    28. Detail of the gas bottle. The little metal nipple coming from the side of the knob has to be pushed to allow the rotation / the opening of the gas bottle, otherwise it stays locked in place. Quite a security improvement for such an old gassie!

    IMG_4534.JPG


    29. Bottom of the gas bottle, with the inscriptions "E 15 K" "710" "28 9 37". The last one is supposedly the date of manufacture, which could make it the oldest portable french gas stove I know.

    IMG_4532.JPG


    30. Size comparison: the stove side-to-side with an early Optimus 8 (embossed model).

    IMG_4515.JPG

    The stove weighs 2,3 kg with the leather case on, and 1,996 kg without it (gas bottle empty). It measures 29,5 x 10,5 x 9,5 cm. Quite a heavy dude for its size!

    That gassie needs more investigation, as its history is still very foggy. If it was created in the late 1930's, then it is possible that it has been forgotten with the troubled times of the second world war. I don't know if there are many examples of that particular stove, I only know that one and I feel very lucky to have it. I will do my investigation job, and hope to come back here soon with more answers than questions... The leather case will soon be restored as well, and I might try to recharge the bottle a little bit and light the stove. It is not specified on which kind of gas it's supposed to work, but my guess is butane.

    Bastien.
     
  7. Doc Mark

    Doc Mark SotM Winner Subscriber

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    @blabast88 ,

    WOW!! This is a very interesting gassie stove, and the setup is really eye-catching! One question: Does the burner head stick up past the pot supports? Or, is that just an optical illusion? Thank you for the information you have shared, and hopefully, you can get this stove up and running, soon, just for the fun of it! A real bit of gassie history, I'm thinking! Take care, and God Bless!

    Every Good Wish,
    Doc
     
  8. blabast88

    blabast88 France Subscriber

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    Hi @Doc Mark ,

    I had to check about the burner head and the pot supports! Not only because you asked, but because when I looked at the pictures I took earlier, I was feeling a bit dumb not to have checked it while the stove was assembled... :-k

    So I took the chance to do it properly and take more pictures. I can answer you now: this is an optical illusion. I thought, like you, that the burner head was higher than the pot supports, but in fact it is a few millimeters lower, allowing a little clearance between the burner and the pot / kettle.

    I put my 0,7l eagle kettle on it. Not the most appropriate one, but the closest to me at that time :D

    Some pictures:


    The babygaz stove with the kettle on it.

    IMG_4537.JPG


    An attempt to photograph the space / clearance between the stove and the kettle. Not very remarkable / barely noticeable, but there is one, of a few millimeters.

    IMG_4539.JPG


    I also took the chance to take a picture from above, showing the gas bottle in place in the metal body. It's held in place by 2 metal "clamps" of which you can see the 4 grey tabs. Those clamps are welded on the bottom of the metal case.

    IMG_4543.JPG

    Happy to see that this gassie is catching your interest ;) I've spent a few hours yesterday evening to find more info on it, ending by ordering some 1930's camping catalogue I've found for sale. Hope to see that stove in those catalogues!

    Best regards,

    Bastien.
     
  9. presscall

    presscall United Kingdom SotM Winner SotY Winner Subscriber

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    @blabast88 Great coverage Bastien, thank you.

    Regarding the possible date stamp, is the format Day/Month/Year usual for France? It is in the UK but not in the USA for example.

    It’s a clever and sophisicated design for sure and the leather carrying satchel is classy.

    One issue I wonder about which will be tested when you re-gas the cylinder and fire up the stove with a pan or kettle on and it’s to do with the minimal clearance between pot base and the burner.

    A burner needs space to enable exhaust gas from combustion to escape and I’ve noticed that some designs of stoves are poor in that respect, restricting output and sometimes emiiting a carbon-y smell as a result of inhibited combustion.

    I wonder how your stove will perform in that respect.

    John
     
  10. blabast88

    blabast88 France Subscriber

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    Hi John @presscall

    You're probably more than right about the minimal clearance. My guess at that time, haven't lit the stove yet, is that it should have a poor power output regarding this lack of space between the burner and the pot / pan. I had that issue with my exemplar of the Jet Gaz double-burner (which we talked about), causing me to think it was an early example, then corrected by adding a pot raiser (and putting the control knobs on the same side, not opposite).

    I will try when I'll light the stove up and let you know ;)

    About the date stamp, the format is the right one for France. It was very common back in those years not to put the "0" before the month (for example not "09" but "9" in that case, for september). I've seen this in official papers from the Camping Gaz company, in the 1950's.

    Bastien
     
  11. ROBBO55

    ROBBO55 Subscriber

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    A very interesting gas stove, Bastien. Congratulations on this find. :thumbup:
    Good luck with your research of its pedigree.
     
  12. ArchMc

    ArchMc SotM Winner Subscriber

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    Nice stove! I like the redundant safety features to prevent gas leaks, especially the button to prevent the valve from turning. The redundancy is probably one indication that it's an early gas model, when the company was still paranoid about this new fangled gas fuel. Would have been eliminated to save on production costs as they gained more experience with it.

    ....Arch
     
  13. kerophile

    kerophile United Kingdom SotM Winner Subscriber

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    Hi @blabast88 A good-looking and very early gas stove that you have there.

    In the Primus-Sievert 100 year anniversary book they state:

    “ In the early 1930s interest centred on a new fuel - “bottled gas” or LPG ( Liquified Petroleum Gas) - and a stove, designed to run on LP gas, was constructed at AB Max Sievert in 1938. Development work stopped during WW2 but was resumed in the late 1940s.”

    It is interesting to see how early the stove manufacturers were involved in work with LPG appliances.

    Best Regards,
    Kerophile.
     
  14. blabast88

    blabast88 France Subscriber

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    Thanks @ROBBO55 @ArchMc and @kerophile ;)

    Well, I have to confess that I've got something, finally... It took me lots of hours in front of my computer, digging up whatever website I could find about camping gear from the 1930's. Nothing on 1930's catalogues. Same thing on 1930's magazines. I acquired a few of them, hoping there would be something, even a single mention of that Babygaz, but nothing, anywhere...
    In the end I was pretty pessimistic to find information about that particular stove. Then (it was yesterday evening), I tried a last search, remembering that it's written clearly "breveté SGDG" on it, which means a patent was registered for that product, at some time. I found that on the INPI website (national institute for industrial property), patents were available online. So I took my chance and typed "babygaz": nothing... "baby gaz": still nothing. Then, I typed "gas stove 1937. 3 documents showed up... I was meticulously checking each of them, when... I was reading some patent registered by a french man, Louis MERMOZ, back in 1937... This mention starded the document:

    "This invention is about a compact and lightweight portable gas stove, in which the gas bottle and the burner are forming a block, whose organs can be easily separated from each other, those organs are contained inside a metal box, constituting the support intended to receive the pans to be heated"

    The document is pretty complete, including technical drawings showing that there could be no doubt about the fact that this patent concerns the Babygaz stove, even if there is no mention of that name.

    In the end, I dug even more in that INPI website, having now the name of the inventor. Louis MERMOZ was living in France, and submitted 5 patents:

    - the first version of the Babygaz, dated 12/11/1936

    - a second version of the Babygaz, with technical improvements, dated 12/05/1937. It was the document I first found on the website...

    - a third version of the Babygaz (the last one), dated 28/12/1938, which is obviously the version I have

    - a burner, intended to work with every compressed or liquefied gas, dated from 1937, which is supposedly the burner of the Babygaz stove that I have (the attached document to that file wasn't the right one, so impossible to check the technical drawings / informations about it)

    - a last patent about a portable gas stove, dated 20/01/1939. This last one is also very interesting, because it shows a stove very similar to paraffin stoves, but intended to work with liquefied / compressed gas, including the same burner as the Babygaz... I don't know if the development work of that stove resulted in something, the patent being delivered a few months before France was invaded by Germany during the second world war.


    My version of the Babygaz stove is identified as the third one, but including some technical aspects from the first version (the control valve with the safety button).
    On those documents, the product has no name yet. I assume that, according to the aspect of my stove, there was already a production line and that "Babygaz" was already distributed in the market. Not during a long period (only a few years between the first patent and the beginning of the war), though. What is also interesting is a mention of the Babygaz in the last patent submitted by Louis MERMOZ, concerning another model of lightweight gas stove:

    "We know such stoves comprising a cylinder of cylindrical shape, housed inside an elongated box which can open and receive a burner to constitute a stove. These devices are relatively bulky and heavy in relation to their heating capacity, and they are difficult to store for transport. The manufacture of the bottle is expensive."

    So, apparently the Babygaz didn't fit all the inventor's expectations... This shows a development work pretty active to find the best solution to bring gas stoves on camping spots. This is one very interesting model, definitely. I couldn't attest that for other countries, but for France, I'm pretty sure this is the earliest finalized product of that type of stoves. :)

    Bastien.
     
  15. kerophile

    kerophile United Kingdom SotM Winner Subscriber

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    Hi Bastien, @blabast88 Great research on this early gas stove.

    You mention :
    "- a last patent about a portable gas stove, dated 20/01/1939. This last one is also very interesting, because it shows a stove very similar to paraffin stoves, but intended to work with liquefied / compressed gas, including the same burner as the Babygaz..."

    Have a look at this old "missing link" post relating to the transition from kerosene to LPG fuel in a small British picnic stove:

    RM Rambler, the Missing Link? *

    Best Regards,
    Kerophile.
     
  16. blabast88

    blabast88 France Subscriber

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    Hi @kerophile ,

    Thanks for that insight! An interesting piece of British stovie ;)

    Concerning the "Babygaz", I selected the pages with the technical drawings, and attached it to this message. You can see the evolution of the different models of the Babygaz, and also the last stove, which was supposed to be something else: lighter, smaller, and maybe cheaper to produce / more efficient. There are more pages, more drawings, but those are the most representative of what the different stoves looked like.


    Bastien.
     

    Attached Files:

  17. blabast88

    blabast88 France Subscriber

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    @presscall John, if you take a closer look at the "Babygaz (version 3)" patent, you can see that even the control knob is very similar to the wee-dex butane stove... I'm getting pretty sure they have a lot in common.

    Those documents brings answers, but also a few questions about this early gassie:

    Were the version 1 and 2 produced? Or was it just a bunch of prototypes, before making the final product? (version 3). It could be very interesting to see those two early versions appearing somewhere...

    What happened to the inventor? I have a bit of work to do in order to learn more about his history... I assume it could be linked to that stove history. Was he killed during world war two? Did he go to UK as a soldier / refugee? As I wrote, no other patent was filed after 1939. So, something might have happened during the war.

    What is pretty sure about that Babygaz, is that it was certainly an early answer to the increasing movement of camping activities. Camping increased a lot during the late 1930's in France, because of the "Front Populaire" victory and the apparition of paid vacations, starting in summer 1936. That stove was developped at that very moment (first patent 12/11/1936), so it is pretty normal to imagine a link between that context and the development of camping gear.

    Apparently, the stove was also made to be used as a gas lamp. I suppose that the first idea was to adapt a lamp as a "bec visseaux", which was already used in homes for a while. I will try to do so, and post some photos as well.

    Bastien.
     
  18. presscall

    presscall United Kingdom SotM Winner SotY Winner Subscriber

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    @blabast88 My compliments Bastien on piecing together some more of the history.

    John